3 ms·

My point is that it is somewhat arbitrary who captures the value, and it is not always clear who produces the value. Say a grocery store is stocking at twice th

My point is that it is somewhat arbitrary who captures the value, and it is not always clear who produces the value. Say a grocery store is stocking at twice the rate they did 40 years ago because they have an app. Is the guy who wrote the app responsible for all the increased productivity? Not really, writing the app was fairly trivial compared to inventing the transistor, the operating system, and the programming language. Is the guy who invented the transistor responsible? Well it would not have mattered at all if there wasn't a store to make use of his invention. Is the store owner responsible? Well he isn't technical at all, he didn't invent the transistor, write the app or stock the shelf. Besides he would have no one to sell to if there wasn't a town to sell to. Is the town responsible? Well they provided road the stocker drove on to work, the university that the programmer and transistor developer went to, the police force that protects the store, and the customers that buy the cans.

marcusverus 6y ago
I propose a thought experiment. Assume the app was developed in the past five years. Replay the last five years twice, with different circumstances: Once without the shelf stocker, and once without the programmer. In one case, the increased productivity still appears, in the other, it does not. It seems to me that the person who is required for the addition of the increased productivity caused the increased productivity, while the person who is not required for it did not.
- slg 6y ago
  If you remove the individual programmer or the individual shelf stocker nothing will change. The company will just get someone else to do the job. If you remove all programmers the shelves will be stocked at a slower rate. If you remove all shelf stockers, the entire system falls apart and no shelves are stocked. It certainly seems like the shelf stockers are more important to this process than the programmers. They still provide value without the programmers but the programmers are entirely dependent on the shelf stockers to provide value. Why do the programmers therefore get to claim the entire surplus in productivity if they are dependent on the shelf stockers for that productivity boost to actually materialize?

marcusverus 6y ago

I propose a thought experiment. Assume the app was developed in the past five years. Replay the last five years twice, with different circumstances: Once without the shelf stocker, and once without the programmer. In one case, the increased productivity still appears, in the other, it does not. It seems to me that the person who is required for the addition of the increased productivity caused the increased productivity, while the person who is not required for it did not.

slg 6y ago
If you remove the individual programmer or the individual shelf stocker nothing will change. The company will just get someone else to do the job. If you remove all programmers the shelves will be stocked at a slower rate. If you remove all shelf stockers, the entire system falls apart and no shelves are stocked. It certainly seems like the shelf stockers are more important to this process than the programmers. They still provide value without the programmers but the programmers are entirely dependent on the shelf stockers to provide value. Why do the programmers therefore get to claim the entire surplus in productivity if they are dependent on the shelf stockers for that productivity boost to actually materialize?