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I have a heretical thought: the integrated circuit revolution has made capitalism and the economy in general look much better than it actually is.
by csours 4y ago
I have a heretical thought: the integrated circuit revolution has made capitalism and the economy in general look much better than it actually is.
- robocat 4y agoHow do we measure the economic value of technology? Solow productivity paradox: “the computer age was everywhere except for the productivity statistics” - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox
- kareemsabri 4y agoIt's actually not that heretical. It's pretty well documented that most of the gains in productivity in manufacturing have been driven by the computer industry, while the rest has largely stagnated.
- oceanplexian 4y agoI don’t buy it. Even before mass adoption of integrated circuits capitalism was on a tear in the 20th century. We had Ford cranking out mass-produced automobiles on assembly lines, prefabricated homes, nuclear energy, advances in medicine and sanitation, advances in aerospace, and so on. While integrated circuits are great and clearly driving large parts of the economy, they aren’t the “source” of our economic success, but actually the latest manifestation of a long line of advances that have come out of a well functioning economic system. You can clearly see this distinction in fields like software engineering, where theoretically every country in the world is on an equal playing field, but the US still dominates. It’s because the economic system in the US is superior, and less capitalistic systems are not as good at driving innovation.