4 ms·

When I look at pretty old buildings, what sticks out are hand-molded wrought iron, hand-laid brick quoins, hand-carved window siding, hand-assembled decorative

by scythe 4y ago

When I look at pretty old buildings, what sticks out are hand-molded wrought iron, hand-laid brick quoins, hand-carved window siding, hand-assembled decorative fences — surely, you can see the common factor? So it's cost disease. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol's_cost_disease http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol's_cost_disease Modern buildings are made principally of prefabricated components designed to be packaged and shipped efficiently and assembled quickly. Why lay bricks when you can nail on a layer of fake brick? Hopefully, 3D printing will save us.

twic 4y ago
You can't just observe that labour-intensive elements are less common and declare that it's Baumol's cost disease! You have to provide evidence that it's that, rather than any other cause.
pixl97 4y ago
Not sure where to start debunking this... When you look at old buildings you're automatically starting with survivorship bias. Expensive and well kept old buildings tend to stay around a lot longer than buildings that were built cheaply at the time. Those have all been bulldozed. Oh, did I mention that expensive building was expensive? It's easy to ignore that huge parts of the population were living in houses with paper thin walls and spending enormous amounts of energy to keep warm or cool (on cooling people had avoided the southern united states in mass till cooling options were available). Oh, did we also mention that not only the US population, but the global population has increased massively since then. All of those processes you're describing are massively energy and labor intensive and do not scale as you're trying to put 8 billion people under rooves. Why lay bricks rather than fake bricks? So everyone has a home and they don't have to burn an entire forest to get it.
- User23 4y ago
  > global population has increased massively since then. All of those processes you're describing are massively energy and labor intensive and do not scale as you're trying to put 8 billion people under rooves This doesn't make any sense. Labor supply obviously scales with population. More people needing housing also means more people available to build housing.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    Labor supply scans linearly if nothing else changes. Being that 100+ years ago people were not building computers, or making money producing minecraft videos, or one of any number of tasks that may pay more than flourishing housing. And you managed to ignore the millions and millions of houses that were close to 'dirt hut' and 'a bunch of sticks leaned together' that have been the more typical means of living for humanity. And that ignored that until 1900ish population grew very slowly meaning that multigenerational housing was more feasible. "Everything has changed, why hasn't the world stayed the same" -- this article
    - scythe 4y ago
      >Labor supply scans linearly if nothing else changes. Being that 100+ years ago people were not building computers, or making money producing minecraft videos, or one of any number of tasks that may pay more than flourishing housing. You realize that that is Baumol's cost disease, correct? If you want to "debunk" my post, you should make sure you don't actually agree with it. >When you look at old buildings you're automatically starting with survivorship bias. Expensive and well kept old buildings tend to stay around a lot longer than buildings that were built cheaply at the time. Those have all been bulldozed. We are also using, for comparison, the most expensive buildings built today. Pointing out that we're comparing them to the expensive buildings from yesteryear doesn't make it an invalid comparison. It's not only tract houses that are ugly.

by scythe 4y ago

twic 4y ago

You can't just observe that labour-intensive elements are less common and declare that it's Baumol's cost disease! You have to provide evidence that it's that, rather than any other cause.

pixl97 4y ago

Not sure where to start debunking this... When you look at old buildings you're automatically starting with survivorship bias. Expensive and well kept old buildings tend to stay around a lot longer than buildings that were built cheaply at the time. Those have all been bulldozed. Oh, did I mention that expensive building was expensive? It's easy to ignore that huge parts of the population were living in houses with paper thin walls and spending enormous amounts of energy to keep warm or cool (on cooling people had avoided the southern united states in mass till cooling options were available). Oh, did we also mention that not only the US population, but the global population has increased massively since then. All of those processes you're describing are massively energy and labor intensive and do not scale as you're trying to put 8 billion people under rooves. Why lay bricks rather than fake bricks? So everyone has a home and they don't have to burn an entire forest to get it.

User23 4y ago
> global population has increased massively since then. All of those processes you're describing are massively energy and labor intensive and do not scale as you're trying to put 8 billion people under rooves This doesn't make any sense. Labor supply obviously scales with population. More people needing housing also means more people available to build housing.
- pixl97 4y ago
  Labor supply scans linearly if nothing else changes. Being that 100+ years ago people were not building computers, or making money producing minecraft videos, or one of any number of tasks that may pay more than flourishing housing. And you managed to ignore the millions and millions of houses that were close to 'dirt hut' and 'a bunch of sticks leaned together' that have been the more typical means of living for humanity. And that ignored that until 1900ish population grew very slowly meaning that multigenerational housing was more feasible. "Everything has changed, why hasn't the world stayed the same" -- this article
  - scythe 4y ago
    >Labor supply scans linearly if nothing else changes. Being that 100+ years ago people were not building computers, or making money producing minecraft videos, or one of any number of tasks that may pay more than flourishing housing. You realize that that is Baumol's cost disease, correct? If you want to "debunk" my post, you should make sure you don't actually agree with it. >When you look at old buildings you're automatically starting with survivorship bias. Expensive and well kept old buildings tend to stay around a lot longer than buildings that were built cheaply at the time. Those have all been bulldozed. We are also using, for comparison, the most expensive buildings built today. Pointing out that we're comparing them to the expensive buildings from yesteryear doesn't make it an invalid comparison. It's not only tract houses that are ugly.