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So no productivity gains or increases to the standard of living since 1949? How about an even more basic set of premises: Do you believe that greater speciali

So no productivity gains or increases to the standard of living since 1949? How about an even more basic set of premises: Do you believe that greater specialization leads to increased productivity? Is there a correlation between specialization and the size of the labor pool? Why is it that we develop software products and buy bread from bakeries? Why not own tractor, maintain a tractor, apply fertilizer, till acreage, sow seeds, irrigate, manage pests, harvest, mill the resulting wheat, knead the dough and bake the bread ourselves? Better yet, just build a tractor at home from iron ore.

adrian_b 3y ago
Your examples are not very good. As a software developer, I have stopped buying bread from bakeries many years ago, because I no longer like the bread made by modern industrial methods. Now I make every morning a bread for myself, kneading the dough and baking it (in a microwave oven, where baking is much faster and more reproducible than in a traditional oven). I would like to also mill the wheat seeds into flour, but I do not have a suitable electric mill. Nevertheless, I mill other plant seeds that I use in much smaller quantities, e.g. poppy seeds, from which I bake a sponge cake. Anything that you can do yourself at home independently of others will always provide better results than anything that you can purchase. I agree that there is a correlation between specialization and the size of the labor pool, but even in a small country with a few million humans the size of the labor pool is enough to cover all specialities. The reasons why various industries are now missing from most small countries (even if they frequently have existed there earlier) have nothing to do with the size of their labor pool. An explanation of those reasons would need a much ampler space. If I compare my standard of living with that of my grandfather before WWII, there are no real improvements, except that now I am able to do myself a lot of work that he did not do, but my grandmother did for him. Because now I cook everything with a microwave oven, I can spend very little time with cooking in comparison with my grandmother. The same by using a programmable washing machine for clothes and a vacuum cleaner instead of brooms. So the progress in living standard is only that I no longer need an unemployed spouse or a servant to do the housework, which is good, because unlike my grandfather I could not afford to support adequately a second person from my salary.
- palmfacehn 3y ago
  Perhaps in a larger urban center the bread you prefer would be available in a specialty bakery.

adrian_b 3y ago

Your examples are not very good. As a software developer, I have stopped buying bread from bakeries many years ago, because I no longer like the bread made by modern industrial methods. Now I make every morning a bread for myself, kneading the dough and baking it (in a microwave oven, where baking is much faster and more reproducible than in a traditional oven). I would like to also mill the wheat seeds into flour, but I do not have a suitable electric mill. Nevertheless, I mill other plant seeds that I use in much smaller quantities, e.g. poppy seeds, from which I bake a sponge cake. Anything that you can do yourself at home independently of others will always provide better results than anything that you can purchase. I agree that there is a correlation between specialization and the size of the labor pool, but even in a small country with a few million humans the size of the labor pool is enough to cover all specialities. The reasons why various industries are now missing from most small countries (even if they frequently have existed there earlier) have nothing to do with the size of their labor pool. An explanation of those reasons would need a much ampler space. If I compare my standard of living with that of my grandfather before WWII, there are no real improvements, except that now I am able to do myself a lot of work that he did not do, but my grandmother did for him. Because now I cook everything with a microwave oven, I can spend very little time with cooking in comparison with my grandmother. The same by using a programmable washing machine for clothes and a vacuum cleaner instead of brooms. So the progress in living standard is only that I no longer need an unemployed spouse or a servant to do the housework, which is good, because unlike my grandfather I could not afford to support adequately a second person from my salary.

palmfacehn 3y ago
Perhaps in a larger urban center the bread you prefer would be available in a specialty bakery.