3 ms·
None of the things that Acemoglu points to would even matter, if it were not for 250 years' denial of the implications of the steam engine.
by FrankWilhoit 2y ago
None of the things that Acemoglu points to would even matter, if it were not for 250 years' denial of the implications of the steam engine.
- hhs 2y ago> denial of the implications of the steam engine. If interested, there has been a lot of research done on the implications of the steam engine and other general-purpose technologies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General-purpose_technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General-purpose_technology
- dredmorbius 2y agoI'm presuming that's a reference to these earlier comments? The purpose of shortening the workweek by 25% is to "create" 20% more "jobs", which still presumes that "everyone" must "work"; but that presumption is false, and, like every falsehood, a sadistic trap. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39716331 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39716331> (2024-3-15) The steam engine made hash of the civilizational moral imperative to work for one's living. Suddenly, instead of N people's labor being needed to support N people, 0.1N or 0.2N people's labor could support N people. What was there for the others to do? So all -- exactly all -- of the political debates of the long 19th and 20th Centuries (where politics is taken to include war) were based on the pretense that the steam engine had no such consequence. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38409930 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38409930> (2023-11-25)