3 ms·

The problem with this logic is that it assumes a zero-sum game, and a constant demand. Example: If we have 10 guys making hydrogen cells, and all the sudden we

by batbomb 13y ago

The problem with this logic is that it assumes a zero-sum game, and a constant demand. Example: If we have 10 guys making hydrogen cells, and all the sudden we can replace them with one robot and one guy, and that takes an unviable industry to a viable one, well then they are going to need a lot more robots and guys, a lot more than the 10 they previously had.

bluedino 13y ago
Except that never ended up happening. I live in a rust-belt city which was booming during most of the 1900's and ended up dying off when the 60's and 70's came around. Today I was at lunch in what's left of our downtown district, and there were old photographs on the wall of business that used to be in the area (mostly manufacturing). I was amazed that some of the photographs showed huge rooms of women sitting at work tables assembling parts, folding boxes, and packing items. That stuff is all gone. I could imagine a handful of machines replacing that group of people. When you go from a city having 50,000 factory workers to the 4,000 or so that we have now, it's a huge deal.
- batbomb 13y ago
  The thing about economics though is it's about the average case, not the individual case. There's always going to be winners and losers, but as long as the winners beat out the losers things work okay. I think a future dedicated towards decentralized/distributed micro-economies relying on coordination and communication would be ideal, because it could prevent exactly what your town experienced. Automation in conjunction with networking could make your town a viable manufacturing micro-hub, for example, instead of those sorts of things being shipped off to Shenzhen. I'd argue The reason china is such a power house is precisely because we don't have the automation necessary to compete with them.

3 ms·

The problem with this logic is that it assumes a zero-sum game, and a constant demand. Example: If we have 10 guys making hydrogen cells, and all the sudden we

by batbomb 13y ago

bluedino 13y ago
Except that never ended up happening. I live in a rust-belt city which was booming during most of the 1900's and ended up dying off when the 60's and 70's came around. Today I was at lunch in what's left of our downtown district, and there were old photographs on the wall of business that used to be in the area (mostly manufacturing). I was amazed that some of the photographs showed huge rooms of women sitting at work tables assembling parts, folding boxes, and packing items. That stuff is all gone. I could imagine a handful of machines replacing that group of people. When you go from a city having 50,000 factory workers to the 4,000 or so that we have now, it's a huge deal.
- batbomb 13y ago
  The thing about economics though is it's about the average case, not the individual case. There's always going to be winners and losers, but as long as the winners beat out the losers things work okay. I think a future dedicated towards decentralized/distributed micro-economies relying on coordination and communication would be ideal, because it could prevent exactly what your town experienced. Automation in conjunction with networking could make your town a viable manufacturing micro-hub, for example, instead of those sorts of things being shipped off to Shenzhen. I'd argue The reason china is such a power house is precisely because we don't have the automation necessary to compete with them.