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> "Innovation has brought great benefits to humanity. Nobody in their right mind would want to return to the world of handloom weavers. " Interestingly even th

by furyg3 13y ago

> "Innovation has brought great benefits to humanity. Nobody in their right mind would want to return to the world of handloom weavers. " Interestingly even this is the opposite of what we're seeing. It may be more expensive (cost), worse (quality), and less efficient (time and materials) but: I like to brew my own beer instead of buying it. I like to build my own cabinet instead of shopping at Ikea. I like to take a day off to raise my child instead of sending them to daycare. To fix my car, make my own lamp, walk the dog, etc. I just went to an open air museum where perfectly right-minded people were looming their own textiles (for free!). I recently met a regional queen in Indonesia who wove her own, as well, because it was cultural, not because her family needed the money.

TeMPOraL 13y ago
Well, you do this for fun. For every person like you who likes to brew his/her own beer, there are other people who just want to buy a beer to have something to drink while they're socializing with friends. The real benefit of innovation is that you're free to choose which things you care about enough to do them by yourself, and have all the others mass-produced and cheaply available.
- VLM 13y ago
  I think you're in a circular loop. Once those "just wanna drink a beer" people have their jobs automated away, they will never again have money to participate in the economy again. At which point they will have to take up barter or crime. They might trade home grown weed for someones home brewed beer, but one thing I know is they won't be part of the monetary economy buying a beer anymore.
  - TeMPOraL 13y ago
    > Once those "just wanna drink a beer" people have their jobs automated away, they will never again have money to participate in the economy again. This is the whole topic of this article. The economy is broken wrt. progress and needs to be fixed. Two pillars of our economic system - scarcity and endless growth - are both being destroyed as we speak.
    - VLM 13y ago
      I'd agree with your two and add two of my own: 1) The existence of the middle class 2) The general public gets to participate in commodity markets. Not the trading commodity market, but the consumer markets. No more buying food, medical care, housing, clothing, no longer participants in the system. The monetary economy is for other people, the rich, not everyone or even the majority.
      - xixi77 13y ago
        Middle class is going away for sure. It has always been a historical abnormality anyway. As for the latter -- people have been participating in monetary economy long before industrial revolution, and will be participating whichever way the society evolves -- it is just simply more convenient than barter. If someone can produce beer himself cheaper than it is available on the market, why would he not sell it and earn some money? And if he cannot make it cheaper, why would he not buy it instead (or not drink it at all if he is too poor, or steal money & buy beer, or...) -- the point is that whatever he does, making it himself is never a good idea unless he enjoys it as a (somewhat expensive) hobby.
    - maerF0x0 13y ago
      > "Two pillars of our economic system - scarcity and endless growth" Clearly "endless" is not possible, that's like saying "give me infinite apples" ... Most people aren't concerned with endless, but with "practically endless" The limits of endless growth come from physical limits, which we're no where close to hitting. Expansion across the universe could give us something on the order of 10^29 times expansion (universe ~10^53kg, Earth ~10^24 kg)... In my human scale that's practically "endless". Also, digital goods consumption have nearly no marginal physical cost, so they can expand without much change in the physical consumption.
  - xixi77 13y ago
    Look at what is happening in low-income countries now. You see a lot of small one-person/one-family businesses, which are effectively people buying themselves jobs (and being forced to carry equity risk of course). The state of the world in which most people are to be employed at set wages by some company is fairly new, and not at all universal. I don't actually think this is going to happen too much -- this is just a counterpoint to the "barter or crime" statement.

by furyg3 13y ago

TeMPOraL 13y ago

Well, you do this for fun. For every person like you who likes to brew his/her own beer, there are other people who just want to buy a beer to have something to drink while they're socializing with friends. The real benefit of innovation is that you're free to choose which things you care about enough to do them by yourself, and have all the others mass-produced and cheaply available.

VLM 13y ago
I think you're in a circular loop. Once those "just wanna drink a beer" people have their jobs automated away, they will never again have money to participate in the economy again. At which point they will have to take up barter or crime. They might trade home grown weed for someones home brewed beer, but one thing I know is they won't be part of the monetary economy buying a beer anymore.
- TeMPOraL 13y ago
  > Once those "just wanna drink a beer" people have their jobs automated away, they will never again have money to participate in the economy again. This is the whole topic of this article. The economy is broken wrt. progress and needs to be fixed. Two pillars of our economic system - scarcity and endless growth - are both being destroyed as we speak.
  - VLM 13y ago
    I'd agree with your two and add two of my own: 1) The existence of the middle class 2) The general public gets to participate in commodity markets. Not the trading commodity market, but the consumer markets. No more buying food, medical care, housing, clothing, no longer participants in the system. The monetary economy is for other people, the rich, not everyone or even the majority.
    - xixi77 13y ago
      Middle class is going away for sure. It has always been a historical abnormality anyway. As for the latter -- people have been participating in monetary economy long before industrial revolution, and will be participating whichever way the society evolves -- it is just simply more convenient than barter. If someone can produce beer himself cheaper than it is available on the market, why would he not sell it and earn some money? And if he cannot make it cheaper, why would he not buy it instead (or not drink it at all if he is too poor, or steal money & buy beer, or...) -- the point is that whatever he does, making it himself is never a good idea unless he enjoys it as a (somewhat expensive) hobby.
  - maerF0x0 13y ago
    > "Two pillars of our economic system - scarcity and endless growth" Clearly "endless" is not possible, that's like saying "give me infinite apples" ... Most people aren't concerned with endless, but with "practically endless" The limits of endless growth come from physical limits, which we're no where close to hitting. Expansion across the universe could give us something on the order of 10^29 times expansion (universe ~10^53kg, Earth ~10^24 kg)... In my human scale that's practically "endless". Also, digital goods consumption have nearly no marginal physical cost, so they can expand without much change in the physical consumption.
- xixi77 13y ago
  Look at what is happening in low-income countries now. You see a lot of small one-person/one-family businesses, which are effectively people buying themselves jobs (and being forced to carry equity risk of course). The state of the world in which most people are to be employed at set wages by some company is fairly new, and not at all universal. I don't actually think this is going to happen too much -- this is just a counterpoint to the "barter or crime" statement.