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>The point of technological progress is to lower the cost of things. Eventually everything will be free or negligible cost This is a non-sequitur. Lowered cos
by Retra 12y ago
>The point of technological progress is to lower the cost of things. Eventually everything will be free or negligible cost
This is a non-sequitur. Lowered costs doesn't mean everything will be (virtually) free. It could very well mean that some particular things are free, but when taken in aggregate, it is not.
In other words, a grain of sand may be free, but 50 million tons of sand is not, and creating and managing a single grain is a completely different problem from managing 50 million tons.
Technology doesn't lower just the cost -- it also increases the volume.
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoAlso it removes the variations. Who can build a new widget, when technology provides one that's almost as good for almost nothing? Why houses are made of prefab parts or cost 10X-100X to build custom. And we don't get the best solutions. We get the ones that were lucky and first e.g. VHS vs Betamax. Technology will see many things reduced to a handful of highly technical mass solutions. Transportation, health, energy, food, everything. The cost of doing something different in small batches will skyrocket.