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I had the thought yesterday that we might see a return of rich guys having huge posses.
Just now I had the thought that if productivity does rise by several orders of magnitude, there will probably be less incentive to prevent petty theft. So people will fairly easily be able to steal what they need to survive.
California already trying that, I hear?
there's even a name for it. "microlooting"
People often say Cali is a few years ahead of the rest of the country
A dubious honor
Nice!
We'll all be jesters and fools at some king's (= producing-man's) court!
Unimportant terminological bickering...?
It's a real story, not a monetary one, so doesn't really matter what you term the "value" and cost savings passes around
I don't think it's unimportant
if you think in terms of "dollars", you won't see the problem with price controls, money printing, demand subsidies, list goes on
I hear you, in principle — not the problem with this one. (Requires you to know a thing or two about the author)
right, and i'm not saying the author doesn't get it
but i will still die on the hill of preferring not to use "dollars" for expositing these ideas
Okay! I don't care enough to fight yah :)
My only beef with this exposition is that it keeps talking about a "saved dollar"
Who the f*** cares about dollars.
It's better to think of things, not money.
What does that "saved dollar" mean in terms of things that carry real value? It represents a resource that the business's customers have traded them, in exchange for a service.
Now, if businesses can provide the same service, with fewer workers, there are two ways this could go:
(A) The business continues providing the same level of service, but with fewer workers
(B) The business expands its workforce and increases the level of service by even more
People are worried about option (A).
If (A), then the business's costs go down. Competition should then also drive the price of the service down. Customers trade fewer resources to the firm for the same level of service.
The customer is now holding more resources in their pocket. What do they do with that? They will want to spend it on something. That is where the opportunity for the future workforce lies.
I know I just re-stated the argument... but I did it with the word "resource" instead of the word "dollar", which I actually think is easier to understand.
But of course, identifying where the opportunity lies for future human workers is the hard part.
Maybe we'll all have to be clowns dancing for the rich guys?