Manufacturing productivity, measured as value added per worker, has increased immensely in recent years thanks to a number of key technologies all improving at once. This article explains how.
Not in the article: This is good news primarily for the people who own the means of production, since they have positioned themselves to keep the benefits of the increased productivity largely to themselves. Ironically, they defend this by claiming to be “job creators”.
It does mean that manufactured goods are rapidly dropping in price, though. Which is a mixed blessing; lots more stuff isn’t necessarily a good thing, but some of it is genuinely useful.
It reminds me of The Economy of Machinery and Manufactures by Charles Babbage (the Difference Engine guy), which is a book I recommend reading if you’re interested in industrialism. Writing in the 1830s, he demonstrated with tables of figures how rapidly the price of manufactured goods had dropped recently, and provided an insightful analysis into why that was. It’s on Project Gutenburg.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
Exponential technologies have helped manufacturing productivity double over construction productivity.
When the needs of the world can be met by 20%-40% of the population, what will everyone else do?
And when manufacturing is all local/replicators?!!
We’ve had a similar shift with farming over the past couple of hundred years. This one will be much faster.
My pick is that a lot of the new jobs will be entertainment-related.
But if majority are employed in entertainment, you have the three merchants stranded on a desert island, all getting rich from trading hats among themselves.
I have no idea what the answer will be.
Ah, but you also have a hatmaking machine.
I’ve a seen the future and it’s a hat, forever falling onto a head.