The Experience Economy • Hacker News Board

Re: The Experience Economy

#21

Post by VladRussian » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 9:20 PM UTC

presidentender wrote: post #8

Technological progress has always been inherently deflationary. Remember, the vast majority of the world's people used to work directly in food production as a matter of necessity. Technology has allowed most of us to get off the farm, and pursue other activities. Whereas a day's work once bought a day's food and not much more, a human worker (using the machines that serve him) is now able to produce a huge surplus o…

>The tragedy of this seems to be that we're running out of stuff for people to do.

There is a lot to do for humans. Just look at the problems in any area of science. Not all people are qualified to work there though. This is why instead of whining about disappearing of menial labor jobs, we should be working toward [what would be at least a start] making K16 a basic level of education instead of K12. A thousand year ago reading and writing would made one a basically educated person (for the rest of his/her 30 year long life). In 19th century K8 was enough (and the average lifespan ~45), in 20th for the most of the part - K12 (and the average lifespan is ~70 at the end of the century). The body of knowledge is growing, we live longer, so it is natural to learn more and apply the more advanced knowledge and skills for longer period of the active adult productive life.

Re: The Experience Economy

#22

Post by wazoox » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 9:30 PM UTC

rmc wrote: post #18

calvinfroedge wrote: post #7

Intensely interesting. This is the most poignant section in the article: "For example, imagine a man we’ll call Sam, who was born in 1900 and died in 1974. Sam entered a world of iceboxes, horse-drawn buggies and, commonly, outhouses. He died in a world of air-conditioning, Chevy Camaros and Moon landings. His life was defined by dramatic material changes, and Sam worked feverishly hard to build a company that sold b…

I'm always skeptical about predictions of a coming food shortage. It's been predicated for the last 200 (Malthus' An Essay on the Principle of Population was published in 1800), and it hasn't happened yet.

This doesn't prove that it won't happen, though. The more people there are, the more probable it is.

Re: The Experience Economy

#23

Post by calvinfroedge » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 9:35 PM UTC

Unseelie wrote: post #15

calvinfroedge wrote: post #7

Intensely interesting. This is the most poignant section in the article: "For example, imagine a man we’ll call Sam, who was born in 1900 and died in 1974. Sam entered a world of iceboxes, horse-drawn buggies and, commonly, outhouses. He died in a world of air-conditioning, Chevy Camaros and Moon landings. His life was defined by dramatic material changes, and Sam worked feverishly hard to build a company that sold b…

Aside from the fact that our global growth rate has been dropping for the last twenty years, I'd like to point out that actually feeding the population isn't a problem. Feeding it beef may well be, but the primary issues with world starvation is that the market is held above their heads by unnatural means (fallow field subsidies in the US, solar subsidies in Europe, and lack of agricultural subsidy in Africa, just fo…

All good points (very good points). I think we will see the cost of extraction result in a net energy loss by the end of the decade, and maybe sooner. I could be wrong, though. As for growth rates, where do you see that global growth is declining? I think that's only in advanced industrialized societies (like Germany and Japan) where birth rates are lower than death rates. Even in the US, population continues to grow, and big increases are expected.

Re: The Experience Economy

#24

Post by nowarninglabel » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 9:39 PM UTC

presidentender wrote: post #8

Technological progress has always been inherently deflationary. Remember, the vast majority of the world's people used to work directly in food production as a matter of necessity. Technology has allowed most of us to get off the farm, and pursue other activities. Whereas a day's work once bought a day's food and not much more, a human worker (using the machines that serve him) is now able to produce a huge surplus o…

I'd side note that estimates are still 1 billion people work in agriculture (ref: grain.org/world bank) and many more are in the transportation, processing, and selling of said agricultural products. The vast majority of these people still only earn enough or little more than enough for a day's food (not a huge surplus of wealth). Furthermore, lack of capital (lack of machines as you will) is still prevalent in many industrialized countries, even in the U.S. Disclaimer: I work for Kiva now, so my perspective is skewed to focus on this group of the world.

Re: The Experience Economy

#25

Post by iuytghyjuk » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 9:43 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #3

I feel like this should be titled "I don't understand the new economics". The economics of a material world are different than the economics of an information world. Rob Gingell used to point out to me that people living during the revolutionary war didn't have a good feel for what the final rules were going to be either. So I buy the insight that it takes fewer people to create Facebook today then it did to produce…

And the NYT only needs a few hundred journalists and editors Think of all the jobs for town cryers and handbill printers that it destroyed.

Re: The Experience Economy

#26

Post by ChuckMcM » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 9:52 PM UTC

Unseelie wrote: post #14

ChuckMcM wrote: post #3

I feel like this should be titled "I don't understand the new economics". The economics of a material world are different than the economics of an information world. Rob Gingell used to point out to me that people living during the revolutionary war didn't have a good feel for what the final rules were going to be either. So I buy the insight that it takes fewer people to create Facebook today then it did to produce…

I think you've missed a core point of the comparison: Chevy Malibu's weren't built in isolation, either. They were built from parts, in factories built by people who specialized in building factories (we call it, in very generic terms, the construction industry). They were serviced by gas stations and mechanics. There is an entire industry focused on producing rubber, primarily for automobile tires. There's another i…

This is the core difference between information manufacture and real good manufacturing.

Real goods, such as the Chevy Malibu, have a pyramid of raw materials starting with ore mining, through smelting, through plastics creation, through tooling, to piecework to sub-assemblies, to assemblies to product.

Information goods on the other hand start with generally lower value information which gets collected and distributed and refined into higher value information. An inverted pyramid if you will.

And unlike ore, which once its in a Chevy Malibu is locked up 'forever', the information that is created can be re-used in an infinte number of additional products.

Consider a contructed example of company A which makes their money selling the current stock ticker from the NYSE, to company B, which takes that data and does analysis on it to create trading strategies for resale, which are purchased by company C which uses the trading strategies combined with capital acquisition from clients to make their money.

A completely different company, Q, might take the same stock ticker information from company A and make a large LED sign which can display it and sell those.

So the same 'information ore' is used in two separate product streams. There can be dozens of such streams. So evaluating the value of Facebook's information by the number of people Facebook employs really misstates the economic impact of a company like Facebook.

"The argument that the information world is the first to stack industries on other industries is fallacious, and misses the point entirely: Information doesn't take labor for every instance of product."

I don't believe I made either of these claims.

To be clear, the claims I make are; 1) Evaluating the information economy using the 'rules' of the real goods economy fails. 2) The information that Facebook and Google create is more analagous to the ore someone might mine out of a mountain than the end product of vehicle brakes. (the real goods example used in the article).

I will grant you an example of someone making money off creating after market products for the Chevy Malibu as a valid post production economic activity, I know of no examples where people have collected Chevy Malibus and then turned them into a product that itself had mass market appeal.

It is the distinctive characteristic that information can be combined into new information which has its own intrinsic value, without losing or consuming the source information (ie removing its ability to take part in additional economic activity) that, for me, differentiates the two economic models.

Re: The Experience Economy

#27

Post by amitraman1 » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 10:02 PM UTC

I watch a lot of moves from the early 80s, Back To The Future I is my favorite.

What we (Americans) had then and now has not really changed much. Items are either faster, larger or cleaner looking, but they essentially do the same thing they did in 1981.

The materialistic items sold today, don't add any marginal value to our lives. The iPad doesn't improve your life by much or at all. I think its good that people are realizing this and focusing in on enjoying life spiritually.

Re: The Experience Economy

#28

Post by zohebv » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 10:02 PM UTC

presidentender wrote: post #8

Technological progress has always been inherently deflationary. Remember, the vast majority of the world's people used to work directly in food production as a matter of necessity. Technology has allowed most of us to get off the farm, and pursue other activities. Whereas a day's work once bought a day's food and not much more, a human worker (using the machines that serve him) is now able to produce a huge surplus o…

While technological progress can be deflationary I have to strongly disagree that work is disappearing. I don't think we are ever going to run out of work.

In fact, more "primitive" societies had far lesser work to do - "studies show that hunter-gatherers need only work about twenty hours a week in order to survive and may devote the rest of their time to leisure", though there are criticisms about the measurement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society

Compare this to our modern technology driven society. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#United_States

Also - "The Kapauku people of Papua think it is bad luck to work two consecutive days. The !Kung Bushmen work just two-and-a-half days per week, rarely more than six hours per day.[30] The work week in Samoa is approximately 30 hours,[31] and though average annual Samoan cash income is relatively low, by some measures, the Samoan standard of living is quite good."

Re: The Experience Economy

#29

Post by rmc » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 10:14 PM UTC

wazoox wrote: post #22

rmc wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always skeptical about predictions of a coming food shortage. It's been predicated for the last 200 (Malthus' An Essay on the Principle of Population was published in 1800), and it hasn't happened yet.

This doesn't prove that it won't happen, though. The more people there are, the more probable it is.

It doesn't prove it's impossible, it proves that the original predications were well off. Back then people though 1 billion people were enough to worry about the lack of food. We're at 8ish billion now and people are still worried. The world survived.

Re: The Experience Economy

#30

Post by billswift » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 10:32 PM UTC

zohebv wrote: post #28

presidentender wrote: post #8

Technological progress has always been inherently deflationary. Remember, the vast majority of the world's people used to work directly in food production as a matter of necessity. Technology has allowed most of us to get off the farm, and pursue other activities. Whereas a day's work once bought a day's food and not much more, a human worker (using the machines that serve him) is now able to produce a huge surplus o…

While technological progress can be deflationary I have to strongly disagree that work is disappearing. I don't think we are ever going to run out of work. In fact, more "primitive" societies had far lesser work to do - "studies show that hunter-gatherers need only work about twenty hours a week in order to survive and may devote the rest of their time to leisure", though there are criticisms about the measurement. h…

If you want to talk about "survival", you can easily survive comfortably, much more comfortably than hunter-gatherers, today on even less work. Buying lots of junk and traveling are not needed for comfortable survival, if you want them, buy them, but don't confuse them with even comfortable survival.