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Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?

economist.com

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Re: Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?

#251

Post by DubiousPusher »

jahaja wrote: post #197
DubiousPusher wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, in fact direct agricultural labor accounts for fewer than a million jobs in the U.S. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/farming-fishing-and-forestry/agricul... One place where technology is struggling to make an impact is in housing. Even ignoring the farcical inflation of land prices in some municipalities, the price of a building itself has not decreased in cost similar to other durable goods. This is in part due to con…

The profit/investment motive is fundamentally behind the scarcity of affordable housing.

This is why I focused my point around the cost of the structure. The costs of land (made expensive by policy) and capital (made cheap by policy) are much more complex.

But regardless of that, even if you buy cheap land in a low regulation county/state and use all non-union labor, the building cost is still more expensive than it would be if buildings had the reduction of costs that other durable goods have had over time.

Some of this is clearly regulatory, i.e. codes. Some is clearly consumer choice, note the failure of prefab and tilt up to catch on. Some is clearly ecology, note the disappearance of native large timber from most residential construction.

Many architects and builders have tried their hand at designing homes and construction processes that reduce the costs of buildings but if they have to build to modern codes, expectations and ecological standards they mostly see marginal improvements. There are just a lot of fundamental costs involved with site constructed buildings that meet modern standards.

Re: Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?

#252

Post by jahaja »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #251
jahaja wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The profit/investment motive is fundamentally behind the scarcity of affordable housing.

This is why I focused my point around the cost of the structure. The costs of land (made expensive by policy) and capital (made cheap by policy) are much more complex. But regardless of that, even if you buy cheap land in a low regulation county/state and use all non-union labor, the building cost is still more expensive than it would be if buildings had the reduction of costs that other durable goods have had over t…

Sure, there's additions. But I would be careful to deduce consumer choice from what is most risk-free/profitable, a.k.a. the market. Cheap, decent quality "projects" would also be rented out in no time. But the profit margin and risk assessment isn't in favour of that.

Re: Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?

#254

Post by [deleted] »

jahaja wrote: post #250
Kalium wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fascinating! Is there anything I could read about this? I would love to hear more about a rich first-world country being able to meet literally everyone's housing needs fully and in a timely manner without using a market economy.

This is a good start: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million_Programme

[deleted]

Re: Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?

#255

Post by devenblake »

luckylion wrote: post #100
devenblake wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think that would be an indicator not that the quantity of smart people is bad but that we live in a society built for stupid people (which implies it was built by stupid people).

If you simplify it: if you have a lot of architects but very few builders, you're not going to get a lot done. That doesn't mean that society was made for or by the builders. Since academics tend to want to eat as well, you still need somebody to provide the food. If all you have is educated people for whom food production is beneath their qualifications, you're going to end up with starving academics lamenting the c…

In the absence of uneducated laborers to do the jobs nobody wants to do, we can get the educated laborers to automate these tasks.

Re: Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?

#256

Post by imtringued »

bleepblorp wrote: post #199
question000 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but even if we accept passive investment is a form of productive labor, there's a limited number safe/good investments for those good investors. As we saw in the 2008 recession when more and investors pile on even the safest investments (mortgages backed securities) the quality of those investments tends to be diluted (via CDO's, errant ratings companies, exploitative real estate practices) This is what's making…

Fundamentally, investments are a bet that the future will be richer than the present. If there aren't enough good investments now then that's an indication that the market believes there are major structural problems with the economy that will prevent the future from being richer than the present. That's a far, far, more serious issue than just a question of what the kind of people who expect to receive passive incom…

There is an obvious shift away from labor to capital. Central banks shift the balance way too far toward capital as it is right now. Lack of labor stimulus leads to inefficient allocation of labor.

Re: Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?

#257

Post by imtringued »

rsynnott wrote: post #46
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> would be investors who do not work for wages. So, everyone with retirement investments. I think they're known as 401(k) in the USA, here in Australia Super Annuation . We've built a self-collapsing economy?

I mean, to some extent, yes, probably. In an aging society, as the fraction of the population doing productive work falls, this sort of thing is likely to become a problem.

It's only a problem in the sense that these investors will at one point realize that their investment is not as valuable as they think.

Re: Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?

#258

Post by rurban »

simonh wrote: post #45
lwneal wrote: post #20

In Peter Turchin's book War and Peace and War [1], the term "elite overproduction" does not refer to an overproduction of smart people, education, or college degrees. Instead, it refers to an overproduction of nobility , individuals who extract income but who do not perform useful work. For example, France during the population boom of the high middle ages overproduced knights and minor nobles from 1200-1300. The nob…

I don't think that's right, Turchin himself pointed out the "overproduction of young graduates with advanced degrees”. The problem is the inability of society to support an excess of people who expect to be in the elite. If the US really is producing 25,000 more lawyers per year than it can employ, that's a real problem. Multiply that across many other disciplines and that could easily be hundreds of thousands of peo…

We were talking about brainy people here, not lawyers, which are the complete opposite.

Re: Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?

#259

Post by luckylion »

devenblake wrote: post #255
luckylion wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you simplify it: if you have a lot of architects but very few builders, you're not going to get a lot done. That doesn't mean that society was made for or by the builders. Since academics tend to want to eat as well, you still need somebody to provide the food. If all you have is educated people for whom food production is beneath their qualifications, you're going to end up with starving academics lamenting the c…

In the absence of uneducated laborers to do the jobs nobody wants to do, we can get the educated laborers to automate these tasks.

That would be people you'd need though, not people that get "produced" in larger numbers than desirable. A million more engineers will be great. A million more art history majors not so much.

Re: Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?

#260

Post by imtringued »

luckylion wrote: post #100
devenblake wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think that would be an indicator not that the quantity of smart people is bad but that we live in a society built for stupid people (which implies it was built by stupid people).

If you simplify it: if you have a lot of architects but very few builders, you're not going to get a lot done. That doesn't mean that society was made for or by the builders. Since academics tend to want to eat as well, you still need somebody to provide the food. If all you have is educated people for whom food production is beneath their qualifications, you're going to end up with starving academics lamenting the c…

The problem with this analogy is that there is no shortage of uneducated people in other countries. If immigration or export is possible then uneducated people in rich nations don't stand a chance in the first place.
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