The Experience Economy • Hacker News Board

Re: The Experience Economy

#11

Post by danenania » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 6:53 PM UTC

calvinfroedge wrote: post #9

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 think people will HAVE to work, for some very hard years, on achieving sustainability. Only then will we truly be on autopilot, and will humanity be able to focus its time on other things. Until then, all we're doing is tricking ourselves into thinking life will keep getting easier. Major conflict over resources is coming...

While it's true that we have a lot of work to do, conflict is unpleasant and expensive and people on the whole have a strong interest in avoiding it. Unfortunately, war mongers tend to spend other people's money, so they don't bear the costs; we need to stop supplying them and/or make them pay. If we can manage this, I think our adaptability and ability to cooperate can win out.

Re: The Experience Economy

#12

Post by groby_b » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 7:02 PM UTC

Tycho wrote: post #6

So US growth started stagnating in 1974 (allegedly). There's something familiar about that number. Something to do with the gold standard? Coincidence?

Unless you can back up that statement with anything else but speculation, yes.

1974 is also the year I got my first chemistry kit. That's about as relevant to the discussion.

Re: The Experience Economy

#13

Post by narrator » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 7:15 PM UTC

Think about the economy of China since 1974.

Re: The Experience Economy

#14

Post by Unseelie » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 7:29 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…

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 industry which builds tires, and another that refines oil, one that focuses on fixing scratches, another on cleaning the devices.

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.

Re: The Experience Economy

#15

Post by Unseelie » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 7:47 PM UTC

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 for example). Big agrabusiness, BTW, exists only because it is more cost-efficient than small farms, and as such could better weather rising energy prices. Energy prices will not ever be high enough to crush big agrabusiness; A large agrabusiness would build private nuclear plants first.

Beyond that point, Localized fuel is a funtion of rising fuel prices. Energy exists in the world, in the form of deep sea oil, shale oil, natural gas, and coal on a scale that makes a mockery of any renewable movement.

Its about cost-effectiveness of extraction, which, as energy prices rise, will make so many sources of energy available to us long before it makes renewables an efficient plan.

Re: The Experience Economy

#16

Post by jhamburger » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 7:55 PM UTC

I'd argue that everything we buy is an experience, some are just longer term than others.

Re: The Experience Economy

#17

Post by dublinclontarf » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 7:57 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.

I'm sorry but this is just wrong. There is no end to human want and desire. As long as there is this want there will be plenty of stuff for people to do.

Re: The Experience Economy

#18

Post by rmc » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 8:39 PM UTC

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.

Re: The Experience Economy

#19

Post by moultano » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 8:49 PM UTC

dublinclontarf wrote: post #17

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. I'm sorry but this is just wrong. There is no end to human want and desire. As long as there is this want there will be plenty of stuff for people to do.

If the people who have wants aren't the same people who have money, it doesn't matter whether their wants are endless or not.

Re: The Experience Economy

#20

Post by bioh42_2 » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 9:19 PM UTC

David Brooks almost wrote an interesting article there.

The beginning is promising, he writes about the different growth rates in developing vs developed countries. This is a well established economic fact. There's an opportunity to infer something from this... Brooks just never quite gets to it.

Another interesting idea he does not clarify but does mention is the productivity improvement we have experienced over the course of this (and last!) century. Technology has greatly reduced the need for labor. Again great potential for a discussion which Brooks is never able to take anywhere meaningful.

Instead the article slowly degenerates into some kind of drivel about hypothetical individuals states of mind... I don't even, what?

It's kind of sad when someone clearly has the education to start a discussion but just completely lack the personal ambition to write to a much higher standard.

Write about hard facts, falsifiable theories based on them. Write something more akin to a readable scientific paper.

Instead we get something which resembles a bright high-school student's essay on the human condition in a consumerist world.

But that's what the work of an op-ed columnist must be like.

If you told me I was doomed to be a ditch digger, I would be quite upset, but I'd get over it.

If you told me I was doomed to sit in a cubicle, well I'd be rather upset that I'll never fulfill my dream of working for myself but I would get over it.

If you told me I was doomed to create nothing other then op-ed articles like this one, I would shoot myself.