Monday, September 3, 2012

All In a (Future) Day's Work


Today is Labor Day in the US, a holiday we evidently borrowed from Canada, and ultimately from Australia. In the linked post I talked about working in space. Here, as you might guess from the title, we'll consider the future of work, whatever planet it is performed on, including none.

The past is prologue: For most of the last ten thousand years, extending to the origins of Labor Day in the century before last, work was largely synonymous with agricultural labor. And, all too largely, work was associated with more or less naked forms of exploitation - sharecropping, rack-rent, serfdom, and so on down to outright chattel slavery.

Agrarian Age exploitation had effects beyond the purely economic: Think of medieval villeinage (a form of serfdom) and the etymology of 'villain.'

Exploitation was often less intensive in environments where agriculture was so marginal that not much could be squeezed out of the peasants. Thus mountainous uplands and other rugged environments were often associated with both poverty (even the lords were poor) and freedom. Montani Semper Liberi, goes the motto of West Virginia: Mountaineers are always free. Much of the Western conception of freedom is rooted in this tradition. Thomas Jefferson might be a plantation slaveowner, but his ideas were built around independent small farmers.

Cities, with their more complex market-based economies, fostered a different sort of freedom. In the medieval German usage, Stadtluft macht Frei: City air makes one free. Urban freedom had much less to do with economic equality, and much more to do with a dynamic balance of power between money and labor interests.

Markets in themselves are inherently oligarchic: one florin, one vote. But an alliance of quasi-monarchical state interest and a populist interest can push back against the oligarchs. Machiavelli was the first to notice that the 'conflict of the orders,' so long as it did not get out of hand, could be a positive basis for freedom.

His ideas - with his name filed off - contributed more than Jefferson's to the theory of the US Constitution: Compare its strong federal government with the weak central institutions of the Articles of Confederacy.

In the Agrarian Age, both mountain freedom and urban freedom were special cases. Exploitation was the norm, embodied in latifundia, manor, and plantation. In the industrial age - which is essentially urban - mountain freedom is even more marginalized, but urban freedom has become widespread. Indeed it has become rather normative, even if often honored in the breach.


Well, that turned out to be a rather lengthy prologue. Now, what of work in the future?

One possibility, which has sometimes come up in comment threads here, is that technology will lead us to a post-scarcity future. Economists will say there can be no such a thing, because human desires are limitless. But we still come from the primate house, with some basic physical needs and comforts. Once we have ample food, we don't want more of it - we want instead some combination of tastier, more convenient, and more appealing to our vanity.

The higher the productivity level, the more things come down to vanity. Whether or not it is technologically feasible, we can at least imagine a world where basic physical comforts are so readily provided as to be nearly free. But in this same world there is almost no demand for productive labor, and it is not quite clear how this nearly free stuff gets distributed - let alone any high level of pleasures.

This post-scarcity economy is often imagined as hobby-driven, with people 'working' for the sake of self-satisfaction, the way I write this blog.

But the economy could equally well be a crass, somewhat creepy mix of celebrity culture and Thorstein Veblen. A world where those in a position to do so hire everyone else, at nominal wages, as personal servants - not to do any work that even cheaper robots couldn't do just as well, but for the sheer ego gratification of showing off how many servants they have. This too is primate-house behavior.

Or the post-scarcity economy could be a mix of both.

But a post-scarcity economy is, alas, scarcely a given. Technological progress tends to come in leaps, followed by longer periods of maturity with only gradual, even glacial progress. So another possibility, at least for the midfuture, is a decelerando, a technological world that stabilizes at a level somewhat higher than today's, but only somewhat.

Such a world has some rather sobering implications. It will not be a world without work, because a robot capable of doing, say, restaurant kitchen work (and doing it more cheaply than Latino immigrants) is a doubtful proposition. But it may be a world without very much high-paying 'good' work, especially if the oligarchic tendency of markets is unchecked by political 'countervailing power.'

In such conditions, the upward concentration of wealth means that investors will have plenty of money. But given a low rate of innovation, due to largely mature technology, they will struggle to find profitable places to invest it.

Their desperate search for high rates of return will fuel asset bubbles, from Impressionist artwork to real estate. And the financial shocks from successive popping of these bubbles will leave the economy sputtering, performing below even its constrained technological potential.

If this world sounds rather familiar, it should - it is arguably the world that has been emerging, at least for the already-industrialized economies, in the last decades of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. We still have plenty of innovation in some industries - especially 'tech' in the sense of computer-related - but unlike mid-century tech progress it is not creating all that many jobs.

If the decelerando scenario is correct, this will become more and more the case.

All of which, in an urbanized, post-industrial future, could be fuel for a new 'conflict of the orders.' Which could take catastrophic forms. Or, channeled into political rather than violent conflict, might well take the positive, freedom-generating form outlined by Old Nick Machiavelli.

Discuss.





The image of Carolingian peasants comes from a blog about the history of cooking and food.

245 comments:

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Tony said...

Rick:

"Experience is very good for some things - even lots of things. But one thing it teaches (at any rate for me) is a reduced level of certainty."

Hmmm...I definitely agree to a point. But it can also produce a great deal of conviction about what doesn't work, no matter how hard one tries to make it happen. When I get exercised about cliches, caricatures, and "isms" (of any type, not just libertarianism), I'm criticising what have been proven to me to be unworkable patterns of thought.

Tony said...

Rick:

"If local knowledge were so critical, this should not happen, and markets would remain fragmented, with local firms taking advantage of their superior local knowledge. But this is not the case for most major industries.

Yes, globalized firms can and do grant local managers varying degrees of autonomy, often quite a bit. But this is ultimately a central decision - the local manager remains a bureaucratic functionary, not an independent player."


Large organizations have the ability to absorb losses until they run the locals out of the market, no matter how much they may know the market. And they usually don't even have to absorb losses -- look at walmart and Costco. They provide something the mass of people want, even if it isn't the greatest thing for local business or Downtown America in general.

I would say that the big box on the edge of town has pretty much taken over most service industries. Even hospitals and doctors offices have undergone that transition in a lot of places.

"So Hayek seems to have been wrong about this, just as he was about his dystopian expectations of the postwar British welfare state. A road to serfdom? Not quite. It was suboptimal perhaps, but hardly dystopian."

The problem with Hayek is that he was just as much an extremist as the elements in British politics that he feared. People generally don't vote for extremism.

jollyreaper said...

*wonka face*

People don't vote for extremism?

Tell me of how much you've learned in your life experience again.

Thucydides said...

I will admit that the formal logic of minarchism is one of the things that attracts me to libertarianism (not I identify with the "small l" branch), but the vastly distorting effects of crony capitalism (such as how ethanol subsidies have distorted the corn market, and are now creating a wave of food price inflation as poor crop yields are amplified by siphoning corn from the food market to the subsidized ethanol market) is the other driving factor for my support of libertarian ideals. The crony capitalists are the "Barons" of this era.

The "Local knowledge problem" does have some scaling effects; in a global market, Costco or WalMart's "local knowledge" base is North America rather than your town. Note too that companies like WalMart or GM for that matter do have "local knowledge" constraints both within their own industries (generally the small business that compete successfully with these giants work "botique" niche markets) and without; you can probably point to ay number of tales of woe where multi nationals or other giant companies came to grief by going beyond their "core" market and moving into areas they had far less knowledge of. One of the defining themes of business in the 1980's was the Junk Bond raiders, who often purchased large corporations and created added value by breaking the various business units up and selling them as individual pieces. Each piece, freed of the bureaucratic and financial overhead of the parent company had the theoretical ability to move more quickly in the market and become more valuable.

Obviously this also needs the new owners and managers to have the actual ability to capitalize on their new found freedom, which sadly many do not.

One other factor which people seem to gloss over in their critique of markets is the way governments and crony capitalists manipulate markets for financial and political gain; Government subsidies for corn ethanol buys votes from corn farmers and gets political contributions flowing from ADM, two forms of incentivization that conventional economics really does not address very well. Once again, in a minarchist society, these perverse incentives would not exist, and markets would be able to operate according to more direct price signals.

WRT experience, I also have time for posts by Rick and Tony, since I probably fall in a similar age and experience bracket (I watched Apollo 11 as a child, and experienced both Stagflation and the effects of the Reagan Revolution). This colours both how I interpret what posters say, and how I am willing to respond. Since I have spent a large portion of my career teaching, I also have a much different style of addressing people.

Tony said...

jollyreaper:

"*wonka face*

People don't vote for extremism?

Tell me of how much you've learned in your life experience again."


I did say "generally". They certainly didn't in Great Britain, though it was on offer at the polls. Most people in Germany didn't vote for the Nazis, nor did most people in Italy vote for a Fascist candidate until the fascists joined in a big tent coalition with the Catholics, conservatives and liberals. In both the German and Italian contexts, the historical outcome had a lot more to do with unstable and deeply suspect national institutions, succeptible to toppling from the inside.

Tony said...

Re: Thucydides

The problem I see with minarchy is that it doesn't have any answers for people and organizations that would take advantage of minimal restrictions on what they can do. Instead of certain parties being favored, everybody with economic power is favored as a class.

Thucydides said...

The wonders of blogging; deceptively simple questions require long and complex answers, most of which cannot fit on the page...

WRT minarchism, there are thought to be several built in safeguards, such as there being few or no mechanisms for the State to pick and choose winners through crony capitalism, favourable treatment and market manipulation. Since libertarian societies are built on voluntary cooperation, there are also scaling limits to what you and your friends can do; in ancient Greece, the growth of Democracy is thought to be tied to the idea that family farms were generally of similar size and economic output, which gave every farmer a similar amount of wealth to purchase arms and armour, which led to Hoplite warfare (based on massed ranks of similarly armed men), which led to the idea that as equals on the field they were also equals everywhere else (very rough paraphrase).

Now even a minarchist society has many places where things can go wrong; every mechanism such as taxation and regulation will attract sharp operators who will attempt to manipulate them (hence the importance of leaving as few openings as possible). Large projects will become very difficult to do (no Apollo moon landings) and some markets are so small and restricted that local knowledge or otehr free market mechanisms are unable to work in an efficient manner (the market for military hardware like jets is a good example).

Manipulating people directly is also a grave danger; democracies like the ancient Greek's were wracked by the actions of demagogues who whipped the crowd into a frenzy and thus voted in favour of whatever was being proposed. This, by the way, explains the division of powers in the American Republic; your Founders were keen students of history and well aware of the danger the masses represent to civic order.

Tony said...

Re: Thucydides

I struggled for a few days trying to make clear to myself what bothers me so much about minarchy. Then I realized that it's the same thing that should bother everyone about minimum control schemes -- the tragedy of the commons. Except with minarchy it's not some actual physical commons, but the whole economy that belongs to no one and can be exploited for personal gain.

Thucydides said...

That is the biggest conception of libertarianism; that there are "commons".

The economy is divided into the discreet units of property that people own, and can use, accumulate, trade or dispose of as they see fit. When the State seizes property, or allows property to be seized then they are committing a grave wrong (see Kelo v. City of New London; where the city seized private property for the express purpose of giving it to another private party in the expectation that tax revenues would be increased. In a perfect example of poetic justice, the principle partner who was supposed to redevelop the land pulled out and New London was left with a worthless bulldozed tract of land).

Now there are very limited circumstances where I would support "eminent domain" (I admit I am in the minority among libertarians here).

To use an analogy, the commons is an overgrown weedy patch, while your garden reflects the time and energy you put into it. To extend the analogy, you can choose to share your garden, rent it out, hire a gardener or simply leave it. You can also compare the results of your garden to other gardeners (or the local city park, and in the real world, people's gardens are usually far superior to public parks in terms of presentation, cleanliness and safety).

Thucydides said...

Edit:

That is the biggest misconception of of libertarianism; that there are "commons"

Tony said...

Thucydides:

That is the biggest misconception of libertarianism; that there are 'commons'."

I made it explicit that I wasn't talking about a physical commons, but a virtual one, in the form of the economy. Just like the tragedy of the physical commons, when there is no regulation of the economy, it can be abused and people can walk away from their abuses unpunished (leaving future abusers undeterred). Yes, regulation of both a physical and a virtual commons can be skewed towards favored actors, but that's a feature, not a bug.

In fact, I think that's one of the biggest mistakes libertarians make -- they don't seem to comprehend that people must in fact be restrained to a certain degree, or they will abuse what they can, in their own favor. While there are specific dangers in community restraint of individuals, the risk is preferable to the known results of lack of restraint.

Thucydides said...

Individual lack of restraint is a failing of individuals.

Libertarians do believe in both self defense and collective defense of property rights, while you are suggesting that individuals can simply commit crimes with impunity. The libertarian credo of "your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose" has practical applications here.

The real issue of "commons" also applies to the economy; individual ownership of property includes such things as intellectual property (patents). The economy is an ecosystem which allows individuals to trade their time and efforts as well as physical property; real trouble comes when property rights are ignored or disarmed citizens get their property taken by criminals or the State.

Rick said...

An apology to commenter 'Z' for posts that got caught in spam jail a couple of weeks ago, and which only I just found and let out.

For me the problem of minarchy is not so much economics per se as politics: Power vacuums tend to get filled. Economics plays in indirectly, because economic elites are in the best position to either capture a weak government or simply ignore it.

Anonymous said...

My view on government is that there should be an upper limit to how complex it is; after a certain point, it becomes inefficent on an accellerating scale. Right now, the U.S. government is is too complex; it has expanded beyond being self-sustaining. What will happen when our lenders' can't or won't lend us anymore money? Or demand that we start paying it back, at an enormously inflated rate? Those are "little-l" libitarian concerns.

Ferrell

Thucydides said...

Ferrell is quite correct here; there is a size beyond which the State is no longer a force for good. The ever increasing complexity can be summed up in the observation that everyone in the United States has broken a Federal Law by 0900; the number of Federal statutes is so vast that no one could possibly be able to keep track of them, and may be inadvertently breaking some law or other.

Prosecutors could have a field day if unleashed on an unsuspecting and generally disarmed population (disarmed in the sense that they can be legally crushed through lack of knowledge and resources; SLAPP lawsuits and Canadian "Human Rights" tribunals are exactly this form of lawfare designed to exhaust the time and financial resources of the person being targeted). Even actual weapons would no longer be enough in this day and age.

An armed population was thought to be able to resist being overawed by the forces of the State; this hasn't been true for a long time since the organized forces of the State are certainly more than a match for handgun and rifle wielding civilians.

Tony said...

Thucydides:

"Individual lack of restraint is a failing of individuals."

And? That's the whole point. Individuals do what individuals are going to do in any environment. In a minarchy, they will take advantage of a lack of community restraint. In a more institutionally constrained society, they will take advantage of the power government offers them. In reality, they tend to do both. The robber barons took advantage of both the freedom that the then-current rules offered them, while at the same time taking advantage of government power, where they could bend it to their objectives. In that very important respect, minarchy and maxarchy are just extreme opinions about where predatory individuals should obtain their power advantage.

"Libertarians do believe in both self defense and collective defense of property rights, while you are suggesting that individuals can simply commit crimes with impunity. The libertarian credo of 'your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose' has practical applications here."

Since when is that a libertarian credo? I was taught that in 8th grade goverment class, as an illustration of rights being balanced by responsibilities.

And I'm not suggesting criminals can commit crimes with impunity. I'm suggesting that people interested in power derive power in ways that are allowed to them. The difference between minarchy and maxarchy are the tools that are available, not the amount of power that can be accumulated.

"The real issue of 'commons' also applies to the economy; individual ownership of property includes such things as intellectual property (patents). The economy is an ecosystem which allows individuals to trade their time and efforts as well as physical property; real trouble comes when property rights are ignored or disarmed citizens get their property taken by criminals or the State. "

As already explained at length, property rights -- any property rights, intellectual as much as real -- are secured by the community. It is an interesting question just where the balance should be struck between perceived individual and community interests, but suggesting there is such a thing as a government that protects indivdual rights by being minmally involved is simply not logical.

Thucydides said...

Government is minimally involved because its purpose is to protect the rights of its citizens (and in a minarchist formulation, that is all).

A police force to protect people from criminals, a military force to protect people from external enemies and courts of law to provide a neutral arbitrator for disputes. If you wish to describe this as "community restraints" then fine, it may be as good of a definition as any.

At any rate, the post is supposed to be about work, and I will close this part by saying that if your work is being taken for someone else's purpose (especially without your consent), then you will have a lot less incentive to work. When enough people in a community feel that way, then economic output falls, hiring declines and tax avoidance and the transfer or hiding of wealth become the order of the day, hardly the optimal outcome for any community.

Tony said...

Thucydides:

"Government is minimally involved because its purpose is to protect the rights of its citizens (and in a minarchist formulation, that is all)."

Pretty obviously, what are the rights of the citizens, and who decides? Also almost as obviously, what forms of protections do the citizens receive, and who decides how much, and when?

See, you're so focused on what happens when government is abused, you seem to have no thought whatsoever for what happens when lack of government is abused. See, government is not an absolute evil, and lack of government is not an absolute good.

In a way, I agree with the concept of minarchy. Government should only become as powerful as it needs to be. But I disagree with your interpretation of how much government is too much. Your estimation is philosophical and absolute. My estimation is pagmatic and empirical.

"At any rate, the post is supposed to be about work, and I will close this part by saying that if your work is being taken for someone else's purpose (especially without your consent), then you will have a lot less incentive to work. When enough people in a community feel that way, then economic output falls, hiring declines and tax avoidance and the transfer or hiding of wealth become the order of the day, hardly the optimal outcome for any community."

All of that is true, as far as it goes. But it's a non sequitur to say that that is an argument for aome philosophically absolute conception of minimal government. It's not just the government that takes at an exploitive rate. It might in fact take considerable government intervention to ensure that minor economic actors are not exploited by major ones, taking advantage of lack of oversight and regulation.

But we can't come to that in libertarianism, because the underlying assumption is that Private => Good, while Public => Bad. I would say that too much of either is the problem.

Thucydides said...

Reading an interesting book called FAB (no, not about the Beatles), which describes MIT's experiences with providing advanced tools and programs to use them in various parts of the world.

One thing which struck me was that people who are given such tools to use immediaty respond by using them to fix whatever the local issue/problem or need is, which is usually nothing at all like what governments or corporations "think" they are. Solutions ranged from devices to measure the purity of milk, electronic tags to track sheep to seemingly trivial devices like diary security systems (for a young girl) and a computer interface for parrots.

Interesting to contemplate what would happen when items can be created relatively inexpensively on a "one off" basis to satisfy personal interests or needs. Much of what will be created will be of individual interest, so in macro economic terms of trivial importance, but if large numbers of people can do this, then the cumulative effects will be quite large.

Tony said...

Thucydides:

"Reading an interesting book called FAB..."

The supposed insights in this book come from an academic scientist observing the work of engineering students. The average person is not going to be able to a desktop 3D printer to do things an engineer can do. Nor is a desktop printer going to be able to work in anything but low-density plastic. High density plastic (which needs to be formed in a high-temperature pressure mold) and metals will still be industrial products. And most really useful items have to be made out of those kind of materials.

jollyreaper said...

Tony:

Wrong again. It would be accurate to say "this technology will have to be able to do X and do so at a price cheaper than Y to be competitive or even disruptive." Which is true at this point. Desktop manufacturing is in the baby days and has promise but is not yet capable of truly competing with traditional manufacturing, for now. But there is potential. Potential is not the same as certainty so it's useful to keep expectations realistic and not jump on the hype bandwagon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_printing

The list of materials includes metal alloys, resins, ceramics, plastics, etc.

What you keep doing is stating your personal opinion as if it's an immutable physical law. It's not. Your view on things lacks even the humility of considering that you might be wrong, overlooked something, or are vulnerable to being caught by something nobody saw coming right out of the blue.

You continually do this and, being the most prominent poster on this blog, it becomes enormously wearisome. Even when I happen to agree with your opinion on a given topic (governmental power vacuum means non-governmental actors will seek to fill the vacancy) your approach remains rude, condescending, and infuriating.

Again, I ask you: is there anyone else on this blog at the center of such acrimony? The other person giving up because they're sick of talking to you is not the same as winning the debate.

Tony said...

jollyreaper:

"Wrong again. It would be accurate to say 'this technology will have to be able to do X and do so at a price cheaper than Y to be competitive or even disruptive.'...

The list of materials includes metal alloys, resins, ceramics, plastics, etc."


Which is why I emphasized "desktop". Yes, additive manufacturing can be used to make parts out of almost any material that can be powdered, but as the density and heat requirements of materials increases, there's a point -- and it's not too far along the curve -- where the process has to move off of the desktop, both for reasons of expense and safety. That's not "[w]rong". It's basic engineering science.

I think I'll also stick to my opinion that conclusions derived from watching MIT engineering students at work are not going to be applicable to the general populace. It's simply not a representative sample. (And that should be so obvious as to go without saying.)

As for the rest, I started out to write a response, point by point. But then I realized that there's simply a cultural divide that is not going to be crossed right here, right now. I know you really hate it when I say this, but it remains a fact -- I've got experience on my side that you apparently don't.

But I'll tell you this: I was in your shoes back in the day. I was young, enthusiastic, and believed all sorts of nonsensical tripe. I identify with you much more than you possibly realize. In fact, I only think myself justified to say those things to you because I was you.

I keep trying to tell you this, and you keep refusing to listen. I can't help you there. My sincerest apologies. I wish I could help. But this is the kind of thing that can only be realized by time and perspective.

Thucydides said...

Actually FAB is about what happens when the professor and his merry band of engineering students take the equipment from the shop out into the ":real world" of rural India, African villages and the slum sector of Boston. They are also not using 3D printers in this book (the concept was still in its infancy) but CNC machines and simple electronics which could be "cut and pasted" onto substrates.

The really astonishing thing about these experiments was that these rural and economically disadvantaged people were quite capable of picking up the basics of how these tools worked and quickly learned how to manipulate the operating programs as well.

As an economic experiment, this could hardly be considered a success, even a simple CNC milling machine could cost as much as a North American car, and the small fleet of machines, computers, programs and diesel generators to make it all run would be far beyond the means of any third world village. Even to create a community workshop here in North America would need a large amount of start up capital, and the break even and payoff would be difficult to calculate. Perhaps signing up hundreds of members with a yearly subscription?

In the longer run, what I think the book is telling us is once the means become available (both technological and financial) then people will revert to artisanship to fulfill some of their needs. This will be a big break from the mass production model of the Industrial Revolution, with many second and third order effects yet to be explored.

Tony said...

Thucydides:

"In the longer run, what I think the book is telling us is once the means become available (both technological and financial) then people will revert to artisanship to fulfill some of their needs. This will be a big break from the mass production model of the Industrial Revolution, with many second and third order effects yet to be explored."

Hmmm...I've long understood that you are interested in decentralization and disintermediation. But the organizational and economic structures of our times exist, I think, for reasons more substantial -- and more fundamental -- than they were convenient for the Industrial Revolution. I would turn things around and say that the Industrial Revolution was convenient for increased economic efficiencies in almost every corner of life. IOW, industrial organization is an enabler of modern life, not a consequence of it.

Taking that as a starting point, I think that DIY design and implementation may be useful for certain niche applications, but I doubt it will radically alter the industrial or economic landscape. Most mass produced tools and appliances work for most people. In fact, if you go and look at your local home improvement big box, you'll find that there is quite a large variety of even mass-produced items available. In fact, I've never not found what I needed in the appropriate outlest, be it hardware, auto parts, home supplies, appliances, whatever.

Thucydides said...

Tony

The book isn't talking about people building hammers or run of the mill "tools" with the capabilities the FAB brought to them, but rather individually crafted items of interest to that individual. Like I said, many of the devices would seem to be trivial (a container to hold screams, and replay them at a later time or computer IO devices that meet the needs of parrots would hardly be on most people's list of "must haves"), but hardly possible at all without the access to the technology the FAB provided.

To use a more personal example, I am a fan of building models of exotic aircraft, but most of the exotic aircraft that attract me have either never been made in a model kit, or the kit was discontinued a very long time ago. I don't have the skill to hand craft a model from scratch, but given access to the sort of toolkit represented by the FAB or future 3D printers, would be able to input a 3 view of the desirable aircraft and create my own model. A different application would be the guy who used a 3D printer to make an operational lower receiver for an AR-15 family weapon (gun barrels and bolts are still beyond printer technology, but could conceivably be made in a FAB if you accept a very short service life.

Like I said, in a macro sense this is fairly trivial now, but once that sort of niche capability becomes available to large numbers of people, then there will be changes.

Tony said...

Thucydides:

"Like I said, in a macro sense this is fairly trivial now, but once that sort of niche capability becomes available to large numbers of people, then there will be changes."

You're describing stuff that has virtually no economic effect. if there was an economic effect -- if it had commercial viability -- somebody would have done something about it already.

And even though 3D printing makes it possible already to make one-offs of whatever, it still takes design skills to use effectively. The expertise changes from solid modelling to digital modelling, but somebody still has to make the model. I doubt if you had a 3D printer on your desktop today that you could create the 3D design file to make the printer turn out your exotic aircraft. Most people can't.

Or, to put it another way, everybody above a minimum economic level has a general purpose computer on his desktop. Programming utilities like text editors and compilers are essentially free. But how many people write their own programs? How many of "those" write programs that have marketable utility and are constructed to commercial standards? IOW, how many write programs that are of specific utility, even to themselves? Not many, huh? That's because knowledge is not free, and developed skill is in fact expensive, even if the tools are free.

That's going to apply to any technology. No matter how close it brings unprecedented capabilities to the masses, a technology, to have economic effect, has to be simple and easy to use, or at least have a simple interface, like an automobile. The problem with digital technologies is that they aren't simple, and only very specific applications, with narrowly defined utility (e.g. wrod processing or web browsing) can be given simple enough interfaces for the average person to get any utility out of them.

Anonymous said...

Thucydides, I think that you've inadvertently come up with a "Job of the Future"; Program Crafter, one who designs custom, often one-off, computer programs for individuals' for limited projects.

Congratuations, Thucydides, on coming up with a future career!

Ferrell

Thucydides said...

Thank you Ferrell. Perhaps you will be one of the first practitioners.

WRT who could actually create or use the programs that run FABs, 3D printers or whatever, the experimental results indicated that rural Indian farmers, African villagers and slum kinds in Boston were quite able to quickly learn to operate these tools and create useful (to them) items. One related experiment in an Indian slum had a computer and mouse simply left in the open for slum children to see and touch; they too learned to start manipulating the computer and getting it to "do" things without any sort of formal training at all.

Perhaps the real sticking point is that people live in the physical world, and so have real motivation to learn and apply tools and techniques that have utility in the physical world as opposed to virtual tools. It is also much easier to learn when the physical prototype is lying in your hand rather than attempting to debug code.

I will simply have to disagree strongly with you here Tony, it seems people ar far smarter than we typically give them credit for. With proper incentives, they can do some pretty amazing stuff.

Tony said...

Thucydides:

"Thank you Ferrell. Perhaps you will be one of the first practitioners.

WRT who could actually create or use the programs that run FABs, 3D printers or whatever, the experimental results indicated that rural Indian farmers, African villagers and slum kinds in Boston were quite able to quickly learn to operate these tools and create useful (to them) items. One related experiment in an Indian slum had a computer and mouse simply left in the open for slum children to see and touch; they too learned to start manipulating the computer and getting it to "do" things without any sort of formal training at all.

Perhaps the real sticking point is that people live in the physical world, and so have real motivation to learn and apply tools and techniques that have utility in the physical world as opposed to virtual tools. It is also much easier to learn when the physical prototype is lying in your hand rather than attempting to debug code.

I will simply have to disagree strongly with you here Tony, it seems people ar far smarter than we typically give them credit for. With proper incentives, they can do some pretty amazing stuff."


I think the difference is between designing a tool that makes a job easier, where one never had a tool before, and designing an efficient tool that actually makes a difference to a lot of people. I haven't read the book, but I'm gettin a strong impression that these experiements were done in places where people simply didn't have access to the industrial economy, and couldn't find what they needed, even though it was already out there somewhere. So they design something that kind of works, but could never design a real, marketable tool that work as well as a professionaly developed one. It's not as if their needs could have been all that unique.

IOW, it's not that people can't jigger up something that fits their needs -- if you've ever looked in a farmer's barn or the average neighborhood tinkerer's garage, that's pretty obvious. Whether the average paerson with no training can invent something economically disruptive? Not so much. Jobs and Woz weren't average guys. Niether were Gates and Balmer, nor Ford and Knudsen.

Anonymous said...

I think that you can't look at this on an individual level; you have to step back ( maybe more than a pace or two), and look at it in the aggraget. The impact is through the volume of people that can now use a tool to make other tools and custom items; through a mass-produced item masses of people can now produce personnalized items for their specific needs. This doesn't mean that mass-produced items will go away, just that it means more flexability of products for more people. A kid in India may need a specific item for a specific need; an old man in Canada may need a simular item for a simuler need, but the two items won't be identical; they'll be individualized for each person. Everyone has, at some time or other, wished for a specific thing for a specific need, that wasn't mass-produced; instead of trying to find a craftsman to produce it, they can now make it themselves. I'm sure that 90% to 99% of all of the stuff created by this new technology will be useful only to one person, but a tiny percentage will likely have wider usage and may well be the start of a new technological trend.

Ferrell

Tony said...

Re: Ferrell

The economic impact of DIY manufacturing will be almost nil simply because the overwhelming majority of people doing it won't be skilled enough to make something that works efficiently even for themselves. If they have access to such technology to begin with, it's not like they're going to be so disconnected from the economy that they can't go find the right tool for the job they need to do. If they make a personalized version of something they can already get, it is simply not likely to be as efficent as some standard tool they can get on the market. Even if they have a truly unique application, how likely is it that the average Joe or Jane is going to have the engineering and design skills to make a tool for it?

The computer programming analogy is valid for any of these concerns. If you have access to computers, you have access to the software to make them do almost any computational job. If you have a truly unique job, chances are that you don't have the skills to design the software to do it. Even if you can roll your own software, chances are you still don't have the personal skill to make it as good as possible, maybe not even efficient enough to compete with some other method of getting the job done with some combination of other tools. (Even as a professional software developer, there are tasks I won't take the time to automate, simply because I don't do them often enough to make the time invested in programming the solution worthwhile.)

Anonymous said...

You have completely missed the point and I seriously doubt that you could comprehend the point, due to your total and willful blind-spot that renders you unable to conceed that you are making a mistake. No one but you is talking about making efficent tools; everyone else is talking about creating personnalized items, even if for one-off uses. No one but you are talking about everyone who uses this technology having to be a software guru; do you have to write a new program every time you want to write a document, or play a game? Don't be silly. You don't have to be able to design a car to be able to operate one. Besides, we were talking about creating real-world items, not software constructs, using this technology. Your computer analogy isn't valid, because it equates operating a tool with being able to design it; it just doesn't follow. Stop flogging a dead horse, you've already lost the race.

Ferrell

jollyreaper said...

I think some comments are still stuck in the spam filter?

Rick said...

Nothing is in the spam jail. Has anyone seen comments that subsequently disappeared, or gotten email comments that never showed up on the comment page?

jollyreaper said...

Ah. You know what it was? The next page links weren't rendering the other day. Now they are and I can get to the end of the conversation.

Tony said...

Ferrell:

"No one but you is talking about making efficent tools; everyone else is talking about creating personnalized items, even if for one-off uses."

Thucydides was asserting the economic disruptivity of such technologies. If the products are going to be economically disruptive -- or even significant -- they're going to have to be more than personalized items of limited commercial value.

"No one but you are talking about everyone who uses this technology having to be a software guru; do you have to write a new program every time you want to write a document, or play a game? Don't be silly. You don't have to be able to design a car to be able to operate one. Besides, we were talking about creating real-world items, not software constructs, using this technology. Your computer analogy isn't valid, because it equates operating a tool with being able to design it; it just doesn't follow. Stop flogging a dead horse, you've already lost the race."

Sorry, Ferrel, but (to borrow a handy metaphor) you never got out of the gate. To use the technologies in question, one must make a 3D digital model of the desired product. That's getting easier than it used to be, tools-wise, but one still has to be able to visualize an define in concrete terms the desired shape or shapes. Just like programming, graphic design is a skill that not everybody -- not even most people -- has. So such desktop "manufacturing" systems, while cute and all, just aren't very democratic, for the same reason that computer programming isn't democratic, or the local machine shop isn't democratic, or even the neighborhood tinkerer's garage isn't democratic. Some things just require more craft than most people possess.

Seriously, Ferrell, what is it that you do that you don't know these things?

Anonymous said...

Tony, go to hell; From what you've said here on the site, I'd guess that I'm at least ten years older than you; I've worked in the electronics field for nearly 30 years; I was in the service twice as long as you were, I've been married for a third of a century, and am an avid reader of scientific and technology articles all my adult life; don't get uppity on me, kid.

As far as this "desktop manufacturing" technology, as you call it, I'll spell it out for you simplly enough so even you can understand it; the economical impact is the vast number of people that this technology is avalable to; Do you go out and design a car every time you need a new set of wheels? No, you do not. When you get one of these machines, you use also get modeling software and you can download more (hell, you can even get people to write software for you, for various amounts), that can help you make what you want. I can't believe that some of you people are so ignorant, or self-blinded, that you don't see that. Let me put it to you another way; when you buy a car, you're not expected to distill your own gasoline to run it. When you buy the device, you also need to get software to run the device; just like you need to have software on the computer we are all communicating on. You put more tools that facilitate innovation in the hands of more people, then eventually, that breakthrough happens; Also, this technology is only a very few years old; it is still way too early to tell the full impact that this technology will have; it may be simply a fun toy that obsesses millions, or it could be the tool that someone uses to make a profound change to the world; dismissing it out of hand is a mistake and rather arrogent of you; now, sometimes you make good points, but many times you simply trot out your opinions like they are fact, and attack anyone who doesn't accept it. You need to concider that others might have valid points, even when those points don't perfectly jive with your own. I know that it annoys the hell out of me when I have to accept that some new perspective on an issue goes aginst the one that I hold, but many times I do modify my own stance because of it; however, saying that, I don't respond well to attacks and condecending comments; most people don't. Perhaps, insteed of trying to make people angry, you should listen to others and, even if you don't agree with them, please make an effort to at least do them the curtisy of respecting their opinions (I know, I sometimes do let my anger seep out onto the screen, but I'm still human); try it, you might be pleasently surprised by other's reactions to you.

Ferrell

Locki said...

Anonymous said...

Tony, go to hell; From what you've said here on the site, I'd guess that I'm at least ten years older than you; I've worked in the electronics field for nearly 30 years; I was in the service twice as long as you were, I've been married for a third of a century, and am an avid reader of scientific and technology articles all my adult life; don't get uppity on me, kid.

Damn. 33 years of marriage? Thats older than a good chunk of people reading this blog and almost as old as my beloved classic mixmaster 1500watt dual motor cake maker.

They just don't make mixmasters like they used to ....

The really interesting question Ferrel wouldn't be about the economics but how did you manage to stay married for so long and how do you sneak time away to keep replying to this blog without ticking off the family.

Just to keep things in perspective. Truthfully I enjoy reading everyone's posts here and it really is quite tame compared to some of the classic all time flame-wars I've witnessed.

I was there in person for Derek Smart's infamous BC3000AD rants. I'm pretty sure that particular usenet thread created the term "flamewar."

So now that I've broken up the awkward silence I'll go back to wikipedia'ing the difference between libertarism or whatever and economics. Economics has always put me to sleep.

Tony said...

Ferrell:

"Tony, go to hell; From what you've said here on the site, I'd guess that I'm at least ten years older than you; I've worked in the electronics field for nearly 30 years; I was in the service twice as long as you were, I've been married for a third of a century, and am an avid reader of scientific and technology articles all my adult life; don't get uppity on me, kid."

I doubt you're ten years older than me. If you've been doing electronics for almost thirty years, and were in the service for twenty, I'm pretty sure that means you were doing electronics in the service. Placing an upper limit of 20 years old on when you enlisted, that means you're 49 or so, at most. I'm 48 next month. Don't call me "kid".

And, since you feel free to tell me to go to blazes, I think I'll feel free to lay it on the line myself. Being an electronics technician for thirty years doesn't make one a student of technology or its history. Reading popular science and technology articles in magazines and online is about the worst thing one could do to become such a student. Pieces like that simply aren't designed to educate -- they're designed to elicit an emotional response and sell advertising. Their science and technical nature are calculated to attract a certain kind of reader.

Tell us, how many books do you actually own yourself that are about the history of technology -- or even just the history of a specific technology? Looking across the living room at my bookshelves, and thinking about an equal number of books boxed up in a closet, my collection of such books owned and fully read runs well over a hundred. They include general histories of military, naval, space, and computer technology, plus many more books about the specific histories of numerous different systems.

I'm saying none of that to aggrandize myself, or diminish you. I'm just outlining a context for the discussion that I don't think you've considered. I've thought long and hard about the nature, workings, and effects of modern technologies. I don't just rattle off any old reactionary opinion.

Tony said...

Ferrell:

"As far as this 'desktop manufacturing' technology, as you call it, I'll spell it out for you simplly enough so even you can understand it; the economical impact is the vast number of people that this technology is avalable to; Do you go out and design a car every time you need a new set of wheels? No, you do not. When you get one of these machines, you use also get modeling software and you can download more (hell, you can even get people to write software for you, for various amounts), that can help you make what you want. I can't believe that some of you people are so ignorant, or self-blinded, that you don't see that. Let me put it to you another way; when you buy a car, you're not expected to distill your own gasoline to run it. When you buy the device, you also need to get software to run the device; just like you need to have software on the computer we are all communicating on. You put more tools that facilitate innovation in the hands of more people, then eventually, that breakthrough happens; Also, this technology is only a very few years old; it is still way too early to tell the full impact that this technology will have; it may be simply a fun toy that obsesses millions, or it could be the tool that someone uses to make a profound change to the world;"

I'm betting on "toy", because local manufacture of doohickies is not likely to undermine a modern industrial system or its commercial distribution channels. Yes, PCs changed the way we work and communicate, but only because they made both more efficient. Printing out tchotchkes at home or even in a community fab is less efficient than buying them at the store or online. About the only exceptions I can think of are truly unique niche items and physical isolation from the market in industrial goods. The possible effects of either of those is not likely to be an economic or social game changer.

"dismissing it out of hand is a mistake and rather arrogent of you;"

Like I said, I've thought a bit longer an harder on this kind of thing than you give me credit for. I know I could be wrong, but I suspect that I'm not. We'll have to see. But for now I'll stand by my opinion, and -- to be perfectly clear -- it ain't for you to tell me that it's arrogant or ill-considered.

"now, sometimes you make good points, but many times you simply trot out your opinions like they are fact, and attack anyone who doesn't accept it. You need to concider that others might have valid points, even when those points don't perfectly jive with your own. I know that it annoys the hell out of me when I have to accept that some new perspective on an issue goes aginst the one that I hold, but many times I do modify my own stance because of it; however, saying that, I don't respond well to attacks and condecending comments; most people don't. Perhaps, insteed of trying to make people angry, you should listen to others and, even if you don't agree with them, please make an effort to at least do them the curtisy of respecting their opinions (I know, I sometimes do let my anger seep out onto the screen, but I'm still human); try it, you might be pleasently surprised by other's reactions to you."

I generally don't attack people, though I have been known to lose my cool with youthful arrogance. I don't even really attack people's ideas. I just try to show where they're mistaken or unworkable. If I'm matter of fact and assertive about it, that's because I've worked for almost thirty years in environments where that's expected. You were in the service and work in a technical field. Surely you can appreciate that.

Anonymous said...

Tony, goodbye; you do attack everything; from your attitude, I'd say that you were 'asked' to not reenlist. I've dealt with people like you before, and you aren't really cut out for a highly structured enviornment where you actually have to get along with other people.
So, again, goodbye; it's useless to try and have a conversation with you, so I'll stop trying.


Ferrell

Rick said...

I'll just shake my head and say 'this too shall pass.' So long as obnoxiousness does not generate outright flame wars and/or drive away commenters, it seems to work to just let it slide.

On balance the comment threads here remain outstanding, and a (perhaps *the*) major value of this blog. But it is in spite of exchanges like the one just above, not because of them.

Damien Sullivan said...

"and/or drive away commenters"

Ferrell seems to have just flamed out. I've been avoiding reading the comments for the last two weeks. Any other names who just quietly stopped appearing?

Thucydides said...

Since I have been away for a while, I will comment from my last comment.

Tony may well be right that FABs, 3D printers and the like won't make much of a difference for people connencted to the first world, but by bypassing the entire supply chain it will make a considerable difference in Third World.

Rick said...

Any other names who just quietly stopped appearing?

Not that I have noticed in the last week or two - over longer time periods, harder to say. Ferrell has been an active, constructive commenter here since close to the beginning of this blog, so he would be a very big loss if he bailed outright, as distinct from just putting Tony on his ignore list.

I also have a bad feeling that Luke Campbell bailed on commenting here because he ran out of patience with Tony.

Outright trolls I would elf without a moment's compunction. What is very frustrating is a commenter who has many good things to say, but manages to regularly say them in annoying and insulting ways.

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