13 Oct
2005
13 Oct
'05
5:47 p.m.
[Luddites] were
anti-[losing]-your-job-due-to-technology. They
didn't think it was right that 10 people working should become 3
people working just because a new machine was installed...
(and, I think they had a point.
I'm not sure which side I agree with (which I suppose means I don't
really agree with either side). To the right, I see no reason an
employer should have to pay 10 people to do something today just
because 10 people were needed to do it yesterday. But to the left, it
can be, and often is, a societal evil in automating jobs out of
existence.
I think economists are all smoking really good dope
when they talk
about mythical 'productivity gains')
I'm not so sure. I suspect it's a question of definition - how do you
define "productivity"? If you take the na?ve definition and say that a
factory's productivity is the amount of product it produces in a given
amount of time, then yes, you can *easily* have productivity gains when
automating a bunch of jobs out of existence. For more complex
definitions of "productivity", I suspect similar things can still
happen - after all, when all you measure is productivity, there are a
whole bunch of things you *aren't* measuring.
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