Quote:
Originally Posted by ThisIsAnOutrage
Interesting. Maybe the economy is something like the measure of progress in relation to the time and resources used to achieve it?
I feel like value of the finite time each human has to sepnd on achieving economic progress vs. doing anything else more fulfilling has to inform the understanding here.
|
I think you're still dabbling in second order effects there.
Time's influence on the economy goes back to how it is the quintessentially scarce resource. But that can be overcome, with automation we detach ourselves from the prospects of 1 man hour worked, 1 man hour of labour done.
And progress is really subject to demand. If you can push efficiency to a point that scarcity is relatively eliminated, then you've essentially eliminated economy. Think of the Star Trek replicator as the classic example, if you can tell any random wall to synthesize any meal from thin air, there is not longer an economy for food production or grocers or restaurateurs or ovens.
This would be my commentary, but we have evolved into a society where political success is less and less tied to long term economic stewardship. When people who find success deny the ways in which society contributed to the success they garnered. That's not to say everything is bad. For thousands of years the reason the state cared about the economy was that a disproportionate share of the economy accrued in a group of the persons that were the physical embodiment of the state itself, for thousands of years slaves were the backbone of most of these economies and while we might wax nostalgic about the past at any given time in history there is an outside chance that our people would not have shared in the benefits of economy weather we be WASP, African, Asian or pre-colonial Native American, and regardless of the suffering and lack of participation we feel, we are among the healthiest and longest living people in history.
I think the right now on balance government contribute a lot more to society than they are able to extract, and on balance they need a way to leverage their contributions into extracting more from the producers in society. Good examples are how The US government basically funded the Moderna Vaccine, or Space X, or The internet. How government roads and postal services basically fueled the rise of Amazon... but it's almost impossible for government to functionally extract a share of the profits these companies earn.
