[Pandabob]

Sure, but one would then assume that in the age of automation, our productivity rates would be skyrocketing. It seems that that hasn't been the trend after the great recession [1]. Not to say that it couldn't change, but seems to me like there's some kind of narrative violation going on where "thought leaders" preach about automation, yet we can't see it in the statistics.

Edit: Although, there's also a change that we're just measuring productivity incorrectly right now, and not correctly taking into account the way the online economy works.

[1]: https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-6/below-trend-the-us-pro...

[taneq]

Hmm. Couple of thoughts on this one:

1) Our standards for products have grown exponentially. It probably does take more labour-hours to produce, say, a mid-range car today than it did in 1980, but that car does unbelievably more than the 1980 model did. Everything in it is controlled and monitored by software. It has navigation and safety and vehicle control and convenience and entertainment features beyond anything you could get even 5 years ago. It'd be astounding if it didn't take more time to build.

2) Wages in real terms haven't grown significantly in a long time. This translates to labour hours being relatively cheap, so companies can spend more hours on their products for the same R&D budget.

[Pandabob]

1) is true, but the gains seem to be eaten up by the fact that, increasingly a larger part of the economy is made up of service sector jobs that are harder to automate [1].

[1]: https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/helland-tabarrok_why-a...

[blencdr]

Productivity by automation is constrained by the available energy, also economic growth could already be limited by the lack of availale energy.

https://energyeconomicgrowth.org/sites/eeg.opml.co.uk/files/...

[adrianN]

Solar panels are pretty cheap. If lack of energy were a problem, I'd expect a lot more of them.

[ben_w]

They are cheap, but production of them is currently growing roughly exponentially, so I don’t think your argument holds.

[siculars]

The cost of energy is going towards zero while (and because) available energy is going to infinity.