[djoldman]

There are a lot of issues brought up in this post, but I want to discuss one in particular: technological progress and its economic and societal ramifications.

We can say that technological progress occurs when a new method is employed to deliver a product or service with some "more desirable" blend of qualities: it's created/delivered faster, cheaper, with a more desirable mix of resource inputs, and/or results in a more valuable/desired output.

Sometimes it's quite obvious when a technology is superior to another as almost all the qualities of it are advantageous: it's made faster, less expensively, and the result is better with such a gap between it and the old way that there's just no denying that the new way is better.

Sometimes the new technology is really a mix of qualities. Let's focus on the mix that generally gets the most attention: the new way is faster/cheaper but the output is not of a higher quality. Sometimes this new way of cheaper+faster but lower quality "wins out" and the consumer prefers it.

And now the crux of it: why is it so common that discussion concerning these shifts is rooted in everything except the consumer?

An imperfect and potentially flawed example: a bunch of consumers have decided that they'd rather pay less for a shirt or shoe that will fall apart faster than more for one that lasts longer. The old way of making a superior product still exists and some consumers still prefer it but most do not.

Fundamentally, this is a shift that is rooted in the perception, true or not, of the consumer that the new way is more desirable.

Some folks are not happy with the higher prices of the outputs of old ways of doing things or the effects that the new ways have on jobs, the economy, and/or society.

Fundamentally, this has to do with consumer preference and that's where any blame should be meted out.

[collingreen]

Homo economicus to the rescue! Every consumer has perfect knowledge, spending power, and access to effectively unlimited choice which is why when they want lower quality things it's a calculated, careful decision weighing all the options and the long term impacts on both themselves and the future of the industry.

Monopolies and pricing power clearly destroy this utopia but even without those I try to remember Pratchett's "boots theory" whenever I start to blame the consumer for "accepting" abuse from the capital in power of what gets made, when, and for whom.

[djoldman]

Hello fellow economics major :)

Yep, capitalism fails in a few ways in the long run. Monopolies, imperfect competition, etc., which is why regulation is required to optimize the system.

[pdimitar]

Regulation against ruling class will never happen. They hire the regulators, more or less, with a few nice and hopeful exceptions, but they're vanishingly rare.

I believe the science knows how to fix capitalism, and has known for decades. But nobody from the rules wants that.

[CRConrad]

> But nobody from the rules wants that.

YM "ruleRs", right?

[pdimitar]

I do. Admittedly I got tired of double-checking if my phone's keyboard will betray me.

[duskwuff]

> technological progress and its economic and societal ramifications

I seem to recall that a mathematician wrote a paper about this around 1995 which got a lot of press attention. I'm not sure I agree with all of his conclusions, though. Nor his methods.

[wizzwizz4]

> a bunch of consumers have decided that they'd rather pay less for a shirt or shoe that will fall apart faster than more for one that lasts longer

They don't know it'll fall apart faster, to begin with… and then by the time they do, they've already spent enough of their clothes budget that they can't afford to buy proper cloth, and it's hard to find that nowadays anyway, so they'll just have to buy more of the low-quality stuff.