[ Taking posts horribly out of order . . . a dangerous precedent . . . ]
In a message dated 1/14/00 10:31:57 PM Central Standard Time,
d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au writes:
> >All those salesfolk and skyscrapers are not mainly there to move stuff
> >from factories to your home, or even to design the things the factories
> >make. They perform lots of other useful functions.
>
> What, though, when all is said and done?
I'm no economist (being unable to add two numbers and get the same answer
twice), but I'll hazard a layman's answer. Most of what the "white collar"
world does is coordinate and facilitate the needs, desires, abilities and
resources of other people. In other words, they create and adjust networks
of people. Far from being replaced by hardware and software that facilitates
this process, the demand for such services seems to GROW with the increase in
functionality of technological support for communication and information
handling.
It seems that people (and other intelligent economic actors) will continue to
value these functions even if we achieved true "anything box" technology.
Having already broken the direct link between money and atoms, this appears
to provide all that is necessary to create the pathway for this phenomenon to
continue on into an economy of superabundance.
(BTW, I don't think they'll be doing this in skyscrapers, though; I'd imagine
these structures will become at least partially residential.)
Greg Burch <GBurch1@aol.com>----<gburch@lockeliddell.com>
Attorney ::: Vice President, Extropy Institute ::: Wilderness Guide
http://users.aol.com/gburch1 -or- http://members.aol.com/gburch1
"We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know
enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another
question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species."
-- Desmond Morris
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:02:17 MDT