This article has an interesting starting in an 'Age of The Essay'^ way. Start with an interesting question and see where the meandering leads. I don't think this got anywhere interesting though.
"a long, complicated journey as somethings become more abundant in some places, while other things are still scarce"
That's an interesting thought. We have lots of examples of things suddenly becoming 'abundant,' especially in the last few decades. If I was doing a meandering essay on this topic I'd make a list and see if there's anything insightful to be learned from these. Maybe we can find a pattern.
Calories/grains are, for the wealthier half of the world are essentially abundant. Peasants were once the majority, producing and consuming grain as their primary economic activity. Today grains cost $200-$500 per ton. Median household income is in the $5k-$10k range. So half the world can have more grain than they can eat for <10% of their income.
Computers have various interesting examples of similar abundance.
The end result is interestingly similar in both cases. Our capacity to consume more quality is enormous. We feed grain to cattle to produce meat. It takes 5-10 grain calories to make a calorie of meat, depending on the animal. We spent processing power to create user interfaces put personal computers in every pocket. More consumption. Higher quality.
This seems to follow standard economics. When goods get cheaper we consumer more, at higher quality and spend less. That concept seems to stretch pretty well. Even though calories and computing power are incredible cheap and abundant compared to their historical prices, we haven't crossed our ability to consume more of them and 'scarcity economics' doesn't break.
If you go back to the industrial age or "space age" equivalents of this essay you will find fantastic parallels. "We can make so much stuff! So cheap! This will change everything!" There seems to be a common fallacy here. We look at a future of 10X efficiency and we underestimate our ability to consume more. Since we can't consume 10X more goods, we assume that we'll just work less. I think the tricky part is 'quality.' You certainly can't eat a ton of( $250) maize per day. But, you can easily spend $250 on food in a day. So, if you don't want to look stupid in 100 years, be careful about predicting free time.
Here's a question I would love to hear economists opines about: why don't high earners work less. Say a Belgian lawyer makes €100,000 euros per year and a paralegal make €35,000. Why doesn't the lawyer work fewer hours? Think of working hours as money and everything they buy as a good. It appears that demand for "goods" as a whole is infinitely elastic. Make the goods half the price and homo economicus buys twice as much. Most markets are a lot more elastic than this one. Why?
If we saw some clear negative correlation between earnings per hour and hours worked (either at economy or individual level) we might be able predict see the path to a start trek economy of optional employment.
It might be worth going back to the beginning with this question. "Why don't people work less when they make more per hour."
The problem with the market is its not so smoothly distributed. You can barely, almost, sometimes buy commodities at a worldwide price in most places, but certainly cannot earn the same everywhere. The median for Africa is about $2K not $10K so making the huge assumption that poverty stricken economies only involve food, thats still ten or so pounds of rice per day, which is pretty marginal as a sole long term food source for an entire household.
Thats the problem with "homo economicus" the market is very small and will not offer certain things, the Belgian lawyer in the example simply won't be offered a part time job by the market, no matter if the demand exists or not.
If you don't really have a market, market speak and market analysis don't lead to useful places.
> Here's a question I would love to hear economists opines about: why don't high earners work less. Say a Belgian lawyer makes €100,000 euros per year and a paralegal make €35,000. Why doesn't the lawyer work fewer hours? Think of working hours as money and everything they buy as a good. It appears that demand for "goods" as a whole is infinitely elastic. Make the goods half the price and homo economicus buys twice as much. Most markets are a lot more elastic than this one. Why?
I think this is the reason : high pay comes from actually caring, meaning part of the reason the paralegal is so underpaid (although no lawyer in Belgium makes €100k unless he owns a law firm or something) is that he works 8-5 and has little responsibility outside of that.
Real work doesn't work like that. The bigger pay comes from being able to give one responsability over a large(r) department/firm and know that whatever it is, it'll get handled. Including at 9pm. Given that people paid for this, it is used. That is partly why the degree matters too, since it proves you can work dedicated to a single task for years and actually have a useful result come out of that.
It's like a marriage ring. It's function is much more "proof of means/job" for the man than it is a token of love.
But why does the lawyer get paid ? Because those hours and the single point of contanct and the service at 9pm, that's the service he's selling. The flip side is, you get lots of long coffee breaks (maybe even on a golf course) and lots of "meetings" at the local steak restaurant.
"a long, complicated journey as somethings become more abundant in some places, while other things are still scarce"
That's an interesting thought. We have lots of examples of things suddenly becoming 'abundant,' especially in the last few decades. If I was doing a meandering essay on this topic I'd make a list and see if there's anything insightful to be learned from these. Maybe we can find a pattern.
Calories/grains are, for the wealthier half of the world are essentially abundant. Peasants were once the majority, producing and consuming grain as their primary economic activity. Today grains cost $200-$500 per ton. Median household income is in the $5k-$10k range. So half the world can have more grain than they can eat for <10% of their income.
Computers have various interesting examples of similar abundance.
The end result is interestingly similar in both cases. Our capacity to consume more quality is enormous. We feed grain to cattle to produce meat. It takes 5-10 grain calories to make a calorie of meat, depending on the animal. We spent processing power to create user interfaces put personal computers in every pocket. More consumption. Higher quality.
This seems to follow standard economics. When goods get cheaper we consumer more, at higher quality and spend less. That concept seems to stretch pretty well. Even though calories and computing power are incredible cheap and abundant compared to their historical prices, we haven't crossed our ability to consume more of them and 'scarcity economics' doesn't break.
If you go back to the industrial age or "space age" equivalents of this essay you will find fantastic parallels. "We can make so much stuff! So cheap! This will change everything!" There seems to be a common fallacy here. We look at a future of 10X efficiency and we underestimate our ability to consume more. Since we can't consume 10X more goods, we assume that we'll just work less. I think the tricky part is 'quality.' You certainly can't eat a ton of( $250) maize per day. But, you can easily spend $250 on food in a day. So, if you don't want to look stupid in 100 years, be careful about predicting free time.
Here's a question I would love to hear economists opines about: why don't high earners work less. Say a Belgian lawyer makes €100,000 euros per year and a paralegal make €35,000. Why doesn't the lawyer work fewer hours? Think of working hours as money and everything they buy as a good. It appears that demand for "goods" as a whole is infinitely elastic. Make the goods half the price and homo economicus buys twice as much. Most markets are a lot more elastic than this one. Why?
If we saw some clear negative correlation between earnings per hour and hours worked (either at economy or individual level) we might be able predict see the path to a start trek economy of optional employment.
It might be worth going back to the beginning with this question. "Why don't people work less when they make more per hour."
^http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html