Anthropic Capitalism and the New Gimmick Economy (2016)

Human labor is not obsolete. Take the old trope that the infrastructure in the U.S. is crumbling--is it crumbling because we've run out of bricks, or because we don't want to pay anyone to do the work? There is tons of work for people to do. The real problem is twofold: 1. Global trade makes unskilled labor in wealthy countries compete with laborers in developing countries. This pushes their wages to converge, which is really ugly for the people on…

"Price is nearly equal to value except in rare edge cases of market failure" What does this even mean? I'll give two thought examples. 1)Let's say I have a severe peanut allergy and peanuts are selling at $5.00/lb. Does the price meet the value? I.e. would I have a tricky time deciding if I would rather have the $5.00 or the pound of peanuts? Is this even true across society as an "average"? Do we believe markets are that rational…

A next problem is that software replaces physical objects by small computer files. Such files have the twin attributes of what economists call public goods: The good must be inexhaustible (my use doesn’t preclude your use or reuse). The good must be non-excludable (the existence of the good means that everyone can benefit from it even if they do not pay for it).