Comment by slg
11 hours ago
>It’s like worrying in 1960 that the companies that invented computers will hoard the benefits of computing.
Isn't that what happened? There was enough competition among computing companies that they weren't able to completely monopolize all the productivity improvements, but the financial benefits were mostly captured by the capital class in one way or another.[1]
TVs might be cheaper today and we all like watching Netflix, but I'm skeptical of the idea that the financial wellbeing of the average American has been improved by computers.
[1] - https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/a-guide...
>I'm skeptical of the idea that the financial wellbeing of the average American has been improved by computers.
Really? Even with all the new avenues of education and communication that they opened up? You think the positives and negatives balance out to close to zero?
The stats I linked above show that those “new avenues of education and communication” didn’t actually benefit the average American financially in at least the relative sense. Do you have something to counter that evidence?
Those are just time series of wealth over time, they don't purport to establish any causal links. You can't conclude that computers didn't "actually benefit the average American financially" from these numbers, because these are measuring the total wealth of the household with all factors combined. We can't say with any certainty what effect computers had on these values; maybe without them people would have been better off or worse off.
It is interesting how the wealth concentration started in the '80s. It could be computers that caused it, though I would be more likely to blame it on Reagan's economic policies.
7 replies →