Source: page 451 and page 828 of the 3rd edition (1972) of University Economics by Armen Alchian and William Allen; the first part of the quotation is Question #30 at the end of Chapter 22. via Bonus Quotation of the Day… – Cafe Hayek
The compassion of unions towards the minimum waged
24 Jan 2017 1 Comment
in labour economics, minimum wage, poverty and inequality, unemployment, unions Tags: do gooders, The fatal conceit, The pretense to knowledge
The robots came in the 1950s for all our jobs
23 Jan 2017 Leave a comment
in economic history, industrial organisation, labour economics, labour supply, movies, survivor principle Tags: Apollo 13, automation, technological unemployment
The robots are coming have got nothing on the mid 20th century in terms of man being replaced by a machine.
One of my favourite scenes from Apollo 13 happens to be online. Tom Hanks and the Apollo 13 crew and ground control were using slide rules to make the critical calculations about re-entry trajectories. That had not been automated in 1969.
I went to high school just after slide rules were replaced by simple calculators.
I am reading some great essays from the 1960s at the moment about the great fear that people had from the computer entering the factory.
The reason for claiming that this time it was different was computed could automate calculations millions of times faster than people could. The computer could monitor and react to events without human intervention as Yale Brozen explained in the mid-60s
The hallmarks of automation, to distinguish it from mechanization or automatic
methods, are its sensing, feed-back, and self-adjusting characteristics. Because it senses changing requirements and adjusts without human intervention, it presumably does away with the need for human attendants or human labor. This is very fearful indeed to those who depend upon jobs for their livelihood.
Tyler Cowen – The Great Stagnation
21 Jan 2017 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, development economics, economic history, entrepreneurship, human capital, labour supply Tags: creative destruction, great stagnation
Is America an imperialist, white-supremacist, capitalist patriarchy? | FACTUAL FEMINIST
21 Jan 2017 2 Comments
in defence economics, development economics, discrimination, gender, labour economics Tags: feminism, foreign policy, gender wage gap, imperialism, racial discrimination, racism
The Race between Machine and Man Daron Acemoglu
19 Jan 2017 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, industrial organisation, labour economics, survivor principle Tags: technological unemployment
Trailblazers: The New Zealand Story – Public Sector Reforms
19 Jan 2017 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, economic history, economics of regulation, fiscal policy, labour economics, macroeconomics
By 2140, a lot of people are going to get birthday telegrams from the Queen
16 Jan 2017 Leave a comment
in health economics, labour supply, population economics
7 of the 8 top billionaires built their business from scratch without political help @Oxfam
16 Jan 2017 Leave a comment
The robots have been coming from longer than you think
16 Jan 2017 Leave a comment
in economic history, industrial organisation, labour economics, labour supply, unemployment
Source: Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson.
Source: Against Robotic Panic, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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