I wouldn’t call it evaporation of improvements. They are not disappearing. It’s more like they are diffused. After all, it is about genuine improvements. These save time or cost or energy. It is just that when you look at it locally, what seems like an improvement for you alone is indeed something that doesn’t happen in isolation. If many people save cost/time, the overall system will, as you write, settle into a new balance where the improvements are shared by many. Often unequally, which is just reflecting unequal power that existed before.
Yeah, maybe “diffusion” is a too optimistic view. A large part of improvements get captured by those who can create an artificial scarcity of some necessity—currently it’s housing, in the past it used to be physical safety. And many other improvements happen as part of arms races, so on net they lead to more waste and no benefit—like improvements to advertising in a fixed size market, or improvements to weapons. I think these are the two main mechanisms that “eat” improvements and prevent us from having a 15-hour work week.
The houses do seem to get smaller and I think this is related to property being inherently finite or the effects of concentration that lead to urbanization (or both).
The houses do get better in quality though (higher standards, more facilities etc.).
Mh hm, yes. House area per person seems to have tripled since the 60s everywhere from Japan to India, Germany, or the US. But it didn’t lead to shortages everywhere.
There are two things that are fixed: Land and attention. For these, I agree.
And there are, of course, improvements to tools of destruction, but Viliam was not talking about those.
But everything that satisfies human needs (without at the same time hurting them, e.g., thru production) can grow until all are satisfied (if that is even possible). Some or even most of those benefits will be captured, but not all, thus I’d argue for such products, it is still diffusion.
There are two things that are fixed: Land and attention.
I think that’s a red herring though. The current scarcity of housing is far below the limit set by land, so I just call it artificial. There can be artificial scarcity of other necessities as well, all that’s needed is that the providers of that necessity act as a cartel.
Land is only a raw input though. What matters to people is something like useable floor space, which isn’t fixed. One way to increase usable floor space is to build further from population centers (in which case you’re using land, but the main cost is building infrastructure and reducing productivity), but another way to increase usable floor space is to build it in top of or below existing buildings, which doesn’t require additional land at all (although it has other costs).
This is the usual misunderstanding of ‘land’ as a macroeconomic factor. ‘Land’ is not merely ‘floor space’ such that you can easily manufacture more of it by simply hiring some construction workers (even assuming no issues like regulation).
For example, adding another floor on a building next to the stock exchange does not create new Land from the perspective of a high-frequency trader, because that floor space must be an additional X meters (and Y nanoseconds) away from the stock exchange central computer compared to the HFT traders on the floor below that. There is a certain sphere of space around that computer which is, due to the finite and unchangeable speed of light, going to be <Y nanoseconds away from it, and no matter what you do, that will always be true (barring some major breakthroughs in string theory or something); and that Land is of fixed finite supply, neither created nor destroyed, only rented out by its current owner for whatever the market will bear.
But my argument is about literal land and floor space for living. Literal land is fixed but it doesn’t matter because floor space for living isn’t (or is fixed at a level way higher than we’re likely to reach any time soon).
It’s the same thing. People do not need ‘literal land and floor space for living’. If you want that, there’s plenty of empty abandoned buildings in, say, rural Japan you can go buy which will provide ‘literal land and floor space’ - because everyone moved to Tokyo. What people need is Land: scarce, finite housing slots with relevant meta-properties like plumbing and garbage collection and low crime rates within X travel-minutes of their job and relevant amenities. Building another floor means additional load on elevators, electricity, garbage, roads and public transit, etc. And to the extent the local residents think all that is already barely adequate and legally bar new entry, then that is the real limit on Land and why it is necessarily scarce and generates high rents.
Well, in some sense: “Yes,” but in another: “No”. Sure, land on a global scale is plenty. But you mention infrastructure yourself. It matters how efficiently you can get together. Proximity to other people, businesses, facilities, etc. matters. It is no accident that more economic activity goes on in cities like San Francisco or New York. Or generally is the biggest cities in a country. And within these cities the center is the most attractive. I hope that remote work will partly solve that, but after some promising development, the trend seems to have reversed.
Yes, but my point is just that you can bring more people in proximity to NYC without more land, either by making transportation faster/better (make the desirable part of NYC bigger) or by building in 3D.
I wouldn’t call it evaporation of improvements. They are not disappearing. It’s more like they are diffused. After all, it is about genuine improvements. These save time or cost or energy. It is just that when you look at it locally, what seems like an improvement for you alone is indeed something that doesn’t happen in isolation. If many people save cost/time, the overall system will, as you write, settle into a new balance where the improvements are shared by many. Often unequally, which is just reflecting unequal power that existed before.
Yeah, maybe “diffusion” is a too optimistic view. A large part of improvements get captured by those who can create an artificial scarcity of some necessity—currently it’s housing, in the past it used to be physical safety. And many other improvements happen as part of arms races, so on net they lead to more waste and no benefit—like improvements to advertising in a fixed size market, or improvements to weapons. I think these are the two main mechanisms that “eat” improvements and prevent us from having a 15-hour work week.
This isn’t really true though. Over time, people keep working fewer hours, for fewer years, doing easier work, and getting paid more in exchange.
https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-median-income?tab=chart
Housing is definitely a problem, but it stands out because it’s an outlier, not because everything is like that.
The houses do seem to get smallerand I think this is related to property being inherently finite or the effects of concentration that lead to urbanization (or both).The houses do get better in quality though (higher standards, more facilities etc.).
That’s not really true either. The average house size in the US is getting larger while the average number of people living it in is getting smaller:
https://www.thezebra.com/resources/home/median-home-size-in-us/
Mh hm, yes. House area per person seems to have tripled since the 60s everywhere from Japan to India, Germany, or the US. But it didn’t lead to shortages everywhere.
There are two things that are fixed: Land and attention. For these, I agree.
And there are, of course, improvements to tools of destruction, but Viliam was not talking about those.
But everything that satisfies human needs (without at the same time hurting them, e.g., thru production) can grow until all are satisfied (if that is even possible). Some or even most of those benefits will be captured, but not all, thus I’d argue for such products, it is still diffusion.
I think that’s a red herring though. The current scarcity of housing is far below the limit set by land, so I just call it artificial. There can be artificial scarcity of other necessities as well, all that’s needed is that the providers of that necessity act as a cartel.
Hm, yes. In the current regime. Tokyo is a also a counter-example. There are strong incentives for property owners to keep the supply limited.
Land is only a raw input though. What matters to people is something like useable floor space, which isn’t fixed. One way to increase usable floor space is to build further from population centers (in which case you’re using land, but the main cost is building infrastructure and reducing productivity), but another way to increase usable floor space is to build it in top of or below existing buildings, which doesn’t require additional land at all (although it has other costs).
This is the usual misunderstanding of ‘land’ as a macroeconomic factor. ‘Land’ is not merely ‘floor space’ such that you can easily manufacture more of it by simply hiring some construction workers (even assuming no issues like regulation).
For example, adding another floor on a building next to the stock exchange does not create new Land from the perspective of a high-frequency trader, because that floor space must be an additional X meters (and Y nanoseconds) away from the stock exchange central computer compared to the HFT traders on the floor below that. There is a certain sphere of space around that computer which is, due to the finite and unchangeable speed of light, going to be <Y nanoseconds away from it, and no matter what you do, that will always be true (barring some major breakthroughs in string theory or something); and that Land is of fixed finite supply, neither created nor destroyed, only rented out by its current owner for whatever the market will bear.
But my argument is about literal land and floor space for living. Literal land is fixed but it doesn’t matter because floor space for living isn’t (or is fixed at a level way higher than we’re likely to reach any time soon).
It’s the same thing. People do not need ‘literal land and floor space for living’. If you want that, there’s plenty of empty abandoned buildings in, say, rural Japan you can go buy which will provide ‘literal land and floor space’ - because everyone moved to Tokyo. What people need is Land: scarce, finite housing slots with relevant meta-properties like plumbing and garbage collection and low crime rates within X travel-minutes of their job and relevant amenities. Building another floor means additional load on elevators, electricity, garbage, roads and public transit, etc. And to the extent the local residents think all that is already barely adequate and legally bar new entry, then that is the real limit on Land and why it is necessarily scarce and generates high rents.
Well, in some sense: “Yes,” but in another: “No”. Sure, land on a global scale is plenty. But you mention infrastructure yourself. It matters how efficiently you can get together. Proximity to other people, businesses, facilities, etc. matters. It is no accident that more economic activity goes on in cities like San Francisco or New York. Or generally is the biggest cities in a country. And within these cities the center is the most attractive. I hope that remote work will partly solve that, but after some promising development, the trend seems to have reversed.
Yes, but my point is just that you can bring more people in proximity to NYC without more land, either by making transportation faster/better (make the desirable part of NYC bigger) or by building in 3D.
Well, I’m not disagreeing with that. But there are limits to that. Technical, but more importantly in terms of coordination.
(I’m tapping out of this thread)