Your argument is simply wrong. Or rather, you take one interpretation of the situation and then denigrate in over-the-top terms all the other interpretations.

An orchestra produces a single unique performance. The productivity of the system of producing single, unique performance has no changed.

You're saying that this single unique performance can be reproduced - sure, that's true but now it's a different product. And certainly, that can increase the price of the final product. A programmer produces programs. Those programs are eventually reproduced on computers on a small or a large scale. A programmer producing a program used by few people still must be paid a salary similar to a programmer producing a program used across the globe - the cost of the program itself has to make up for this, if it doesn't, the programming isn't going to happen.

Moreover, the orchestra example is ... just an example. There are quite a lot of other fields requiring skilled workers, where the productivity has stayed fairly steady.

"The phenomenon was described by William J. Baumol and William G. Bowen in the 1960s."

I imagine streaming services were not a thing back then.

Also you make fair points in your comments but you confuse the example for the argument. Replace 'String Quartet' by 'waiter' or 'child minder' if you prefer.

I think the issue is that you measure productivity as in quantitative physical output instead of in value as driven by supply and demand. Absolute value increases due to inflation even though the supply/demand ratio is the same.

> Absolute value increases due to inflation

For a meaningless definition of absolute, where it coïncides with “nominal,” yes.

Well, there was a fairly huge streaming service called FM Radio that had a huge audience at the time.

Do your analysis per-capita, please; as a former gigging musician, I assure you that it doesn't matter how much money is being given to the Big Four by streaming services, it only matters how many gigging hours there are per week. And the number of gigging hours per week is limited, and the amount of music produced per gigging hour has not changed in centuries.

This is a bad, ignorant example. Not just wrong, but flagrantly, wildly, outrageously misinformed.

I had a similar reaction re: professors.

Sure, it takes the same amount of time to mark an essay. But it takes much less time to score exams and to administer them.

Writing research papers takes much, much, much less time because of word processors, online submission systems, copyediting changes, and so forth. A lot of research itself takes less time to do because of statistical analysis libraries, computerized administration and recruitment, etc etc etc

This is actually something I've heard older, very professors lament -- some of them have claimed that when, say, papers took longer to produce, you had more time to think when things were being mailed back and forth, and there wasn't so much of a factory approach to paper writing where they were treated as widgets. I'm not saying I agree or disagree with this necessarily but I'm really skeptical of claims that productivity hasn't risen in certain fields.

Now you can get into a discussion of "real" versus "false" productivity gains but that's a little different.

Another example - reference managers are a very specialized piece of word processing software that means researchers no longer have to renumber footnotes when editing their papers. If you make a derivative work, like if you give a talk on the paper, you can cut down the paper and the reference manager will automatically give you a bibliography slide for your presentation, with only the relevant citations included.

This is pretty much what I wanted to write. How come productivity is measured in dollars when exchanging goods/services, but constant units when this Baumol thing comes up?

The simplest way to resolve the paradox is that you have a society that becomes more productive over time, and that everyone shares in the increased productivity due to the negotiation process. If you can fish and I can cook, and you discover how to 10x your fishing output while I sit on the beach, you are still going to give me more than whatever amount of fish I got before.

The other thing about Baumol - not his fault - is you often see it quoted as a sort of club to beat people with if you don't like how they make their money. And the fact that it's an economist gives it a respectability that makes people hesitate before asking more.

" This is pretty much what I wanted to write. How come productivity is measured in dollars when exchanging goods/services, but constant units when this Baumol thing comes up?"

From an economist perspective there is no difference between the two. Money is just a convenient metric to be able to compare the value of multiple goods.

You don't think of you salary as the power to buy X burgers or Y beers but really it is what it is. It is just easier to say I earn XXXX$.

The difference is the price, no?

If I get paid 100 for playing a concert on one day, but 120 another day, did I get more productive? Either way I produced the same number of concerts, but got 20% more payment.

Measured in concerts my productivity was the same. Measured in other goods it went up.

Thanks for explaining. I'm looking forward to your Nobel Prize for disproving established economic theory.

I wasn't aware that anyone takes "established economic theory" particularly seriously. The entire field is about as objectively useful as philosophy, pompous awards or no.