https://cdn.mises.org/Less%20than%20Zero%20The%20Case%20for%... is an interesting book on the topic. (Ignore for a moment that it's hosted by mises.org..)
Some people think that deflation is bad for an economy. That's a bit confused.
What's bad for the economy is a fall in aggregate nominal spending. That one leads to recession and unemployment.
If prices fall, but total spending stays stable, that's fine.
We figure out how to turn atmospheric carbon into cheese. Take CO2 -> C12H22O11
Paying people to do nothing gives you nothing.
Full employment isn't an end in itself, but it's useful because it is typically related to things we do care about. Employing people to do nothing is like fiddling with the speedometer of your care in order to 'go faster'. Or relabeling your amplifiers to go to 11.
You can sort-of turn atmospheric carbon into cheese. Have grass capture the carbon, and a cow eat the grass. That's totally doable, just not viable or efficient if your goal is to capture carbon at scale.
(If your goal was to go carbon negative at all costs, you could instate a whooping big carbon tax, and let the economy figure it out.)
I think we already have a lot of high paying jobs in the economy that don't do much and pay people to do nothing (of value). We should absolutely spread that around.
The relative price of steel has remained flat, while the steel performance has greatly increased.
https://www.metalbulletinresearch.com/Article/3532290/Commod...
Between material science and cheaper compute, we can build higher tech parts and techniques.
The cycles/consumed/per/person/per/year is an exponential, what are some important points on that curve? When the computation to design something is on the order as the same amount of energy to create it?