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Re:Chip Design Shifts as Fundamental Laws Run Out of Steam by eru on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @07:26AM (#33419723)
Productivity improvements in the economy are indeed deflationary. That's a general idea in economics.

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.

Re:Chip Design Shifts as Fundamental Laws Run Out of Steam by sitkack on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @12:21PM (#33438336)
So it sounds like we need to do more of nothing but employ a lot of people doing it and we can be carbon negative AND have full employment.

We figure out how to turn atmospheric carbon into cheese. Take CO2 -> C12H22O11

Re:Chip Design Shifts as Fundamental Laws Run Out of Steam by eru on Thursday November 03, 2022 @01:01AM (#33447216)
Could you please try to explain what you want to say with less snark? I'm a bit confused.

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.)

Re:Chip Design Shifts as Fundamental Laws Run Out of Steam by sitkack on Thursday November 03, 2022 @10:14AM (#33451319)
Right now our economy basically runs on carbon at the core. We make stuff, move stuff and emitting carbon is necessary. If we switched our economy to owing and moving information, then we could still have full-employment, move money in the ecosystem while from the viewpoint of a materialist, just be moving useless bits around.

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.