Re: Where to now?

I  agree with you, Dan. Newer and better versions of tablets or iphones are marginal improvements and will not provide the stimulus to the economy to change the direction we are following.

But I also have a problem with the idea that creating new customers by which I guess, Kevin, you mean demand, is the only solution. I believe our problem has been that we have been fixated on creating demand only, not on the type of demand we are creating. 

 Much of our economy in the world today is built around building demand for throw away products that merely replace previously created products. Thus the value added by labor is wasted in terms of creating lasting wealth. As you saturate the widget market you must create artificial demand to create turn over and continued demand for the widgets. Thus, the birth of the advertising industry and designed obsolescence.  Now think of all the time and effort we spend on developing advertising content which is ephemeral. Most of it is used once and discarded. Add that to the inevitable loss of raw materials to land fills as people scrap the old models and we have to ask, are we building lasting wealth or merely making work for our population? If all we are doing is recycling wealth and at the sam
 e time we allow that wealth to be siphoned off and sequestered by fewer and fewer people we have a problem. 

Now the idea of a black swan that would make a difference would be something that would incrementally increase wealth by adding lasting value to labor. The computer initially did that by allowing increased productivity of knowledge workers. Then by assembly line robots, etc. Or perhaps another example of what we need is something like a breakthrough in access to space and all the resources of the solar system.

I apologize for jumping in late to this conversation. but you all have been fascinating.  I think that these are fundamental issues that have created a flaw in our economic model and if not remedied we are facing a slow decline in the standard of living everywhere as populations change and resources become constrained. Great fodder for science fiction, of course.

Chris Frandsen

 On Nov 19, 2012, at 1:04 PM, Dan Minette <[email protected]> wrote:


> 
>> There is one and only one factor that creates jobs, and it is not wealthy
> people. That one factor is 
>> customers. 
> 
> I differ here.  Not that middle class consumers are not more important than
> the top 0.1% getting more money, I agree with that.
> 
> But, Clay's article is deeper than that. Look at all the jobs that existed
> in 2000 that didn't exist in 1900. They employ most of the people now
> working. The reason for this is whole industries were developed from
> disruptive innovations.  But, since we have't had an earth shattering
> disruptive innovation in more than 50 years (for 50 years our ecconomy
> boomed off the invention of the transistor), we are now at the point where
> we are just more efficent build cars, drilling for oil, etc.  Thus, fewer
> people are needed for the same job.
> 
> One potential disruptive innovation would be a process that coverts CO2, sea
> water and sunlight into petrol, at a cheaper price than we pay at the pump.
> That would create tens of thousands of good new jobs.  
> 
> But, the next ipad will not create many US jobs, no matter how many
> consumers buy it.
> 
> Dan M. 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
>