| Matthew Rosewarne on 26 Oct 2007 21:22:53 -0000 |
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On Friday 26 October 2007, zuzu wrote: > selling "units" of a mass-produced item is a relic of a manufacturing > economy. in a knowledge economy, it's selling the _creativity_ of > _people_ that's the scarce/valuable commodity. instead of buying > "things" we need to focus on buying "people" in the form of creative > labor (vis-a-vis opportunity cost) to invent _new_ features and > functionality. last I checked, your brain is the only one of its > kind. Most of what we buy, particularly what we _need_ to buy, is the product of the manufacturing economy. Creative labour isn't really that important if you can't build whatever it is that you're dreaming up. A major problem for the US is that we have bought into the idea that we no longer need to make anything, and so we are actively dissolving our economic future. The reason the US rose to be an economic powerhouse in the late 19th century, other than its agricultural prowess, was its immense manufacturing base. Only in recent history did we essentially abandon manufacturing to become a consumer and "knowledge" economy, which is an entirely unsustainable model. It's not that we don't need creativity or knowledge, but unless we can actually manufacture things, our chances of continued success are quite slim. Attachment:
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