Josh Pollak writes:
| On Mar 23, 2004, at 2:48 PM, John Chambers wrote:
| > I've seen another cute parallel that illustrates one of the  problems
| > we're facing. Some economists have pointed out that, according to the
| > standard definitions of "productivity" that we use today,  the  early
| > decades  of  the  1900's  saw  a huge increase in the productivity of
| > horses.  That is, the amount of work divided by the number of  horses
| > at work went up very rapidly.
| >
| > Did this benefit the horses?  Well, not exactly ...
| >
| > This was an intro to the suggestion that what we're starting  to  see
| > is  a  similar huge increase of productivity in humans.  That is, the
| > ratio of goods produced to human workers is going up  rapidly.   Will
| > humans  benefit?   Probably no more than the horses did a centry ago,
| > and for the same reason.
|
| Evidence of this happening is already present, read 'Nickel And Dimed:
| On (not) Getting By In America", by Barbara Ehrenreich,
| (http://www.nickelanddimed.net/), where she details how corporations
| demand more and more 'productivity' out of fewer and fewer workers.
| Because we have a glut of workers and fewer jobs, companies can afford
| to physically burn and wear out employees, since they are so easy to
| replace.

This isn't really the same phenomenon.  What she was writing about is
employers  demanding  more and more work from each worker, usually in
the form of longer hours,  since  no  productivity  enhancements  are
being provided.  The horse comparison, and the development of robotic
factories,  is  something  different.   In  this  case,  productivity
actually does go up, but fewer workers are needed. The tendency is to
decrease  the  number  of  workers  rather  than  to   decrease   the
hours/worker, for various reasons. The tendency then is towards fewer
and fewer workers employed because they're not needed.

Of course, this does lead to Ehrenreich's situation for the remaining
workers,  since they will fear being let go if they don't put in long
hours. But in some industries, the real change is the decreasing need
for workers.

An interesting aside: I've read several articles explaining the large
increase  in  the  number  of  working horses in the US over the past
several decades.  The reasons are complex and  due  to  many  special
conditions.   But it seems that some people have taken a hard look at
the economics, and in some situations, horses turn out to  be  better
and/or cheaper than machinery.

One interesting case is that the growing price of many kinds of  wood
have  turned woodlots into profit centers for a lot of farmers.  It's
difficult to harvest the high-profit trees with machinery, due to the
usually  very  uneven  ground  and  the  mechanical damage to younger
trees. But horses are very sure-footed on uneven ground, and they can
be used to drag logs out of a lot with minimal damage to other trees.
So a few guys with chainsaws plus a drover and horse team has  become
a common way to harvest threes and get the logs out of the lot.

Similarly, a small number of humans will probably always be needed to
keep the economy running. But it may well stabilize at a rather small
percent of the population.  What will  happen  to  the  rest  of  the
population is yet to be seen.

Maybe Wells was a prophet.

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