7 ms·
For the vast majority of human existence 'dupe culture' was the norm. So far this is just a tiny 200 year abberation.
by 4ndrewl 2mo ago
For the vast majority of human existence 'dupe culture' was the norm.
So far this is just a tiny 200 year abberation.
- inigyou 2mo agoThe centralisation is abnormal. Used to have one blacksmith in each village making clone horseshoes and earning a living. Now there's one company in South Korea that makes all the world's horseshoes and earns a million livings while each village has minus one living. And the guy who invented the horseshoe is sleeping under a bridge.
- nine_k 2mo agoCentralization offers efficiency gains, else it won't happen. Your imaginary company in South Korea likely makes a million horseshoes employing only 1000 people, and the horseshoes are good quality, and the price is like 5% of the price of a handcrafted horseshoe. Many more people can afford horseshoes as a result.
- Joker_vD 2mo agoBut think of the jobs! There used to be a million people involved in horseshoe-making, now there is only a thousand, and the rest of that million now has to do something else! And since there is literally nothing else for them to do, they'll have to die out :( The most bizarre thing about the economical systems is that there indeed were cases where former workers of the industries that collapsed/disappeared indeed went the way of the dodo.
- nine_k 2mo agoIt depends on the speed of change though. If a million-strong industry collapses overnight, it can lead to really painful social disturbances. If it winds down in 10 years, the transition can be much more smooth. BTW see also https://www.edge.org/conversation/gin-television-and-cognitive-surplus https://www.edge.org/conversation/gin-television-and-cogniti...
- inigyou 2mo agoThis is an intentional policy choice btw. You could just legislate the horseshoe company pays 90% of each displaced blacksmith decreasing by 5% per year.
- Joker_vD 2mo agoAnd hey, almost a million blacksmiths displaced is a huge block of voters that any elected politician would be glad to capture! Although I struggle to recall any of the examples of something like this happening in the real-world history.
- inigyou 2mo agoJust shows how powerful capital interests are.
- bruce511 2mo agoI always find this line of thought interesting. Because it implies the manufacturer has all the power. But they don't. The consumer does. Ultimately the manufacturer wins the horse-shoe battle because they are cheaper. And the consumers in the village prefer cheap shoes to locally made (expensive) ones. Fundamentally consumers like cheap stuff. Manufacturing shifts happen because as soon as there's a cheaper output, you've won. Consumers will reliably switch to cheap. At the start there may be some brand loyalty, there may even be a quality difference, but both those erode quickly. Lots of people promote the idea of buying locally, even if it's more expensive. But it's a hard message to sell, and a tough one to buy. I'm sorry for the blacksmith, but times are hard and I need my horses shod. It's easy to blame capitalism or factory owners or foreign cheap labor or any other convenient political scapegoat. But the root of the problem is consumer preference for cheap (even if inferior) to the exclusion of everything else. This is perhaps culturally most evident where the premise above is false. In the US for example food is low quality, but plentiful. In Europe food generally costs more, but is of a much higher standard. Portions are smaller. Quality is more important than quantity. This is not by accident. Europe has deliberately fostered local food markets, local food production, and promoted a narrative around history and good production. Cheap food is available, but quality food has a strong foothold.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- inigyou 2mo agoMany fewer people can afford horseshoes as a result because all the money is at the horseshoe company.
- wat10000 2mo agoThe opposite is actually true in reality. More people can afford X than ever before, for nearly any X that doesn’t involve directly paying for someone else’s labor.
- inigyou 2mo agoWhat doesn't involve paying for someone else's labor? You mean things that are pure profit?
- wat10000 2mo agoYou’re missing the word “directly.” More people can afford to buy a toilet than ever before. The same may not be true of affording a plumber to install it.
- Joker_vD 2mo agoDepends on the overarching economical policies. During the British rule, the Indian textile weavers went out of manufacturing business and had to switch to sustenance farming, and then perish during one of the many famines. And the Parliament legally forbade the public relief efforts, such as fundraisers to buy and send corn to the affected regions, explicitly citing the concerns that such efforts would skew the market forces and unbalance the trade.
- superxpro12 2mo agoThat seems less an indictment of economies of scale, and more an indictment of british colonialism
- cortesoft 2mo agoWell, the guy who invented the horseshoe died thousands of years ago. And the idea that one location making all the horseshoes means each village is minus one living is ignoring the other effects. Now, all the villagers can get cheaper horseshoes, so they don’t have to spend as many resources on shoes for their horses, and can now invest more into what their village is best at, and sell those goods to other villages. Basic Ricardian Economics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardian_economics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardian_economics Of course, that doesn’t mean the blacksmith isn’t out of a job, but I always hate that so many people think the solution to that problem is to just give up the economic benefits of specialization instead of working to improve the distribution of the gains.
- pluralmonad 2mo agoI've come to view the goal of things being cheap as an anti goal. The biggest contribution to us speed running killing our ecosystems. Maybe all of us going without more often would end up with a significantly higher standard of living in the long term.
- wat10000 2mo agoExternalities must be accounted for. Once that’s done, cheap should correlate well with being less ecologically harmful.
- cortesoft 2mo agoYou do that by properly pricing in externalities, not by making everything harder to do so we can't put as much strain on the environment. You are probably right that we need to have less stuff, but if we are going to have less, I would rather work less, too.
- coldtea 2mo ago>And the idea that one location making all the horseshoes means each village is minus one living is ignoring the other effects. Ignoring all the possitive other effects as well.
- 2mo ago
- xboxnolifes 2mo agoThe village grew as the world got smaller. The world has one blacksmith.
- cyberrock 2mo agoI think this is missing the part of the story where the blacksmith in South Korea comes to open a shop in your backyard and yet you delay them for years for inane reasons.
- techterrier 2mo agosure, but if the blacksmith starting passing off really shitty horseshoes he'd get driven out of town
- marysol5 2mo agoThe other side of that is where there was a factory for the villagers to work in, and everybody had a wage, and a community. The factory is now all robots, and only 3 people have a job there.