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phil
@phil
Welcome to @jasoncrawford.eth! Jason is the founder of The Roots of Progress, a non-profit dedicated to progress studies. In addition, he has served as an advisor for Our World in Data and as a guest lecturer at MIT. His essay, We Need A New Philosophy of Progress, is one of the best arguments for techno-optimism that I've read: https://rootsofprogress.org/we-need-a-new-philosophy-of-progress/ He has agreed to do an AMA for the /books channel as part of the ongoing Silicon Valley Canon course. Reply with your questions. :)
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s5eeo
@s5eeo
Do you see a realistic path toward effectively addressing Baumol’s cost disease in America or other countries where it exists? And do you see it as something that hampers progress?
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Jason Crawford
@jasoncrawford.eth
No, I think the term “disease” is wrong. The classic example is that a string quartet still takes four musicians to play, but those people now get paid modern wages, so a string quartet is actually more expensive in real terms. But that's not a “disease” from the standpoint of the musicians! It's pretty good! And if somehow real wages for musicians were stuck at 1700 levels, we just wouldn't have any live music. So it's good for the rest of us too. “Baumol effect” is a better term. Alex Tabarrok explains it well here. It's all about unbalanced productivity gains: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/the-baumol-effect.html “The focus on relative prices tells us that the cost disease is misnamed. The cost disease is not a disease but a blessing. To be sure, it would be better if productivity increased in all industries, but that is just to say that more is better. There is nothing negative about productivity growth, even if it is unbalanced.”
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