This is very important - I’d like to see an Austrian perspective away from labour-intensive societies to ones where ownership of firms becomes the predominant means of earning income. I think as automation increases, this shift will come about provided the gov’t gets out of the way.
Interesting points, but how did you reach such a conclusion? The infinite number of human wants, and division of labour, imply that this won’t be the case - a transfer from a situation in which ownership of firms STOPPED being the predominant means of earning income, ie, the extent of the division of labour increased, heralded as we know massive increases in productivity. naturally This does not preclude that its somehow turning the other way as a result of automation, but I don’t quite understand why exactly automation in certain sectors of the economy (since not all processes can [or at least easily or are likely to] be automated, would lead to a fall in total labour-intensiveness in the economy as a whole; certainly this is possible in a situation in which the number of human wants was not infinite, in which perhaps they could be provided for by automated processes to a great extent, but in a situation in which we cannot approach a fulfilling of the majority of human wants (since in theory they are infinite) i see no reason to assume that the division of labour would exhibit diminishing returns on such a level. That is, that a diminishing of the returns to scale of division of labour (thereby causing an increase of firm ownership rather than employment) would come about as a result of automation in some processes, even if those processes were to encompass the majority of production overall.
sorry to the OP for the thread hijack, if you want send me a message!
It is a big “if” but it would be interesting to provide a comprehensive refutation to those who play chicken little about automation. My argument is that even if it does happen on a full scale that it will a) not be the end of the world because a transition to ownership can be effected and b) machines will begin improving humans rather than replacing them anyway.
I don’t think it would necessarily qualify as research, but we could use more works of fiction that contain an an-cap society. Sort of like The Probability Broach. I am thinking of one, and the idea of humans being enhanced by machines is a really good idea. What if astronauts were just humans plugged into a matrix-like environment (but one that would allow easy and intuitive control over the ship, essentially the ship becomes their body), simply because it saved a lot of space and resources?
On the topic of Europe, I recently learned Europe has production quotas on vegetables (and recently on grapes specifically). I wonder how that’s working out.
Jon Irenicus: Thank you for many great suggestions. My favorites are:
“Friendly societies and pre-state welfare systems”
This is particularily relevant in a South-East Asian setting as Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam are very far away from the European welfare state paradigm. I think I might end up formulating a topic a long the lines of this soon. I’ll let you know if it materializes.
-A lot more work on crony capitalism.
Again, this region is often viewed as crony capitalism epitomized.
-Some in-depth work on inflationist vs deflationist strains of Austrianism and on the divergent ways booms can end up.
I may be able to come up with a topic around the Asian crisis of 97 by focusing on some of the lesser known boom and bust areas.
Wheylous: The EU has a lot of strange regulations including one about the aesthetics of certain vegetables. It may have been repealed (not 100% sure) now but there was a law against ugly vegetables up untill a few months ago.
