alt Hacker NewsI mean, even ignoring the recent GenAI narrative, vast portions of the economy have already been significantly automated for decades.
Additive Manufacturing, industrial robotics, the Internet, and the proliferation of computers had already made large portions of manufacturing and low skill white collar jobs redundant by the mid-2010s.
Furthermore, the brutal reality is most businesses can generate revenue growth just by concentrating on the 90th percentile and above of households [0], (edit: or at best the 70th percentile of households of income [1]).
For example, despite all the love Costco gets on HN - the reality is it only targets customers within the top 50% of households by income [2]. You may delude yourself into thinking that you are a thrifty underdog when you shop at Costco, but the reality is most Americans cannot and will never be able to afford Costco, and Costco doesn't want or need their business.
A K-Shape Economy is actually the historical norm.
[0] - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/income-share-of-the-top-1...
[1] - https://dqydj.com/household-income-percentile-calculator/
[2] - https://www.businessinsider.com/how-costco-sams-club-shopper...
Replies
> Additive Manufacturing, industrial robotics, the Internet, and the proliferation of computers had already made large portions of manufacturing and low skill white collar jobs redundant by the mid-2010s.
I think a much more realistic explanation than robotics and 3d printing is the outsourcing of the social and environmental costs of industrialization to countries willing to bear it, like China, Vietnam and Mexico.
Containerized shipping, email, and computerized logistics have made globalization efficient, and therefore inevitable.
This is my suspicion. I imagine, if you don't care about the majority of the population, you might as well reduce the economy to circular transactions between corporations and between 1%ers and the businesses catering to them.