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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (701956)	3/1/2013 8:21:45 PM
From: i-node	Respond to of 1577917

To be clear, I agree that technology does drive the free markets in ways that are difficult to see at this time. This is the core of many of my arguments about why aggregation of wealth is not inherently a bad thing. But one can envision, 100 years from now (or possibly much sooner) a time when providing the needs of humans will be a far less labor-intensive activity. And on average, the need for a 40 hour average work week will be gone -- at least as far as production of goods and services. Perhaps many of those jobs will move to service industries, but these jobs do not historically support the standards of living most of us are accustomed to, and the supply of those jobs is likely to hugely outstrip the demand. We'll always need people to develop technologies that everyone else consume. But look at the industries that have fallen, or at least changed radically over the last 15 years as a result of the Internet. The first ones were the easy [obvious] ones -- music and online shopping, and as it happens, these are among the least affected. As time moves on, more radical changes start to take root. The university system is a big one that is on the horizon, and could start to fall apart quickly. Undoubtedly, we'll see a series of mergers and acquisitions, but in the end, most American universities will be history. Is Harvard or Cornell going to disappear? No. But the plethora of state universities should and will, in favor of more cost effective online programs administered by -- Harvard and Cornell. All those highly educated professors? Looking for jobs. The .com bubble was, imo, mostly a result of people expecting too much, too fast. These entrenched interests take a very long time to unwind except in the most obvious areas (like shopping and music). But a day will come when a substantial portion of hardgoods can be downloaded and produced locally -- eliminating the need for a factory to build it. Just my 2c.