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Comment by neffy | Hacker News Reader

Think about a book with information in it on, oh I don't know, basic first aid principles.

1000 Years ago it wasn't available.

200 years ago, it was available only to those who could afford to go to university, and had reached a very socially expensive and scarce educational level.

Now you can download it for nothing. With pictures. Ditto music, film, etc.

The financial apparatus that you're referring to can solve more or less for the scarcity case, but it cannot solve (i.e. find prices for) the abundance case. The liquidity issues are a sideshow to what will be the main event.

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> The financial apparatus that you're referring to can solve more or less for the scarcity case, but it cannot solve (i.e. find prices for) the abundance case.

Prices should be declining if supply are increasing.

If you're right, which you're not, then prices should be decreasing very quickly.

Food and energy bills for the average person in my country and others I've been to are steadily increasing.

USA 2011 http://www.cbsnews.com/news/food-prices-increase-most-in-36-...

USA 2014 http://www.cbsnews.com/news/food-prices-soar-as-incomes-stan...

World graph http://www.worldwatch.org/global-food-prices-continue-rise-0

EX-computation, tell me something good. We can't eat silicon wafers.

The cost of energy alone is exponentially higher than it was in the early 70s.

We're not living in an enchanted forest, formerly progressive trends are going into reverse on most counts outside of computers.

I'm not sure that computation is much of an exception. Yes, we have more transistors on chips, but can we actually make them do more useful things? It's not always clear cut. Also it seems like many employed in software are mostly reinventing older ideas poorly.

Didn't see your post there, sorry.

I agree, but I try to lead with my strongest case that can't be denied objectively. The concern about implementing 'actual useful shit' e.g. not flinging birds at pigs, is very much at the forefront of my mind but it's a harder case to argue even if it would be more meaningful, esp. to the uninitiated.

The other factor in pricing is monetary expansion. Every 10 years the US money supply doubles.

Factor that in, and essentially what we´re looking at is a world where production is increasing, reducing prices, money and credit supply are increasing, increasing them - at the same time. At the moment the two are more or less (more in the case of TV´s, less in the case of housing) balancing each other out.

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