Artisanal things are great, but because they take so much more time for a person to make, fewer people can have them - realised in our society as them being more expensive, but to be clear this is due to the fundamental issue of it not being possible to make as many for the same input of human time.
So, is it worth it to have a table made by a master craftsman versus a table produced in an IKEA factory, when the societal result is that some people just can’t afford a table - or they can, but the tradeoff is they can’t have something else? We are not a post-scarcity society, these are real questions.
Is it worth rewinding the green revolution and starving half the world population who depends on the higher crop yields due to modern agriculture?
The whole point is that you can still make things. What you cannot do is something 99% of people have never been able to do, that is: feed yourself by doing something that you would still do if feeding yourself didn’t depend on it.
Artisanal things are great, but because they take so much more time for a person to make, fewer people can have them - realised in our society as them being more expensive, but to be clear this is due to the fundamental issue of it not being possible to make as many for the same input of human time.
So, is it worth it to have a table made by a master craftsman versus a table produced in an IKEA factory, when the societal result is that some people just can’t afford a table - or they can, but the tradeoff is they can’t have something else? We are not a post-scarcity society, these are real questions.
Is it worth rewinding the green revolution and starving half the world population who depends on the higher crop yields due to modern agriculture?
The whole point is that you can still make things. What you cannot do is something 99% of people have never been able to do, that is: feed yourself by doing something that you would still do if feeding yourself didn’t depend on it.