On craftsmanship and effective value, and, eventually, the death of the rural economy

[quiescere]

(Warning: this entry actually came out a lot darker and more depressing than I expected. You might want to skip or delay reading if you can't face that sort of thing at the moment.)

A couple of days ago I mentioned the decreasing relative value of craftsmanship. I'll use woodwork as my primary example, but other fields face the same problem.

Comments

[angry_user]

It's past time that we started having conversations in this country about how to transition the social safety net to something based around a guaranteed/universal wage. Automation ain't gonna stop. We're going to reach a point where there just literally are not enough things to do for the size of our population to earn their way

[angry_user]

Another interesting thought experiment:

The Economics of Star Trek
The Proto-Post Scarcity Economy
https://medium.com/@RickWebb/the-economics-of-star-trek-29bab88d50#.xg0g7st0p

[lorigami]

Part of the problem (automation and Wayne's points aside) is that our economy depends upon people continuing to make purchases. Making quality items which will last forever and can be repaired dos not appear to be in anyone's interest. Things either must be deemed "out of fashion" or they must break, or there must be some sort of planned obsolescence which will force replacement.
That isn't sustainable either, from a resources standpoint, but try bringing that up into a conversation about jobs and employment...