<story><title>Life Improvements Since the 1990s</title><url>https://www.gwern.net/Improvements</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>MontyCarloHall</author><text>The downside to broadening the talent pool for design&amp;#x2F;manufacturing is that it means workers now have to be among the best in the world to get business and thus earn a good living. It no longer suffices to be the best in a local region.&lt;p&gt;If each local region needs its own widget factory, then to become a top widgetsmith you only have to compete with the local widgetsmith talent pool. Just as there can be many high school star athletes across the world, there can be many top widgetsmiths within their local widget factories across the world, even if each is likely mediocre relative to the global pool of widgetsmiths.&lt;p&gt;Now the widget market has globalized. To become a top widgetsmith, you now need to be the best in the world. There is no room for locally optimal widgetsmiths when the market can globally optimize, just as there’s no room for most star high school athletes at the NBA.&lt;p&gt;The upside is that the entire world gets much better widgets. The downside is that you can only make a good living as a widgetsmith if you’re the absolute best in the world. Local markets lead to redundancy, which is globally inefficient but locally optimal.</text></item><item><author>throwaway0a5e</author><text>I think he kind of missed the elephant that is modern communication technology has reduced the marginal cost of skilled services enabling pretty much every object designed in an office and manufactured in a factory to benefit from a broader array of engineering and design professionals and methodologies.  The average product and service that the average actor in the economy interacts with is designed and optimized to a far greater degree today than they were historically.&lt;p&gt;Look at the bottle of Elmers glue on the table.  Today the glue probably works better (barring regulation that forces compromises to product efficacy) and comes in a bottle that uses half as much plastic.  Something like a bottle revision that would have formerly required expensive salaried employees to come up with multiple options, send them to the supplier, supplier has to respond to each with details and quotes, etc, can now be accomplished in a fraction of the man hours thanks to email and CAD being ubiquitous in the entire supply chain from marketing, to engineering, to the vendor&amp;#x27;s contractor who will actually design the tooling.  Sign off might take days instead of weeks.  This sort of efficiency improvement allows more engineering, design work, or other optimization to be done to every good and service in our economy allowing it to penetrate into even the most thin margin use cases.  From farming to high finance products and services are substantially more influenced and optimized by specialist professionals than they were in 1990. Increase efficiency like this throughout the national and global economy is how lawnmowers and A&amp;#x2F;C units can be sold on sale for $100 and still make a profit. (yes I know that example isn&amp;#x27;t perfect but you get the point).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>inglor_cz</author><text>&amp;quot;workers now have to be the best in the world to get business and thus earn a good living&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;This is extra pronounced for singers, actors etc., but not as much for people such as software engineers. A mediocre programmer that implements functionality that &lt;i&gt;you&lt;/i&gt; need is much more valuable for you than a star programmer immersed in his UltraFastXMLParserForHaskell library and does not take side jobs.</text></comment>
<story><title>Life Improvements Since the 1990s</title><url>https://www.gwern.net/Improvements</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>MontyCarloHall</author><text>The downside to broadening the talent pool for design&amp;#x2F;manufacturing is that it means workers now have to be among the best in the world to get business and thus earn a good living. It no longer suffices to be the best in a local region.&lt;p&gt;If each local region needs its own widget factory, then to become a top widgetsmith you only have to compete with the local widgetsmith talent pool. Just as there can be many high school star athletes across the world, there can be many top widgetsmiths within their local widget factories across the world, even if each is likely mediocre relative to the global pool of widgetsmiths.&lt;p&gt;Now the widget market has globalized. To become a top widgetsmith, you now need to be the best in the world. There is no room for locally optimal widgetsmiths when the market can globally optimize, just as there’s no room for most star high school athletes at the NBA.&lt;p&gt;The upside is that the entire world gets much better widgets. The downside is that you can only make a good living as a widgetsmith if you’re the absolute best in the world. Local markets lead to redundancy, which is globally inefficient but locally optimal.</text></item><item><author>throwaway0a5e</author><text>I think he kind of missed the elephant that is modern communication technology has reduced the marginal cost of skilled services enabling pretty much every object designed in an office and manufactured in a factory to benefit from a broader array of engineering and design professionals and methodologies.  The average product and service that the average actor in the economy interacts with is designed and optimized to a far greater degree today than they were historically.&lt;p&gt;Look at the bottle of Elmers glue on the table.  Today the glue probably works better (barring regulation that forces compromises to product efficacy) and comes in a bottle that uses half as much plastic.  Something like a bottle revision that would have formerly required expensive salaried employees to come up with multiple options, send them to the supplier, supplier has to respond to each with details and quotes, etc, can now be accomplished in a fraction of the man hours thanks to email and CAD being ubiquitous in the entire supply chain from marketing, to engineering, to the vendor&amp;#x27;s contractor who will actually design the tooling.  Sign off might take days instead of weeks.  This sort of efficiency improvement allows more engineering, design work, or other optimization to be done to every good and service in our economy allowing it to penetrate into even the most thin margin use cases.  From farming to high finance products and services are substantially more influenced and optimized by specialist professionals than they were in 1990. Increase efficiency like this throughout the national and global economy is how lawnmowers and A&amp;#x2F;C units can be sold on sale for $100 and still make a profit. (yes I know that example isn&amp;#x27;t perfect but you get the point).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>BurningFrog</author><text>The upside I think of is that this enables more specialization and &amp;quot;division of labor&amp;quot;, which is one of the basic drivers of prosperity.</text></comment>