A recent wide-ranging, erudite, and politically salient Substack post by Justin Smith defends the thesis that "we may identify a vast process currently underway whereby we are moving, in our efforts to understand reality and to harness it to our ends,
"most of the American economy is not information-focused: It’s focused on delivering physical goods and services like homes, cars, restaurant meals, and haircuts." This is ceasing to be the case. In occupational terms, if you define "information-focused" as "can work from home", the share is obviously large, and growing.
Yes, I recall that. I took the novelty here to be the recovery and reinterpretation of Stigler's argument that might explain government as monopoly provider of certain kind of information. Can you point me to more literature on that?
I talk about this in Chapter 11 of Economics in Two Lessons "market prices give us information about the opportunity costs we face, and are therefore central to our decisions about buying and selling goods and services of all kinds. But what about information itself? Is it a private good that can be bought and sold, and if so what is its price? If it is a pure public good, who will supply it? " I don't give a firm answer on this. Elsewhere in the book, I talk about advertising
Thank you. I had not seen it yet. It's kind of neat that it basically follows naturally from Stigler's argument (you are a Chicago economist now, John!)
The flipside of this attitude about "its to bits" can be found in this good analysis from Tim Lee https://www.understandingai.org/p/software-didnt-eat-the-world
Agreed!
"most of the American economy is not information-focused: It’s focused on delivering physical goods and services like homes, cars, restaurant meals, and haircuts." This is ceasing to be the case. In occupational terms, if you define "information-focused" as "can work from home", the share is obviously large, and growing.
I've been talking about this for the last 20 years or so. Our concepts of the economy haven't caught up with the fact that it's mostly bits now
https://johnquiggin.com/2022/10/17/capitalism-without-capital-doesnt-work/
Yes, I recall that. I took the novelty here to be the recovery and reinterpretation of Stigler's argument that might explain government as monopoly provider of certain kind of information. Can you point me to more literature on that?
I talk about this in Chapter 11 of Economics in Two Lessons "market prices give us information about the opportunity costs we face, and are therefore central to our decisions about buying and selling goods and services of all kinds. But what about information itself? Is it a private good that can be bought and sold, and if so what is its price? If it is a pure public good, who will supply it? " I don't give a firm answer on this. Elsewhere in the book, I talk about advertising
This is a better and more accessible reference, where I cover most of the main points. The Haskel& Westlake books are important https://insidestory.org.au/go-with-the-grain-john-quiggin/
Thank you. I had not seen it yet. It's kind of neat that it basically follows naturally from Stigler's argument (you are a Chicago economist now, John!)
Always have been. Got the full Chicago training at ANU 50 years ago. https://crookedtimber.org/2007/06/01/heterodoxy-is-not-my-doxy/