Expensive Oil and the Analogue World
Fascinating stuff:We usually think about technological improvements in productivity as benefiting the highly skilled and educated, and disenfranchising the poorly skilled and uneducated, but what I find most interesting about globalization in an era of $127 dollar-a-barrel oil is that blue-collar workers who make physical things in the West will stand to benefit, newly protected from foreign competition by energy tariffs, while white-collar workers who live off their wits will still feel the immense pressure of competing with everyone else in the world.
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2 comments:
An excellent point, considering oil jumped over $10 today, and you're reading a guy who has a PhD! This is also true for basic services involving homes, for example, in the US. Try getting someone to come to your house — a plumber, carpenter, roofer, or gutter-cleaner, or simple repairman.
You can't: they're all busy! And in 2008, they can name their price. If you don't like it, the next guy will estimate his cost even higher. "Doing-it-yourself" is only viable to the amount of time and money you have available to learn to do something, often only once — how many times are you going to need the siding on your house repaired in a few places? And if you're like me and not mechanically inclined, then you're not having much fun doing everything yourself (eventually).
Interesting, isn't it?
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