Re: [OPE] the great stagnation

Paula,

Sociologically interesting...

The Experience Economy
By DAVID BROOKS
NYT February 14, 2011

(...) As Cowen notes in his book, the automobile industry produced millions of jobs, but Facebook employs about 2,000, Twitter 300 and eBay about 17,000. It takes only 14,000 employees to make and sell iPods, but that device also eliminates jobs for those people who make and distribute CDs, potentially leading to net job losses. In other words, as Cowen makes clear, many of this era's technological breakthroughs produce enormous happiness gains, but surprisingly little additional economic activity.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/opinion/15brooks.html?src=me&ref=general

This points to the relevance of your project on the "political economy of services".

The services presuppose that there is somebody there who can buy the services at a competitive price. David Brooks is a rather dumb guy, i.e. he leaves out all the employment spin-offs of the Facebook gravy train. But the general point is probably true.

The result is that you get people providing highly specialized services for an international market, where they can more or less monopolize the supply of that service.

Jurriaan

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Received on Sat Feb 19 05:01:23 2011