John wrote in [OPE-L:3269]:
> <snip> However, there is scant evidence on the micro
> level in the period of large scale industry. <snip>
If you want examples of branches of production where labor-saving forms of
technical change are common, here are some:
I. Manufacturing
=============
o auto assembly: it can readily be observed in recent decades that
following technical change, the output level/plant doesn't increase
(this can be observed by the relatively stable line speed), however,
there are fewer workers required/plant to produce the same output.
Examples of specific technologies available on request.
o chemical industry and process industries in general, including
plastics, steel, cement, and gas.
o paper products and the woodworking industry.
o plastics and rubber processing.
o metals manufacture.
o metal fabrication.
o textiles, including leather processing, show manufacture, and
apparel.
o electrical and electronic products.
o clay and cement products.
o asbestos processing.
o glass industry.
o iron and steel manufacture.
o electrical engineering.
o shipbuilding.
o bituminous coal mining.
o newspaper typesetting.
II. Service Industries
==================
o banking and commerce; recent technical changes include ATMs,
magnetic-ink character recognition, automatic check depositing,
automatic fund transfers. The savings here is in terms of laborers
required to produce a given amount of services.
o reail sales. Process innovations included electronic cash registers,
bar codes (UPC), materials handling equipment, etc..
o transportation: technical changes such as automation in container
ships, electronic reservation and billing systems, etc.
o distribution: automatic warehousing and storage, recod keeping and
scheduling, etc.
o health care and medicine: medical data collection, advances in
clinical laboratory techniques, computers monitoring critically ill
patients, computer tomography, automated delivery systems, etc.
o libraries: computer cataloging and searching (e.g. LEXIS).
o hotels: reservation and billing systems.
o postal industry.
o meter readers: electronic meter reading and remote control from a
truck.
etc., etc., etc....
In Solidarity,
Jerry