A better example would be to compare manufacturing with a personal service, such as barbering. I seem to recall that Baumol may have used barbers as an example. Of course the barber can use some electronic device to facilitate the service, but for the most part it is hand labor that is difficult to automate. The hand labor in the production of computers has fallen dramatically.
On Sun, Feb 06, 2005 at 12:20:22PM -0800, Doyle Saylor wrote: > Greetings Economists, > Michael P writes, > the idea is that productivity in services cannot rise as fast as in > commodities. The > classic example is that it takes the same labor to perform an opera, but a > movie of > an opera can service many more people. > > Doyle > My understanding of this point 'that the same labor performs an opera as > performs a movie' is that we are talking about the distribution network and > how it works. What I mean is that an opera or a movie is usually meant to > be one to many product. So distribution is one to many. > > Most of the commentary about such intellectual property has to do with the > cost of making copies and distributing copies, but what I wonder about is > the network properties of the labor. An opera or a movie usually is looked > in the labor process as a blend of the community in the performance. To > take that within the context of a file that could be distributed, a few > gigabits of size that remains roughly one to many in the conventional > business sense. > > Suppose I thought about the network properties a little differently. For > example, if I make music with a laptop with garage band loops I could build > a sympathy myself. Suppose I distributed the music? And someone else > performs something with the music also? So I contribute to the network a > file size roughly equivalent to an opera file which mimics the communal > structure of the music? And then the communal structure takes that file and > does something with it also. The network structure is many to many. The > file size starts out increased, and increases once it is in the network. > That's a model of IT increasing the productivity of the individual in the > network structure. > > That would impact wages in such a network. As productivity increases the > wage per unit opera files size units would fall because the product > increases per unit of labor. > thanks, > Doyle -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
