Reconfigurations
10th February 2011
Arnold Kling looks at how things are shifting around.
Consider the following hypotheses.
1. The Great Depression and World War II ended the last vestiges of the Jeffersonian agricultural economy in America. The yeoman farmer disappears.
2. The current recession is accelerating a transition away from the industrial era in which efficiency requires ever-increasing scale along with tight worker discipline. The robotic human worker disappears.