The idiots in the Steveosphere are going off on their “America doesn’t build products to sell anymore, like it did in its heyday” kick. Crap like this:
R. J. Stove wrote the following in 2009, on Takimag, about his experiences briefly studying “Knowledge Management” [as part of a "librarian degree"] at an Australian college:
Once upon a time, in the Bad Old Days (we were asked to believe), people earned money by making things. Now, in the Brave New World, people earned money by thinking things. This Is The Knowledge Economy. We Love The Knowledge Economy. Long Live The Knowledge Economy. Rah Rah Rah!
No amount of contrary evidence could shake lecturers’, and textbook writers’, faith in this Knowledge Economy gig. The fact that every knowledge-worker I know is about to lose his job or has already lost it—even as plumbers, electricians, bricklayers, and other non-knowledge-workers are earning at least six-figure annual salaries—was simply not allowed to disturb the prevailing euphoria.
Those job losses, of course, are a direct result of high-skill immigration (esp. from East/South Asia), not a defect in the “knowledge economy” as such. (Economists, MBAs and librarians contribute very little of value to that economy; and the geeks who are actually driving that trade don’t take courses in “Knowledge Management,” except as a route into management. Yuck.)
So I was glad to see this rebuttal:
If you guys think the USA doesn’t “manufacture” anything anymore, then you need to spend some time in a hospital and check out the shiznat that the radiologists and OB/GYNs and gastroenterologists and cardiologists deploy in order to peer inside of their patients—we’re talking physical sensors and algorithmic software packages which simply knock the socks off of anything that anyone else is doing anywhere in the rest of the world.
But it takes a Masters or a PhD in a pretty serious major [Physics, Math, EE, Comp Sci, etc] to be able to help design and produce those rigs.
Which doesn’t leave much work for the average high school graduate to perform.
Precisely. Because, guess what? Software is a product.
Guess what else? Robots and other hardware are products. And even if they’re manufactured in sweatshops overseas (iPhones in China, etc.), the knowledge which enables that manufacture is still a predominantly North American/European resource. (And thanks to the mindless conformity enforced by Asian cultures, from India through to China and Japan, it’s likely to stay that way.)
iPads are products. The Kindle is a product. Microsoft Windows is a product. Java is a product. The .NET platform is a product. They are not products that grunt-working, worthless, prejudiced, homophobic, misogynistic proles can produce, but for damned sure they’re still products. Duh!!
Guess what else? When robots are used to put cars together, or (within a decade or two) to pick tomatoes directly from the vine, those cars and tomatoes are still products. The fact that the knowledge-based technology used there puts moronic proles out of work doesn’t change any of that. It does, however, demonstrate pretty conclusively that the regressive Steveospheric-prole hope of reducing the role of the Western “knowledge economy” in favor of a dumbfuck-reliant one where “real men build things” (and women stay in the kitchen where they belong) would not restore America to its former economic greatness; on the contrary, that regressive path would in fact be the quickest route to Third World status for the nation. (These technologically illiterate morons seriously have a problem with people who get paid to think?? Where the fuck do they think their tech toys come from???)
Further, half a century from now, when cars and tomatoes are assembled from-atoms-up by biological nanotechnologies, they will still be products, even though requiring no dumbfuck-prole labor at all in their manufacture. This is the future world which geeks (like me) are building today.
That, of course, is lost, utterly lost, on the Steveospheric morons, for whom biotech is just “glorified science projects that will never see the light of day or contribute anything substantial to GDP.”
“Gobsmacking stupidity” would be putting it far too politely. Just read KurzweilAI’s daily email synopsis of cutting-edge nano- and bio-technologies, and you’ll see how hopelessly wrong the above moron is. Even just in terms of genetically modified “frankenfoods” (e.g., corn and soy), the contribution is already very significant. If you want a further prediction: Within a decade—or two at most—biotech will be a larger fraction of the American GDP than personal computers are today. It’s truly well on its way to being the basis of all health-care, for one.
As more than one commenter on that thread noted, economics is not Sailer’s forté. It ain’t mine (yet) either, for that matter—notwithstanding that I did manage to pass that mandatory third-year Economics for Engineers course back in the ’80s, without attending classes, studying, or doing the assignments. But when even someone with near-zero background in economics can find holes big enough to drive a Wilber-esque SUV through, in the arguments of a group of “cutting-edge, insightful conservatives,” you can be certain that the econ is just more Steveospheric Quackery, fully on a par with their bumbling “insights” about the supposed benefits of high-fat diets, and their projection-filled fantasies about imagined white liberal-elite motivations.
Truly, the more you understand about each of the topics on which the Sailerites pontificate, the more it’s obvious that they’re just confidently bumbling “Wilbers,” just with a passion for politics rather than for spirituality.
