Thanks. I changed the wording to “moody 7-year-old” and “office or high-tech factory” which puts me on firmer ground I think. :)
I think there have been general increases in productivity across the economy associated with industrialization, automation, complex precise machines, and so on, and those things provide a separate reason (besides legal & social norms as you mentioned) that 7yos are far less employable today than in the 18th century. E.g. I can easily imagine a moody 7yo being net useful in a mom & pop artisanal candy shop, but it’s much harder to imagine a moody 7yo being net useful in a modern jelly bean factory.
I think your bringing up “$3/day” gives the wrong idea; I think we should focus on whether the sign is positive or negative. If the sign is positive at all, it’s probably >$3/day. The sign could be negative because they sometimes touch something they’re not supposed to touch, or mess up in other ways, or it could simply be that they bring in extra management overhead greater than their labor contribution. (We’ve all delegated projects where it would have been far less work to just do the project ourselves, right?) E.g. even if the cost to feed and maintain a horse were zero, I would still not expect to see horses being used in a modern construction project.
Anyway, I think I’m on firmer ground when talking about a post-AGI economy, in which case, literally anything that can be done by a human at all, can be automated.
Thanks. I changed the wording to “moody 7-year-old” and “office or high-tech factory” which puts me on firmer ground I think. :)
I think there have been general increases in productivity across the economy associated with industrialization, automation, complex precise machines, and so on, and those things provide a separate reason (besides legal & social norms as you mentioned) that 7yos are far less employable today than in the 18th century. E.g. I can easily imagine a moody 7yo being net useful in a mom & pop artisanal candy shop, but it’s much harder to imagine a moody 7yo being net useful in a modern jelly bean factory.
I think your bringing up “$3/day” gives the wrong idea; I think we should focus on whether the sign is positive or negative. If the sign is positive at all, it’s probably >$3/day. The sign could be negative because they sometimes touch something they’re not supposed to touch, or mess up in other ways, or it could simply be that they bring in extra management overhead greater than their labor contribution. (We’ve all delegated projects where it would have been far less work to just do the project ourselves, right?) E.g. even if the cost to feed and maintain a horse were zero, I would still not expect to see horses being used in a modern construction project.
Anyway, I think I’m on firmer ground when talking about a post-AGI economy, in which case, literally anything that can be done by a human at all, can be automated.