Re: poly: Modeling Economic Singularities

At 05:37 PM 4/28/98 -0700, Peter McCluskey wrote:

>Let T2 be the time when the total value of physical goods (measured using
>prices that prevailed at time T1) produced in the wealthiest countries is
>100 times what it was at T2.

This isn't a very good standard, because a large increase in the production
of a product whose price declines very fast could do this, without really
affecting anything. For example, in 1988 prices, the production of
computers in 1998 is probably worth a trillion dollars. I wouldn't be
surprised if there is some biochemical that was first produced in milligram
quantities in a lab ten years ago for billions of dollars a gram and is now
churned out by a factory at a rate of a hundred kilograms a year, amounting
to more than the entire value of the 1988 economy.

--CarlF
Received on Thu Apr 30 19:59:41 1998