PODCAST: Hexapodia LVIII: Acemoglu & Johnson Should Have Written About Technologies as Labor-Complementing or Labor-Substituting

In which Noah Smith & Brad DeLong wish Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson had written a very different book than their "Power & Progress" is...

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Key Insights:

1. Acemoglu & Johnson should have written a very different book—one about how some technologies complement and others substitute for labor, and it is very important to maximize the first.

2. Neither Noah Smith nor Brad DeLong is at all comfortable with “power” as a category in economics other than as the ability to credibly threaten to commit violence or theft.

3. Acemoglu & Robinson’s Why Nations Fail is a truly great book. Power & Progress is not.

4. We should not confuse James Robinson with Simon Johnson

5. Billionaires running oligopolistic tech firms are not trustworthy stewards of the future of our economy.

6. The IBM 701 Defense Calculator of 1953 is rather cool.

7. The lurkers agree with Noah Smith in the DMs.

8. The power loom caused technological unemployment because the rest of the value chain—cotton growing, spinning, and garment-making—was rigid, hence the elasticity of demand for the transformation thread → cloth was low.

9. We need more examples of bad technologies than the cotton gin and the Roman Empire.

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References:

• Acemoglu, Daron, & Simon Johnson. 2023. Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity. New York; Hachette Book Group. <https://archive.org/details/daron-acemoglu-simon-johnson-power-and-progress-our-thousand-year-struggle-over->

• Acemoglu, Daron, & James A. Robinson. 2012. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. New York: Crown Publishers. <https://archive.org/details/WhyNationsFailTheOriginsODaronAcemoglu>

• Besi. 2023. “Join us Tues. Oct. 10 at 4pm Pacific for a talk by

  @MITSloan’s Simon Johnson…” Twitter. October 9. <https://twitter.com/BESI_Berkeley/status/1711541113738387874>.

• DeLong, J. Bradford. 2024. “What To Do About the Dependence of the Form Progress Takes on Power?: Quick Takes on Acemoglu & Johnson's "Power & Progress”. Grasping Reality. February 29.

• DeLong, J. Bradford; & Noah Smith. 2023. “We Cannot Tell in Advance Which Technologies Are Labor-Augmenting & Which Are Labor-Replacing”. Hexapodia. XLIX, July 7.

• Gruber, Jonathan, & Simon Johnson. 2019. Jump-Starting America: How Breakthrough Science Can Revive Economic Growth and the American Dream.

  The book is available on the Internet Archive: <https://archive.org/details/e-20190429>.

• Johnson, Simon, & James Kwak. 2011. 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown. New York: Vintage Books. <https://archive.org/details/13bankers0000unse>.

• Smith, Noah. 2024. “Book Review: Power & Progress”. Noahpinion. February 21.

  Book review: "Power and Progress"

• Walton, Jo. 1998. “The Lurkers Support Me in Email”. May 16. <http://www.jowaltonbooks.com/poetry/whimsy/the-lurkers-support-me-in-email/>.

+, of course:

• Vinge, Vernor. 1992. A Fire Upon the Deep. New York: TOR. <https://archive.org/details/fireupondeep00ving_0>.