Baumol's Sawdust: Why markets fail to deliver deep wants
ryan_t_lowe · x · 2026-08-10
Oliver Klingefjord's essay 'Baumol's Sawdust' explores why markets often deliver thin proxies for deep wants like companionship and adventure. He cites cost disease, eroding infrastructure, and preference adaptation as key reasons, drawing parallels to 19th-century food adulteration.
More from AGI Musings
- Opinion: Breakthroughs in Continual Learning Could Upend AI Monopolies — abhiadesai · 2026-08-10
- AI Makes Software Engineering Fundamentals More Valuable: Architecture Decisions Over Code Typing — techNmak · 2026-08-10
- AI Alignment is Just Software Engineering? Expert Pushes Back on Philosophy — Dan_Jeffries1 · 2026-08-10
- Dwarkesh and Brundage Debate: Pre-Deployment AI Testing is Outdated in the Era of Continual Learning — andrey_kurenkov · 2026-08-10
- Opaque Corpora Make the 'Stochastic Parrot' Theory Hard to Disprove — RexDouglass · 2026-08-10
- GQ's AI Coverage Praised: Interviews Ask 'Is Everyone Using AI Better Than Me?' — briannekimmel · 2026-08-10