From 42 hours to under a second: the staggering collapse of lighting's labor cost
PeterDiamandis · x · 2026-09-03
Peter Diamandis illustrates how technology crushes the labor-time price of goods: around 1750 BCE, a Babylonian worker needed roughly 42 hours of labor to afford 1,000 lumen-hours of sesame-oil light, while modern LEDs deliver the same light for a fraction of a second of average labor by some estimates.
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