The idea of diminishing marginal returns is a key founding block in economics. We assume that as one adds each additional unit of something, the additional product of that unit decreases unless all other inputs are increased by the same amount. This is not always the case, but for many real world examples, diminishing marginal returns (DMR) hold.
Over the past couple centuries, the amount of growth the world has seen has been tremendous. On all known levels of human development, there has been significant progress even at the average level. Granted, some nations have fared better than others (that’s another story), but the industrial revolution has been a net positive for humanity. Within the United States, this rate of growth peaked in the mid 1920s, but high levels of growth continued in the subsequent decades. Many of the highest impact inventions were created during this time: radio, television, cellular technology, semi-automated home appliances, the early versions of the internet, nuclear energy, solid state electronics, transistors, and integrated circuits. All of which, are still with us, but this rate of progress did not continue. It is common knowledge, amongst economists and infovores, alike, that developed countries have experienced on average lower growth in productivity and technological change since the 1970s.
Much of this decline in technological change reminds me of growth models encountered in my first year grad courses. In these models, all economies converged on a steady state growth path where the rate of change in their respective productivity growth became zero. For many of these models, this stationary state implies some sort of equilibrium; however, I’d argue that the world is in a constant state of disequilibrium while trending towards some unknown target and each of these inputs has DMR. The path towards equilibrium in many of these models contains well-specified criteria and variables, but in the real world, everything is a variable.
A small goal of mine is to come closer to understanding this slowdown in growth. Many people question it, including recent Nobel laureate, Paul Romer, but it isn’t the mainstream topic of our time outside a few, well-specified circles.
Some thoughts moving forward in an inquiry into the nature and causes of productivity growth:
- Innovation is a form of social violence against the current technology and producers.
- Complacency is a human downfall?
- The current set of research has reached saturation to the point of DMR
- Institutions, both social and legal, have changed to maintain the status quo.
- Leisure is to cheap relative to work (credit: SP).
- We are no longer engaging in basic research.
- We have gathered the low-hanging fruits.
Deric Tilson 