Third proposing speech
Regarding all the different speeches already done, we have seen that our thesis rely on our perception of the difficulty to make breakthrough innovations, or as it is developed in The Great Stagnation, reach higher fruits. This has to be linked by an analysis of nowadays economy; we must understand how economic growth is done and whether new breakthroughs are actually responsible. Thus making T. Cowen right or wrong, but we’ll show you that he is right regarding the consumption of low hanging fruits. [...]
by JC
Third opposing speech
Everyone knows that the 19th century was a great period for western governments, specially for America. The large number of innovations boosted the economy and created more jobs than ever. Now, American economy grows with a low rate. But it doesn’t mean that there is a lack of innovations. In my view, Cowen’s provocative explanations are a bit shaky, like the other team’s reasoning. I will explain below why I disagree with most of their theories. I will also express my opinion about some aspects of the thesis that have not been debates yet. Finally, I will conclude and sum up all my ideas. [...]
Everyone knows that the 19th century was a great period for western governments, specially for America. The large number of innovations boosted the economy and created more jobs than ever. Now, American economy grows with a low rate. But it doesn’t mean that there is a lack of innovations. In my view, Cowen’s provocative explanations are a bit shaky, like the other team’s reasoning. I will explain below why I disagree with most of their theories. I will also express my opinion about some aspects of the thesis that have not been debates yet. Finally, I will conclude and sum up all my ideas. [...]
Third proposing speech
Regarding all the different speeches already done, we have seen that our thesis rely on our perception of the difficulty to make breakthrough innovations, or as it is developed in The Great Stagnation, reach higher fruits. This has to be linked by an analysis of nowadays economy; we must understand how economic growth is done and whether new breakthroughs are actually responsible. Thus making T. Cowen right or wrong, but we’ll show you that he is right regarding the consumption of low hanging fruits.
Surprisingly, we could consider opposers’ arguments to defend our thesis, and without considering any optimistic or pessimistic points of view. Economic growth is enabled through incremental innovations, we don’t deny it and the former proposer explained that it was obvious and necessary for companies and business to make money. But this fact is relevant with our thesis. Indeed, we are still trying to eat the same fruits again and again, the ones that we have reached in the past decades or centuries. Even though the level of technology got higher and higher, we are talking about a level of technology, and not a technology. I will use an example that has been already mentioned in the debate, we do not have the same cars as in the 50s but they are still cars, the way of manufacturing them has not changed so much and the actual trend is to reduce costs, by moving factories in low cost countries, but this doesn’t really create growth or employment, it mainly moves it. That is what is implied in T. Cowen’s book.
These kinds of assessments may be rude but we should face it. However, and that is also mentioned in the book, we should stay confident about future innovative breakthroughs. Having eaten all the low hanging fruits doesn’t imply there are no other fruits; it is just that it will require more efforts from us. The past steps enabled to have a better education and teaching, we learn things that have already be done and discovered but this also develops our mind and maybe our creativity. So, thanks to this education, we could allow people to make the next breakthroughs. For example, the Internet is one of them but I agree with the former proposers, this doesn’t have the expected consequences on growth and especially employment. But if such things can still be imagined, why couldn’t we dream for impressive innovations?
To emphasize how future breakthroughs are important, we can deal with another clue about the lack of low hanging fruits: all the efforts companies are making for environment protection. The purpose is not so noble but it still can be reached, no matter how because, as it was mentioned in the Stern Report, protecting environment has became an economic solution, that’s why the main goal is actually to prevent them from going bankrupt when there won’t be any more resources they used to make profit with. The principle is really simple, the closer the risk is, the more you make efforts and even though some studies have shown that we will still have easy access to oil for at least 50 years, companies will have to manage the future transition. The oil and the way to use it is, in this case, a good example of low hanging fruit that we have consumed but we will have to replace it.
To conclude, I would say that, yes, we have eaten all the low hanging fruits but I am confident in science or more generally in human being to discover the next innovation that will make us get/feel better.
JC
Third opposing speech
Everyone knows that the 19th century was a great period for western governments, specially for America. The large number of innovations boosted the economy and created more jobs than ever. Now, American economy grows with a low rate. But it doesn’t mean that there is a lack of innovations. In my view, Cowen’s provocative explanations are a bit shaky, like the other team’s reasoning. I will explain below why I disagree with most of their theories. I will also express my opinion about some aspects of the thesis that have not been debates yet. Finally, I will conclude and sum up all my ideas.
Everyone knows that the 19th century was a great period for western governments, specially for America. The large number of innovations boosted the economy and created more jobs than ever. Now, American economy grows with a low rate. But it doesn’t mean that there is a lack of innovations. In my view, Cowen’s provocative explanations are a bit shaky, like the other team’s reasoning. I will explain below why I disagree with most of their theories. I will also express my opinion about some aspects of the thesis that have not been debates yet. Finally, I will conclude and sum up all my ideas.
First of all, as I said before, American economy’s stagnation doesn’t mean that we have eaten all the “low-hanging fruits”. There are various elements explaining this stagnation, such as economic policies and labor force participation rate which represents the rate of employed people in a population.
Obviously, it was observed that new technologies did not boost more employment than old technologies did. Indeed, 19th century’s innovations enabled an increase of middle-skilled jobs since manufacturing needed more and more workers. MLM, in the First proposing speech, argued that today’s innovations reduce jobs and that is bad for America’s economy. Certainly, new companies tend to relocate manufacturing and consequently, to eliminate many repetitive and uninteresting jobs. But now, new technologies provide interesting jobs for high-skilled people. The aim of new advancements is not to create jobs, but to educate people and to allow them to have more rewarding and pleasant jobs.
Consequently, I think that developing countries don’t gain advantage from innovations’ benefits in term of innovation, contrary to RF’s opinion (Second proposing speech). These countries keep population’s skill lower by doing uninteresting jobs, so they can’t really participate to the research on technology breakthroughs.
To summarize this idea, recent innovations create industries based on technology instead of relying on repetitive or dumb labor. Since the future should not be different, there is no need to wait for a major innovation that would create many labor-intensive jobs: what should be mass-produced is either offshore or automated.
Now I will talk about a specific innovation domain, computer science. Why? Because since last decade, advancements are concentrated in this domain, and these technologies are evolving quickly. It regroups many major innovations, especially Internet, but we can’t reduce computer science to Internet.
This domain is not mature enough, so we can’t predict precisely its impacts on American economy. As TJ said in the First opposing speech, new technologies will change the world, and it will probably take time to discover what does the future hold with computer technologies. Since information technologies are partially widespread, we could expect more growth in the near future.
Some objects, such as TVs or cars, are not just objects with computer systems; they are nearly computers with additional functions (switching on, driving, flying...). Cars, phones, TVs, these objects evolved so much that we can’t compare their old technologies with the newest ones, even if they have today an appearance close to the appearance they had before. That’s why I consider that Cowen underestimates all recent evolutions and reduces them into their material aspect. With this restriction, I understand that he could not find many major innovations. In fact, here, major innovations are not limited to one object, but they cover several fields.
I already said that information domain is a relatively new domain, so it is on of the most innovative domains. Elsewhere, scientific progress is becoming more difficult, but we can’t ignore it (progress in energy for example).
To conclude this discussion, we believe that we have not eaten all the low-hanging fruit. The productivity of the newest technologies should not be downplayed. There are so many domains to explore and that are being explored today. These domain will provide jobs, but not with the conventional meaning of employment as uninteresting labor work, but rewarding and attractive jobs. So, don’t be pessimistic.
AB
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