I honestly cannot understand why it is so hard for you to grasp the very simple basic economic principle that price or the ‘environment’ has nothing to do with productivity. The only factors that counts when calculating productivity are inputs and outputs, with technology or skill being the reason for productivity gains.
I even mathematically proven that pure inflation would be more than accounted for the price increase over time you used as an example, with the cost savings compared to inflation down to actual productivity gains, such as using electric clippers with guiders, better techiques etc. Yet you still cling to your nonsensical, illogical and completely made up perversion of basic economic principles. You are behaving pretty much exactly like a certain someone on my ignore list who does the same thing.
Look, I made the simple statement below, in various forms,
Barbers across the world and in different times do essentially the same work but have vastly different standard of living due to the environment they work in.
Now which part of that statement do you object to and why?
Yeah, that conclusion from your example makes zero sense, and indeed sounds suspiciously like someone trying to dream up excuses to justify his believe that countries and people’s should ‘know their place’.
If there was such a incredible technological breakthrough, of course your made up country of Zamunda should build it.
Because even though they are predominantly goat hurders now, it does not mean it is the most productive allocation resources for them to be goat herders.
They could use this massive technological boost to rapidly climb up the value chain to open up other economic opportunities. Such as rebalancing their economy for tourism now that they can bring in vast numbers of foreign visitors for almost no cost per head. They can charge half the price of airline tickets and still easily break even on that $10bn initial investment and running costs with only a few million visitors a year in one year.
With such low per use costs, they won’t even need to invest in tourist infrastructure and can just beam the visitors back to the comfort of their own homes at the end of every day, and beam them back the next morning for more sightseeing.
Even their goat herders would massively benefit, since while it won’t make economic sense to move their goats around the pastures with it, it will make perfect economic sense to use this transporter to be able to sell their sheep to new markets proviously far too costly to reach.
It’s funny how your dreamed up extreme examples always does the opposite of what you think they should.
I remember when western pundits were making the same made-up nonsense criticisms of China’s investment in high speed rail, and predicting how it would all be a bust since no one in China was supposed to be able to afford a ticket.
New technologies brings with them new opportunities. If you do not adapt and keep wanting to do things the same old ways, then yes, investing in technology will be a waste.
But if you are willing to be flexible, to change the way you do things and embrace chances made possible by technology, you will thrive.
LOL, you must be one of those guys who, upon hearing the story of the Little Red Riding Hood, stands up and yell at the story teller: Hey, this story is made up, because it is common knowledge that if you go to the woods, you bring an armed drone and a sub-machine gun with you.
I made up this story to illustrate the fact that infrastructure, like clothing, must be tailored made to each country. That countries with higher productivity can make better use of more expensive infrastructure due to their higher productivity. That for some countries, the cutting edge stuff is not always best.
Now can a country with goat herding economy be turned into a country with tourism? That is the same question as, can a country of goat herders be turned into Wall Street traders or Silicon Valley. The answer is not always affirmative. It depends on a lot of things. Heck, even for a country like China, after several decades of struggle, only manage to achieve a quarter to a third of the productivity of the U.S. China is quite exceptional. There are plenty of nations where just stop the fighting long enough for the tourists to start coming was too hard to do. So even if Zamunda manage to transform into a tourist destination, it would take decades of work. If, in ten years time, they got 200 tourists to visit, would a $10 billion transporter be the best investment?
Infrastructure has a life span. It must have a positive return on investment during the life time of the infrastructure.
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