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Comment by Gigachad | Hacker News Reader

What is interesting is the new things are cheap while the old stuff is now expensive. Average house in Australia is $1,000,000 while a TV is $500. The internet, social media, etc are cheap. Having someone repair your shoes is expensive.

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Automation made the TV inexpensive, but if you look at a chart on inflation almost everything that cannot be easily automated has risen in price.

https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/cpichart2019-...

Surely U.S. housing was not twice as automatable 12-13 years ago as it is now.

No, that rose in price for different reasons

That is the famous Baumol effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect

Economies of scale were realized in the tv, but not the house. Maybe bc they aren’t realizable in housing, maybe bc regulation, maybe bc of the nimby veto, etc.

I think it’s rather because of scarcity: you can’t scale and automate land/prime-location land

Well you can scale it, which is why housing affordability is higher in many places where the cities are actually far denser than Australia. There are perverse incentives not to though, property prices don’t rise (which is what investors want) if you actually focus on increasing supply.

People are building houses with way more features, that last longer, have better thermoregulation, and just more comfortable to live in.

Same goes for TVs too. That’s clearly not the reason why house prices rose so drastically.

It's more like automated, industrial stuff is cheap, while land and human labor is expensive (and thank God for that!)

Some old stuff is now cheap: Grain, oils, clothes, steel, heating, electricity and books, for example.

Good quality Goodyear welted boots, adjusted for inflation, are cheap AF. I can get an excellent pair from Grant stone with horween leather for ~300 USD when on sale.

A pair of Nike jordans or air maxes is often in the ~120 range and made of far inferior materials.

Boots have never been cheaper/accessible before. The people that bring up repairable shoes don’t wear them or buy from shit brands like Thursday, doc martins, or timberland. You deserve your poor quality footwear.

Brand new boots are cheap because some child in a 3rd world country makes them. Having them repaired in my country costs enough to generally make it worth getting new ones.

As predicted in The Diamond Age.

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