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JoshuaZ comments on Open Thread June 2010, Part 3 - Less Wrong
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The technology to manufacture insulin has been getting a lot cheaper since the late 1970s when bacteria were first used to synthesize insulin (before that it had to be extracted from animals). That process has become even easier since the process for growing E. coli has become much more efficient.
True, that was just one layman's brief pondering of an alternate metric, and I hadn't realized the secular technology trend. I was mainly looking for something that can't be debased because then people will die, but that is also has minimal volatility in demand, supply, and speculation, and requires numerous inputs so as to smooth out the effect of local shocks.
And perhaps I'm running into a Goodhart trap myself -- today, the problem seems to be inflation being hidden via product degradation, but if I pick a metric mainly optimized for that, it will get worse over time. So finding a good or basket that covers all those would require more work -- but product debasement is pretty clearly being ignored today.
(Note that precious metals are sold in a way that prevents them from being secretly debased, but also are heavily influenced by global extraction rates, and are heavily speculated on and hoarded.)
Anything that has numerous inputs will likely be something which is complicated to manufacture and therefore will have increasing efficiency as the technology improves. I can't think of a single good that fits your criteria and hasn'thad substantial technological advancements of how it is made in the last 30 years. This sort of approach might work if one had very steady data for some long historical period with not much technological advancement.