You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

mwengler comments on Comparative and absolute advantage in AI - Less Wrong Discussion

18 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 16 July 2013 09:52AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (50)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: mwengler 16 July 2013 09:05:35PM 0 points [-]

And that is why our iPhones are made in the USA and Europe.

NOT. They are made in China using cheap labor instead of being made in USA and Europe using robots.

"Cheap Labor" is a statement that unwraps to absolute advantage, generally. An hour of labor in the US produces about 7X the value as an hour of labor in China. Their wage drifts down to allow them to change in the comparative advantage sense: an iphone made the same way in the US as it is made in China would be prohibitively expensive.