People who don’t understand that falling labor costs mean falling prices will keep resisting automation and technology, and in doing so, they end up driving costs even higher.
These unionized Uber drivers believe they’re improving their pay to keep up with rising expenses, but they’re missing the larger point. If every sector pushes for higher wages while also expecting the cost of goods and services to stay low, it creates a contradiction. The only reason platforms like Uber could compete with regular taxis in the first place was because they operated with lower overhead and fewer labor constraints. You can’t raise labor costs across the board and expect prices to stay the same. Everyone wants to earn more and pay less, but that balance is impossible when people fail to recognize they are on both sides of the trade in any market.
This cycle is entirely predictable. Most people still haven’t grasped the deflationary reality of technology. As Jeff Booth explains, technology is supposed to drive prices down by making processes more efficient and reducing the need for human labor. That’s not a bug—it’s the point. But instead of allowing deflation to benefit everyone through lower costs, the current system fights it by printing money to preserve the illusion of growth, which ends up distorting market signals and inflating asset prices.
Technology lowers the marginal cost of everything it touches. That means labor, across the board, becomes less economically valuable—and in a truly functioning system, prices would fall to reflect that. But instead, wages stagnate, prices rise, and people fight to claw back purchasing power through unions and legislation, not realizing that the core problem is the monetary system refusing to let deflation happen.
Once again, the nostr:nprofile1qqsg86qcm7lve6jkkr64z4mt8lfe57jsu8vpty6r2qpk37sgtnxevjcpz4mhxue69uhk2er9dchxummnw3ezumrpdejqz9thwden5te0dehhxarjv4kxjar9wvhx7un8evhvq0 thesis is unfolding exactly as he predicted. Until we shift to a system aligned with technological deflation—like Bitcoin—these contradictions will keep accelerating.
https://youtu.be/xFC18q05H60?si=Rw6POe8nryhBVYXM
