Sunday 8 February 2009

Social changes of technological capitalism

I have been wondering today about the social changes which would follow if economic growth became dependent on accumulation of technological knowledge. Many economists have provided evidence or theoretical models of a drift towards such technological capitalism, in one form or another.

It is probably fair to say that the societal changes changed by capitalism are less frequently studied in the major economic journals than the changes in capitalism caused by social structures, although the neglect is probably due as much to empirical limitations on testing the resulting hypotheses as anything else. Sociologists and left-leaning economists have long conjectured that capitalism leads to society forming into arrangements which support it and promote its further development.

The societal changes which could arise from technological capitalism are doubly conjectural, but could have features such as shifts to increased knowledge transfer, greater legal protection for technology, and so on. My considerations are hardly adequate, as you can see. Ho hum.

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