Of course any tool that makes a job easier means that less people are needed to do the same job. If demand doesn’t change the supply will naturally shrink.
So hypothetically 1 man can cut wood but it takes him 2 days to do a big job. With a power saw it takes him half a day so his output on this section of the job is amplified by 4x. Any tool that makes his life more trivial increases his output and therefore increases the supply of the product without touching demand. With an over supply the system will naturally lower in supply by replacing carpenters.
This happens for anything and any tool that makes someone’s occupation easier. You have to think in aggregate. It may be the increase is imperceptible as it only increases the efficiency of a worker by 1 percent which is nothing but in aggregate that translates to a 1 percent reduction in the work force. Of course reality is more complicated than that but I hope the example shows you what I’m saying.
And it gets even more complicated than this too because increasing supply can also increase demand because the product becomes cheaper. Or demand may have already been astronomically high so the increase in supply only meets the demand.
In general if the product is in equilibrium of supply and demand and you increase the efficiency of the worker producing the supply then you will reduce worker population because the job doesn’t pay well enough anymore and people leave or less people join. The system slowly comes back to equilibrium or it can oscillate back and forth between over supply and undersupply as it’s basically a control system. This is what’s been happening with software for the past 3 decades.
The idea that the power saw didn’t replace a carpenter is flat out wrong. The story is much more complicated than that but the reality is that in general it did replace some carpenters just like how vibe coding for sure is replacing some software engineers.
You're right that it may have, and you're right that it's hard to quantify. But it is thoroughly possible that the increased productivity heightened demand. The ability to create more or better output for the same amount of labor can make some production feasible that wasn't before.
After all, in net, increased production has allowed us to have more. We aren't making do with the same amount of stuff and spending less. We're spending more, and receiving much more. That money is going to other people's pockets.
So hypothetically 1 man can cut wood but it takes him 2 days to do a big job. With a power saw it takes him half a day so his output on this section of the job is amplified by 4x. Any tool that makes his life more trivial increases his output and therefore increases the supply of the product without touching demand. With an over supply the system will naturally lower in supply by replacing carpenters.
This happens for anything and any tool that makes someone’s occupation easier. You have to think in aggregate. It may be the increase is imperceptible as it only increases the efficiency of a worker by 1 percent which is nothing but in aggregate that translates to a 1 percent reduction in the work force. Of course reality is more complicated than that but I hope the example shows you what I’m saying.
And it gets even more complicated than this too because increasing supply can also increase demand because the product becomes cheaper. Or demand may have already been astronomically high so the increase in supply only meets the demand.
In general if the product is in equilibrium of supply and demand and you increase the efficiency of the worker producing the supply then you will reduce worker population because the job doesn’t pay well enough anymore and people leave or less people join. The system slowly comes back to equilibrium or it can oscillate back and forth between over supply and undersupply as it’s basically a control system. This is what’s been happening with software for the past 3 decades.
The idea that the power saw didn’t replace a carpenter is flat out wrong. The story is much more complicated than that but the reality is that in general it did replace some carpenters just like how vibe coding for sure is replacing some software engineers.