I think the general problem is the concept that the organizations with the ability to lock (and unlock) the resources are not the end-users, but the manufacturers.
It's the old tradeoff between responsibility and freedom: if computer users want "security" in their systems but don't want to be responsible for achieving that security (and instead give that responsibility to the hardware and software OEMs) then those users must by necessity give up some freedoms.
I think the issue here is that moves like this don't even give users the option to make the choice - the freedom (and responsibility) has been taken from them without their consent. I suppose there may be an argument for removing some freedoms for "the greater good" (for example, if people have the option to have an unsecured machine and they get malware, that will affect many other people not just that individual) but that, in my opinion, is a philosophically dangerous argument.
I find it curious that the article says 35k people for 20 square miles is "typical". I'm familiar with several small cities with about 40k people in 9 square miles, and it's not that dense. 20 square miles for 35k people seems like a very inefficient city. 0.36 acres per person is not "city-like" at all.
Consider Detroit, which has lost a staggering amount of population, has a density of about 0.13 acres per person (using 700k and 139 square miles), and this idea of "typical" seems to be really poor.
That sounds like something said by someone who's good at keeping a cool head in an argument. And of _course_ he's always right, ergo...
I really didn't quote it correctly, to be sure. The idea behind the quote isn't that you can't be angry about the thing which causes you to have a discussion, but that you shouldn't resort to anger as a means to get your point across. I wish I could find the actual quote...
Just rent the damned thing at the destination or pay somebody to haul it and use a sensitive car to drive to work the rest of the year.
This is a valid technical solution, but it comes with hidden costs such as lack of control and autonomy. If you have to depend on a rental agency, or some hauling company, you have sacrificed some freedoms.
Now, I admit that it is arguable that you might find that cost worth the environmental benefits. That is an interesting argument though. The environmental argument, though, boils down to something like how much am I willing to sacrifice the standard of living of my children today for the benefit of people some arbitrary number of generations in the future? Incidentally, this is the type of "thinking" to which the article is really referring.
Too many comments so far are missing the point: the article isn't about lack of new "things." The article is about a lack of critical thinking.
It used to be that, in the past, magazines and newspapers and other "common-man" publications would have essays about heady topics. Now you just get articles about how to get rich quick, how some superstar or politician has done something, or some other essentially mundane topic.
Even the "debates" on economics, social norms, climate change, or intellectual property are very sparse on respectful discourse and are instead filled with emotional responses. There's an interesting quote to which I cannot recall attribution, along the lines of "If you get angry when you're defending your topic, that's probably a sign that you don't feel it can stand on its own merits." The lack of temperance in such discussions - from all viewpoints - is fairly damning.
Modern society seems to frown upon thought for thought's sake: if you can't monetize it, why bother? I'd say that "modern society" in this case has missed the point: earning wealth is not the only goal.
I'm curious to hear what definition of wealth you are using. Wealth, in the economic sense, as I understand it is defined as useful resources. This includes things like infrastructure, educated people, processed raw materials, finished goods, and the like.
Things like "giving a haircut" are not wealth, although the ability to give a haircut is wealth. A sea voyage is not wealth, but the ability to take that voyage is. The distinction is critical: services are not wealth, but the ability to perform services is.
I've seen this statement that "economics says value can increase even if wealth doesn't" several times in this thread, and I'm completely baffled. Maybe a new definition of "value" has been starting to circulate?
The traditional definition of "value" is the measure of what an individual is willing to trade for some other particular product or service. Value cannot increase without bound, because in the limit that would mean that people would be willing to trade every asset in the universe for some other single asset: that is, after all, what "value" means.
For instance, if you value food higher than free time, you may work in a factory all day to earn enough food to survive one day (and that's it). At some point there is a limit in value, because you cannot sustain an environment where you value food so highly you work two days for one day's rations.
I suspect that people are confusing "low prices for everything" with "high value"; those are actually opposite concepts.
I dont know of anyone that is squirreling away money. Savings accounts are losing money as they pay an interest rate that is less than inflation rate.
Apparently the aggregate US population doesn't agree with you: people are increasing their savings to a degree not seen in quite a while. In fact, just a few years ago the net savings rate in the US was negative.
True. A more correct statement is "some economic activities are zero-sum, others are not."
Production does indeed create wealth, and because a large part of wealth is durable goods, total wealth can indeed increase over time. However, consider that finite resources are used to allow production.
At the end of the day, it boils down to energy: energy spent on activity A cannot be used for activity B; it really is an either-or situation. Yes, it's possible to improve efficiency so it takes less energy to perform activity A, but in the limit, what happens if you are as theoretically efficient as possible?
And that doesn't even get into individual use of time: if I spend time on one activity, there are many other activities which are necessarily precluded. Again, I can perhaps gain some efficiencies by multitasking, but there are real physical limits.
While each party in the transaction places a higher value on the thing they receive than the thing they give, trade does not change those objects into something else: no wealth is created or destroyed in a trade.
Wealth is only created by manufacturing and agriculture, and wealth is destroyed when goods are consumed or destroyed (through violence or decay).
While economics may not be zero-sum in terms of value, it is most certainly zero-sum in terms of wealth.
Apparently the method is to force innovation so you don't infringe, rather than merely "encourage" innovation.
Of course, the problem with many patents (as has been demonstrated by a horse beaten so badly it is now perhaps just a few molecules which once represented a horse) is that they are granted when they are so broad as to cover the desired effect rather than an implementation of the desired effect. This makes it impossible to innovate in many areas.
The fix to the patent system would simply be "Patents must be on novel, useful, unobvious machines or methods to achieve an effect, rather than a description of an effect."
A similarly powerful revision, though I don't really have a good strong wording for it, is something like "Patents shall not be granted to arbitrary designs such as particular encoding mechanisms (for instance, use of the number 1 to represent 'red' versus the number 2 to represent 'red'." To rule out silly things like particular data recording formats being patented.
You seem to be advocating a distinction of responsibility of knowledge where programmers should not need knowledge of design.
Hrm. That was not my intent. Basically what I was saying is that there is a difference in types of errors between design errors which persist even if you program them correctly versus the type of errors which are due to writing code that doesn't match the design.
Personally, I do agree that there is a more hazy line between "software engineering" and "programming" than just "implement design as code", and people that only implement design as code tend to make more errors than those who understand the system. I have seen this first hand; it's not necessarily a question of ability either - but if you have "coders" with no exposure to or understanding of the system, it's easy to make an implementation which really doesn't meet design intent (because often times the specifications are poor).
A programming mistake is one where you meant to type x+1 and instead you write x-1. Missing something like authentication or checking is a requirements or design problem, not a programming problem.
If software was a car, you wouldn't say it's a manufacturing problem if the car didn't have a place to install a lock - you'd say it's a design problem. It would only be a "programming" issue if it had a place for a lock but it was left uninstalled.
(Yes, I don't consider "programming" to include the design aspects; I consider "programming" to mean "conversion of requirements into computer code." The errors about which this article talks are mostly requirements problems, not implementation problems.
So, let's assume that all the American citizens suddenly got a hair up their asses about cell phone data plans and were clamoring for legislation or for prices to drop. Do you think companies will lower their prices just because it is what the citizens want?
No, they'll lower prices in the face of lower revenues because some revenue is better than no revenue, and they'd rather have it than their competitors. That's assuming, of course, that the market doesn't suffer from (even informal) collusion where all parties charge exorbitant rates and it's prohibitively expensive (or bureaucratically impossible) for another player to enter the market.
The problem, as the GP noted, is that supply and demand only really applies when you have what economists call "rational actors" on both sides. When it comes to things like cell-phone-technology mobile plans, the majority of the demand side is so ill-informed (or perhaps worse, the majority just doesn't care) that it cannot be called "rational" in that sense. If the participants in an otherwise open market are not rational, that "free market" will be extremely inefficient.
The tyranny of the majority is a real detriment to the concept of a truly free rational market. And this is just cell phone data plans.
assuming your goal is a reasonable work week, getting paid for your work, and having reasonable protections.
Aside from "having reasonable protections" which I don't understand in this context, I have all those things and I'm not in a union. Perhaps the only "protection" I don't have is that my employer could terminate me with only minimal notice, and assuming it wasn't due to some strange reason (by that I mean something warranting wrongful termination) I'd just have to look for another job.
A union is why I can tell a manger in a meeting precisely why they are wrong and not fear reprisal.
I do this all the time and have no fear of reprisal because I'm a respected member of the workplace and because I use data to back up my assertions. It also helps that I do not use language like "why the manager is wrong" but instead "why this course of action has risk," or in severe cases "that viewpoint is not consistent with the physical characteristics of the device on which we're working; here are the basic principles which indicate that is an path which will not lead to success." That subtle difference is extremely important.
So, I feel that I have the same benefits that you get, and I don't have the overhead and, let's be honest, politics of a labor organization.
I am in a software union.
When it's all said and done, I think it's fine that you have a situation that works and that sounds pretty reasonable. Unfortunately, organized labor as a whole has a very polarizing reputation for very good historical (and continuing) reasons.
I'd give up too many individual freedoms in the workplace. All my experience with unionized workplaces is that you cannot do anything outside a narrowly defined set of roles and responsibilities without drawing the ire of staff with more seniority.
There's also the general tendency to reward seniority higher than merit; there should be some value in having more seasoned employees but merit should also be there; I've seen firsthand people be openly threatened because they work more efficiently than the "acceptable" rate.
In general, unions are no longer the appropriate solution to the problem; the problem is the same age-old one, specifically the way property ownership is granted (the way zoning works is related as well; for instance, in many rental properties the rental contract disallows running a business from that location). Unions address a symptom, not the problem.
Hopefully, eventually the technology will get good enough that it's far safer than a human driver and they'll require everyone use it.
Indeed; when you give up responsibility, you must simultaneously give up freedom. Granted in this case the "freedom to control my own vehicle" is perhaps a bit esoteric, but it is indeed a freedom that will be eliminated if people are required to use "automatic" cars.
Personally, I don't like the trend in global society where people are giving up their freedoms just because they don't want any responsibility.
The consumer gets to prioritize her electricity use and give up uses that are not as important to her.
The problem here is you're assuming rational consumers. History has shown us that the average consumer is far from rational. What is more likely to happen is that people will continue to use the same amount of electricity at the higher cost, complain about the cost, and reduce spending and/or go deeper into debt for discretionary items which will then have a cascade effect on employment due to drop in demand for consumer goods or another debt-related financial system collapse.
More generally, you seem to be saying that setting a market price for something is equivalent to forcing people to give it up. Does this mean that setting a market-price for medical services is the same as forcing people to give up medicine?
If the market is constrained such that supply cannot increase in response to the higher prices, then, yes, the market can indeed price people out of a particular good or service. Similarly, if the price of a limited-supply good or service is held artificially low so people are not "priced out" then there are other detrimental consequences.
Because it's not actually free as in freedom OR free as in beer.
This is so far the only response that is in any way accurate.
The connotation of "communist" for the stereotypical citizen of the US is "the government is going to take my hard-earned resources and give them to someone else." The big issue is that we have this kind of odd dichotomy (it may indeed be a false one) between the concepts of "fairness" and "the American dram." The latter says that I should be able to reap all the benefits of my hard work and/or scheming. The former says "that other person has more than me and that's not fair; they shouldn't have all that stuff because that means I don't have as much."
While in general I agree that having a high minimum standard of living is good for all society, I admit that I don't really have strong philosophical support for any of the existing or proposed mechanisms to provide such a thing while avoiding both the encouragement of entitlement mentality and the tyranny of the property owners (indeed, the class warfare in the US is not against, as people put it, the wealthy versus the non-wealthy, but the property owners against the lessors. In general the wealth follows the property, yes, the root cause isn't the wealth, it's the property ownership laws. So I probably fall into the camp that thinks that feudalism is indeed an increasingly accurate representation of the current economic trends.)
Again, the reaction to this is "no bad events, no matter how low probability, no matter the cost!"
What is the actual acceptable cost/benefit tradeoff? How low a probability event do we ignore, even if the consequences are large? I can't answer these questions, but it's not obvious that this is even in the minds of the people proposing "do whatever it takes" activities. (This is in response to the "we have to do more to address these low-probability events" sentiment.)
an economy based on cerebral creative work is not inherently worse than one based on welding and riveting
I'd argue the opposite actually: an economy based on actually producing wealth will always have an advantage over an economy that is purely based on services.
Now, I would argue that an economy that uses "cerebral creative work" to augment its wealth creation activities will be better than both. But if all you do is cerebral activity, you are enslaved to people who actually provide the food, machines, etc. Because as soon as those providers no longer have an interest in getting the services from you (for "cerebral creative work" is just a service) then you're SOL to get the material you need from them unless you can figure out the type of services for which the providers are willing to trade.
Yes, it may not be as economically efficient to be self-sufficient, but it is much more robust to be so. Take a look at the effects of the earthquakes and tsunamis: industries grind to a halt because they are incapable of producing everything they need locally.
The thing is, people opt for the short-term profit from efficiencies of specialization, even though specialization makes you very vulnerable to changing environmental conditions. I think specialization has a hidden cost for which an account is not taken.
I'm not sure comparing 30lbm propane gas cylinder swaps to swapping batteries is a fair comparison. (Assuming that's what you meant; I'm not aware of anywhere that swaps gasoline cans.)
That said, there are many groups working on swappable battery packs. Part of the problem, though, is that you have structural issues, alignment issues, storage issues (it's a lot easier to store and move liquids than it is 100+ lbm battery packs), matching the correct battery pack to the correct vehicle, and issues like making sure that the terminals don't short to anything during the swap. Liquids also lend themselves much easier to continuous processes where swappable batteries are inherently batch. Managing an inventory of batteries is a lot more difficult than managing a giant tank.
There are pros and cons to both approaches, but in general liquid-based approaches are much more flexible.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the general problem is the concept that the organizations with the ability to lock (and unlock) the resources are not the end-users, but the manufacturers.
It's the old tradeoff between responsibility and freedom: if computer users want "security" in their systems but don't want to be responsible for achieving that security (and instead give that responsibility to the hardware and software OEMs) then those users must by necessity give up some freedoms.
I think the issue here is that moves like this don't even give users the option to make the choice - the freedom (and responsibility) has been taken from them without their consent. I suppose there may be an argument for removing some freedoms for "the greater good" (for example, if people have the option to have an unsecured machine and they get malware, that will affect many other people not just that individual) but that, in my opinion, is a philosophically dangerous argument.
I find it curious that the article says 35k people for 20 square miles is "typical". I'm familiar with several small cities with about 40k people in 9 square miles, and it's not that dense. 20 square miles for 35k people seems like a very inefficient city. 0.36 acres per person is not "city-like" at all.
Consider Detroit, which has lost a staggering amount of population, has a density of about 0.13 acres per person (using 700k and 139 square miles), and this idea of "typical" seems to be really poor.
I really didn't quote it correctly, to be sure. The idea behind the quote isn't that you can't be angry about the thing which causes you to have a discussion, but that you shouldn't resort to anger as a means to get your point across. I wish I could find the actual quote...
Exactly...Slashdot is by no means a "common-man" publication. The mainstream media doesn't really espouse deep thinking any more.
This is a valid technical solution, but it comes with hidden costs such as lack of control and autonomy. If you have to depend on a rental agency, or some hauling company, you have sacrificed some freedoms.
Now, I admit that it is arguable that you might find that cost worth the environmental benefits. That is an interesting argument though. The environmental argument, though, boils down to something like how much am I willing to sacrifice the standard of living of my children today for the benefit of people some arbitrary number of generations in the future? Incidentally, this is the type of "thinking" to which the article is really referring.
Too many comments so far are missing the point: the article isn't about lack of new "things." The article is about a lack of critical thinking.
It used to be that, in the past, magazines and newspapers and other "common-man" publications would have essays about heady topics. Now you just get articles about how to get rich quick, how some superstar or politician has done something, or some other essentially mundane topic.
Even the "debates" on economics, social norms, climate change, or intellectual property are very sparse on respectful discourse and are instead filled with emotional responses. There's an interesting quote to which I cannot recall attribution, along the lines of "If you get angry when you're defending your topic, that's probably a sign that you don't feel it can stand on its own merits." The lack of temperance in such discussions - from all viewpoints - is fairly damning.
Modern society seems to frown upon thought for thought's sake: if you can't monetize it, why bother? I'd say that "modern society" in this case has missed the point: earning wealth is not the only goal.
I'm curious to hear what definition of wealth you are using. Wealth, in the economic sense, as I understand it is defined as useful resources. This includes things like infrastructure, educated people, processed raw materials, finished goods, and the like.
Things like "giving a haircut" are not wealth, although the ability to give a haircut is wealth. A sea voyage is not wealth, but the ability to take that voyage is. The distinction is critical: services are not wealth, but the ability to perform services is.
I've seen this statement that "economics says value can increase even if wealth doesn't" several times in this thread, and I'm completely baffled. Maybe a new definition of "value" has been starting to circulate?
The traditional definition of "value" is the measure of what an individual is willing to trade for some other particular product or service. Value cannot increase without bound, because in the limit that would mean that people would be willing to trade every asset in the universe for some other single asset: that is, after all, what "value" means.
For instance, if you value food higher than free time, you may work in a factory all day to earn enough food to survive one day (and that's it). At some point there is a limit in value, because you cannot sustain an environment where you value food so highly you work two days for one day's rations.
I suspect that people are confusing "low prices for everything" with "high value"; those are actually opposite concepts.
Apparently the aggregate US population doesn't agree with you: people are increasing their savings to a degree not seen in quite a while. In fact, just a few years ago the net savings rate in the US was negative.
True. A more correct statement is "some economic activities are zero-sum, others are not."
Production does indeed create wealth, and because a large part of wealth is durable goods, total wealth can indeed increase over time. However, consider that finite resources are used to allow production.
At the end of the day, it boils down to energy: energy spent on activity A cannot be used for activity B; it really is an either-or situation. Yes, it's possible to improve efficiency so it takes less energy to perform activity A, but in the limit, what happens if you are as theoretically efficient as possible?
And that doesn't even get into individual use of time: if I spend time on one activity, there are many other activities which are necessarily precluded. Again, I can perhaps gain some efficiencies by multitasking, but there are real physical limits.
Trading does not create wealth, it transfers it.
While each party in the transaction places a higher value on the thing they receive than the thing they give, trade does not change those objects into something else: no wealth is created or destroyed in a trade.
Wealth is only created by manufacturing and agriculture, and wealth is destroyed when goods are consumed or destroyed (through violence or decay).
While economics may not be zero-sum in terms of value, it is most certainly zero-sum in terms of wealth.
Apparently the method is to force innovation so you don't infringe, rather than merely "encourage" innovation.
Of course, the problem with many patents (as has been demonstrated by a horse beaten so badly it is now perhaps just a few molecules which once represented a horse) is that they are granted when they are so broad as to cover the desired effect rather than an implementation of the desired effect. This makes it impossible to innovate in many areas.
The fix to the patent system would simply be "Patents must be on novel, useful, unobvious machines or methods to achieve an effect, rather than a description of an effect."
A similarly powerful revision, though I don't really have a good strong wording for it, is something like "Patents shall not be granted to arbitrary designs such as particular encoding mechanisms (for instance, use of the number 1 to represent 'red' versus the number 2 to represent 'red'." To rule out silly things like particular data recording formats being patented.
Hrm. That was not my intent. Basically what I was saying is that there is a difference in types of errors between design errors which persist even if you program them correctly versus the type of errors which are due to writing code that doesn't match the design.
Personally, I do agree that there is a more hazy line between "software engineering" and "programming" than just "implement design as code", and people that only implement design as code tend to make more errors than those who understand the system. I have seen this first hand; it's not necessarily a question of ability either - but if you have "coders" with no exposure to or understanding of the system, it's easy to make an implementation which really doesn't meet design intent (because often times the specifications are poor).
Perhaps I'll just say I was testing the forum software's ability to check syntax =D
Yes, that's a much better car analogy... I was having a tough time thinking of one, sadly.
...Those are system design mistakes.
A programming mistake is one where you meant to type x+1 and instead you write x-1. Missing something like authentication or checking is a requirements or design problem, not a programming problem.
If software was a car, you wouldn't say it's a manufacturing problem if the car didn't have a place to install a lock - you'd say it's a design problem. It would only be a "programming" issue if it had a place for a lock but it was left uninstalled.
(Yes, I don't consider "programming" to include the design aspects; I consider "programming" to mean "conversion of requirements into computer code." The errors about which this article talks are mostly requirements problems, not implementation problems.
No, they'll lower prices in the face of lower revenues because some revenue is better than no revenue, and they'd rather have it than their competitors. That's assuming, of course, that the market doesn't suffer from (even informal) collusion where all parties charge exorbitant rates and it's prohibitively expensive (or bureaucratically impossible) for another player to enter the market.
The problem, as the GP noted, is that supply and demand only really applies when you have what economists call "rational actors" on both sides. When it comes to things like cell-phone-technology mobile plans, the majority of the demand side is so ill-informed (or perhaps worse, the majority just doesn't care) that it cannot be called "rational" in that sense. If the participants in an otherwise open market are not rational, that "free market" will be extremely inefficient.
The tyranny of the majority is a real detriment to the concept of a truly free rational market. And this is just cell phone data plans.
Aside from "having reasonable protections" which I don't understand in this context, I have all those things and I'm not in a union. Perhaps the only "protection" I don't have is that my employer could terminate me with only minimal notice, and assuming it wasn't due to some strange reason (by that I mean something warranting wrongful termination) I'd just have to look for another job.
I do this all the time and have no fear of reprisal because I'm a respected member of the workplace and because I use data to back up my assertions. It also helps that I do not use language like "why the manager is wrong" but instead "why this course of action has risk," or in severe cases "that viewpoint is not consistent with the physical characteristics of the device on which we're working; here are the basic principles which indicate that is an path which will not lead to success." That subtle difference is extremely important.
So, I feel that I have the same benefits that you get, and I don't have the overhead and, let's be honest, politics of a labor organization.
When it's all said and done, I think it's fine that you have a situation that works and that sounds pretty reasonable. Unfortunately, organized labor as a whole has a very polarizing reputation for very good historical (and continuing) reasons.
I'd give up too many individual freedoms in the workplace. All my experience with unionized workplaces is that you cannot do anything outside a narrowly defined set of roles and responsibilities without drawing the ire of staff with more seniority.
There's also the general tendency to reward seniority higher than merit; there should be some value in having more seasoned employees but merit should also be there; I've seen firsthand people be openly threatened because they work more efficiently than the "acceptable" rate.
In general, unions are no longer the appropriate solution to the problem; the problem is the same age-old one, specifically the way property ownership is granted (the way zoning works is related as well; for instance, in many rental properties the rental contract disallows running a business from that location). Unions address a symptom, not the problem.
Indeed; when you give up responsibility, you must simultaneously give up freedom. Granted in this case the "freedom to control my own vehicle" is perhaps a bit esoteric, but it is indeed a freedom that will be eliminated if people are required to use "automatic" cars.
Personally, I don't like the trend in global society where people are giving up their freedoms just because they don't want any responsibility.
The problem here is you're assuming rational consumers. History has shown us that the average consumer is far from rational. What is more likely to happen is that people will continue to use the same amount of electricity at the higher cost, complain about the cost, and reduce spending and/or go deeper into debt for discretionary items which will then have a cascade effect on employment due to drop in demand for consumer goods or another debt-related financial system collapse.
If the market is constrained such that supply cannot increase in response to the higher prices, then, yes, the market can indeed price people out of a particular good or service. Similarly, if the price of a limited-supply good or service is held artificially low so people are not "priced out" then there are other detrimental consequences.
This is so far the only response that is in any way accurate.
The connotation of "communist" for the stereotypical citizen of the US is "the government is going to take my hard-earned resources and give them to someone else." The big issue is that we have this kind of odd dichotomy (it may indeed be a false one) between the concepts of "fairness" and "the American dram." The latter says that I should be able to reap all the benefits of my hard work and/or scheming. The former says "that other person has more than me and that's not fair; they shouldn't have all that stuff because that means I don't have as much."
While in general I agree that having a high minimum standard of living is good for all society, I admit that I don't really have strong philosophical support for any of the existing or proposed mechanisms to provide such a thing while avoiding both the encouragement of entitlement mentality and the tyranny of the property owners (indeed, the class warfare in the US is not against, as people put it, the wealthy versus the non-wealthy, but the property owners against the lessors. In general the wealth follows the property, yes, the root cause isn't the wealth, it's the property ownership laws. So I probably fall into the camp that thinks that feudalism is indeed an increasingly accurate representation of the current economic trends.)
Again, the reaction to this is "no bad events, no matter how low probability, no matter the cost!"
What is the actual acceptable cost/benefit tradeoff? How low a probability event do we ignore, even if the consequences are large? I can't answer these questions, but it's not obvious that this is even in the minds of the people proposing "do whatever it takes" activities. (This is in response to the "we have to do more to address these low-probability events" sentiment.)
I'd argue the opposite actually: an economy based on actually producing wealth will always have an advantage over an economy that is purely based on services.
Now, I would argue that an economy that uses "cerebral creative work" to augment its wealth creation activities will be better than both. But if all you do is cerebral activity, you are enslaved to people who actually provide the food, machines, etc. Because as soon as those providers no longer have an interest in getting the services from you (for "cerebral creative work" is just a service) then you're SOL to get the material you need from them unless you can figure out the type of services for which the providers are willing to trade.
Yes, it may not be as economically efficient to be self-sufficient, but it is much more robust to be so. Take a look at the effects of the earthquakes and tsunamis: industries grind to a halt because they are incapable of producing everything they need locally.
The thing is, people opt for the short-term profit from efficiencies of specialization, even though specialization makes you very vulnerable to changing environmental conditions. I think specialization has a hidden cost for which an account is not taken.
I'm not sure comparing 30lbm propane gas cylinder swaps to swapping batteries is a fair comparison. (Assuming that's what you meant; I'm not aware of anywhere that swaps gasoline cans.)
That said, there are many groups working on swappable battery packs. Part of the problem, though, is that you have structural issues, alignment issues, storage issues (it's a lot easier to store and move liquids than it is 100+ lbm battery packs), matching the correct battery pack to the correct vehicle, and issues like making sure that the terminals don't short to anything during the swap. Liquids also lend themselves much easier to continuous processes where swappable batteries are inherently batch. Managing an inventory of batteries is a lot more difficult than managing a giant tank.
There are pros and cons to both approaches, but in general liquid-based approaches are much more flexible.