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DE-INDUSTRIALISATION

 
Paper:ewp-dev/9601001
From: W Stanners <   > 
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 96 17:52:58 GMT
Date (revised): Mon, 5 Aug 96 09:44:28 CDT
Date (revised): Tue, 13 Aug 96 15:45:12 CDT

Abstract:
The notion of de-industrialisation arises from the fact that industrial employment, having risen rapidly, is now in equally rapid decline. This paper presents the view that agriculture and industry together form, and have always formed, a logically seamless "primary" sector which from the beginning, because of its harnessing of direct or fossilised solar power and thus its inherent capacity for productivity gains, has progressively freed labour for non-productive or service work. The "industrial revolution" was really an accelerative phase in a millenia-old development. There is no new phenomenon of de-industrialisation, no rise and fall, merely a speeding up of a monotonic process of labour-freeing from the primary sector of agriculture/industry, whose ever decreasing work force produces ever increasing agricultural/industrial output.

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EconWPA began as a conversation between Bob Parks and Larry Blume on January 28, 1993. I located Paul Ginsparg's archive (then xxx.lanl.gov) and he graciously installed his software on a Sun Sparc system which was supporting the department of economics email and computation. EconWPA began accepting papers July 1, 1993 and had ftp, email, gopher and web interfaces. The web interface for submissions was engineered into existence in July 1995. A complete and catastrophic machine failure in 1999 caused the loss of EconWPA's email new paper announcment service at which time there were over 15,000 subscriptions with over 8,000 unique email addresses.

In 2005, Arts and Sciences commandeered the computing services that I had provided to the Department of Economics since 1987. Some might say that the department was sold out, others would (erroneously) claim that centralization is efficient, and still others would claim that I have few marketing skills.

I was told that I could keep operating EconWPA (as well as many other services including rfe.wustl.edu, barnett.wustl.edu, and three RePEc servers) but I would receive no support (hardware, software, or anthing else) and (as had been the case) no compensation. At that point, given the apparent low valuation of my activities by the department, and university, it made no sense for me to continue operating EconWPA or other services.

Thanks to all who have supported EconWPA in the past.

A Chinese curse states May you live in intersting times. I have. Bob Parks - Jan 2006