The value of goods and labor

Technologies can change the value of goods. For example, the introduction of the cotton mill in England in 1771 to mechanically clean, spin, and weave bales of cotton into cloth significantly decreased the value of manual cotton production. In recent years, e-commerce has allowed lower costs for businesses and consumers by making intermediaries such as retail stores superfluous. Nanotechnological innovations are predicted to profoundly reduce the cost of expensive goods, such as computers and medical devices, as well as basic human needs including energy and clean water.

A profound shift of economic value may also occur as knowledge production increases in value, as opposed to the production of material goods or the provision of services. This shift may follow the trend of recent technological innovations that have had significant economic value, such as Microsoft’s software, Amazon’s online market, and eBay’s online auction. Services may become relatively inexpensive as they are eventually provided by sophisticated computer systems, and goods may become easily accessible as they are eventually ‘zapped up’ and mass-produced in nano-factories.

The changing value of goods and services that technology can bring is deeply embedded within a complex system of economic relations and can have varying consequences for different sectors of society. The cotton mill, while enormously beneficial for its consumers, was devastating for artisans who used the old technologies of spinning wheels and hand looms. Similarly, the invention of the cotton gin in the American South led to significant financial gain for the Southern cotton industry, but the consequences for Africans who were enslaved to pick cotton for this growing industry were catastrophic.

As we examine the changing value of goods with nanotechnological advancements, it is important to consider the complex ways in which the expansion and extinction of particular industries will affect communities in different ways. For example, as energy becomes more efficiently stored and produced and dependent on ‘cleaner’ solar and hydrogen sources, communities that depend on coal-mining and oil-drilling are likely to be negatively impacted. The increasingly new world economy that nanotechnology promises, as less expensive goods and services continue to be exchanged between nations, will undoubtedly provide economic opportunities as well as risks of economic insecurity and exploitation.