[13lackGu4rd]

Originally Posted by Soyweiser

Now you are making a little mistake here imho. You take furniture in general, and pick one example of a high end product, for which there are replacements etc. And try to invalidate his whole claim. But it was about furniture in general. Not the high end products. A simple folding chair which costs 5 bucks 10 years ago, still costs 5 bucks now. (Modulo, inflation, costs of plastics etc). A piece of high grade wooden furniture to (to let your grandchildren inherit) still costs the same now as it did 10 years ago. In general furniture prices stay the same. (Sure high end innovative stuff such as expensive office chairs is a counter example. Or fasionable furniture (don't know how people call the furniture fasion industry). But all of these invalidate the previous generation. So that is why the previous generation drops in price).

mistake? I was simply giving an example, obviously 1 example can't count an entire field, but it doesn't make it any less valid. moreover, office chairs, a high end product? am I missing something here...? but if you insist, you can pick regular(as in kitchen) chairs, desks, tables, even outdoors furniture, whatever you want... even your example of a simple 5$ folding chair(outdoors furniture) can be made from better materials, have better axises, have longer longevity, etc. not that you can go much lower than 5$ but you can make the old 5$ chairs irrelevant by offering much better products for the same 5$s. you were just looking at my example, not my entire reasoning before that example, which was your main mistake.

Heck, the whole point of technological progress is to make production as a whole cheaper, otherwise there would be no economical logic behind investing money in making better technologies in the first place...

There are loads of different reasons to improve technology, making production cheaper is one of them. Radical innovation (which tends to make new products more expensive) is another one. Gradual innovation tends to either make products more affordable, or better. Sometimes companies just create new products because a "New" sticker on the product increases sales. (That is why shampoo bottles tend to chance colors and bottle types every few years. Most of it is just marketing).[/quote]

I wouldn't call "radical innovation" as "technological progress". radical innovations is mainly in the realm of theories. if engineers or whoever else actually find useful products to be made out of these radical innovations than they usually try to make them with current technologies. it is rare for technological progress to happen on the basis of some crazy theory.

keep in mind that technological progress is not usually done by universities or other research institutions, unless said institutions found some miraculous break through. technological progress is normally done by corporations, and to a lesser extent smaller companies, as in the private sector. the private sector thinks economically, so if a technological progress doesn't improve their production lines in any way than they just won't bother with it.