Why did agriculture mechanize and not construction?

Building production is also characterized by a great deal of uncertainty and factors outside the builder’s control. The physical environment is often difficult to predict (whoops, we got seven days of rain, whoops, we found a huge boulder when we were excavating), as is the cultural and regulatory environment (whoops, the zoning board is making us ... See more

Unless there are massive changes in terms of who is controlling the technology, deciding where resources should be funneled, and what kinds of products should be built and for whom, I don’t think there is really any way to get out of the cycle that we’re currently in.

Construction is a $10T industry with several very big problems. As an industry, it consumes the greatest amount of resources and energy and contributes the largest amount of waste. We build everything as if it's unique, have unacceptable worker injury/fatality rates and collect sparse data.

Workers without a college education have been most adversely affected by the advent of routine-biased technology, but the mechanisation of agriculture that characterised this period has also had further detrimental effects on local social and environmental systems.

The foundation of business strategy

Our current AI conundrum would not have been a surprise to British economist Ronald Coase. At age 26, he published his legendary essay, "The Nature of the Firm." Coase grapples with a fundamental problem: If the market is efficient, shouldn’t it be cheaper for a firm to outsource the majority of its inte

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