Mechanization affects patterns of production and consumption
Why did mechanization revolutionize patterns of both production and consumption?
Human Labor had been the prior and only source of production of goods till mechanization was achieved. Mechanization has been defined as the process of replacing manual labor (in the form of human/animal labor) by the use of machines (also known as automation) which may or may not depend on a human operator on a wider scale. Technology had just reached breakthrough heights when scientists and inventors established that machines could replace the work done manually.
The major reason why there was a complete shift from manual to automation is that although the cost of investment was lower, the efficiency increase was rather substantial. Human labor has only an average efficiency of about 1% to 5.5% when compared to machines which have varied efficiencies ranging from 20%, all the way up to almost 90%.
The growth in human population was always gradually increasing by the same factor on an exponential scale. It was around the time when the demand for products increased with the population and was not met by the supply. Hence the pattern of consumption had already picked up, even before mechanization actually took place. Also this was the age of conspicuous consumption, when spending of money on and the acquiring of luxury goods and services determined one’s social status. This kind of consumption was originally only seen in royal families and about this time it had shifted even to the regular upper class households.
This requirement pressurized industries to meet the demand by some form of productivity improving technologies which lowered the traditional factors of production of land, labor capital, materials and energy.
This eventually marked the beginning of Mechanization and Automation which ‘changed life more than it had in the 7000 years before’. It resulted in a series of breakthrough technologies in –
1) Substitution of Mechanical Devices for Human Skills
2)
Human Labor had been the prior and only source of production of goods till mechanization was achieved. Mechanization has been defined as the process of replacing manual labor (in the form of human/animal labor) by the use of machines (also known as automation) which may or may not depend on a human operator on a wider scale. Technology had just reached breakthrough heights when scientists and inventors established that machines could replace the work done manually.
The major reason why there was a complete shift from manual to automation is that although the cost of investment was lower, the efficiency increase was rather substantial. Human labor has only an average efficiency of about 1% to 5.5% when compared to machines which have varied efficiencies ranging from 20%, all the way up to almost 90%.
The growth in human population was always gradually increasing by the same factor on an exponential scale. It was around the time when the demand for products increased with the population and was not met by the supply. Hence the pattern of consumption had already picked up, even before mechanization actually took place. Also this was the age of conspicuous consumption, when spending of money on and the acquiring of luxury goods and services determined one’s social status. This kind of consumption was originally only seen in royal families and about this time it had shifted even to the regular upper class households.
This requirement pressurized industries to meet the demand by some form of productivity improving technologies which lowered the traditional factors of production of land, labor capital, materials and energy.
This eventually marked the beginning of Mechanization and Automation which ‘changed life more than it had in the 7000 years before’. It resulted in a series of breakthrough technologies in –
1) Substitution of Mechanical Devices for Human Skills
2)