by Rod D. Martin
July 19, 2015

The infographic below (thank you Cato Institute) is a shocking testament to how technology is making our lives cheaper, better and cleaner by “dematerializing” them.

Lots of folks think technology is destroying us, polluting the world and improving our lives marginally if at all. But take a look at this chart. The cost of the many items replaced — all by just one device — is far, far higher, meaning that now vastly more people can have the functionality them all.

Less money for the same (or better) stuff = more disposable income = more wealth and a better standard of living for everyone. And likewise, all the physical, manufactured things we used to need meant more pollution: now we have far more, using far less, resulting in a much cleaner environment despite billions more people than when I was born.

Innovation is good, nay great, stewardship. It is also the ever-advancing creation of universal abundance (or what Christians might call “pushing back the Curse”). The left wants to “redistribute wealth” from those who’ve accumulated it “unfairly,” but I can assure you, all the money Steve Jobs ever made was the tiniest fraction of the wealth he created for all the rest of us. Likewise for Rockefeller (kerosene light instead of whale oil); Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse and Morgan (electricity instead of animals and brute force); Carnegie (steel instead of wood and iron); Ford (cars instead of wagons); and all the other “robber barons” the left loves to hate.

That’s capitalism. And that’s how it works.

Dematerialization - Cato