badgenome on 27 February 2013
I don't buy it. Baumol's famous line about the string quartet, while certainly pithy, is a great example of just how wrong he was. Once upon a time, a string quartet would play and only those in attendance would ever hear it. Now, thanks to recording technology, everyone who is alive or who will ever be alive can hear that one single performance. The productivity of musicians has therefore risen dramatically, and there's no reason that the same can't happen in medicine or education if the system is free enough to permit such changes to take place.
In fact, the same has happened with medicine as diseases that could once be dealt with only through invasive surgery (or simply suffered through) can now be treated with a simple pill.
