@keunwoo i don't think that's right. Baumol is a story about the relative productivity of people. the machine comes in, because one technician might be as "productive" (ignoring a difference in quality) as ten customer service agents. the technician, according to a mistaken theory of wages, is paid her productivity, so is paid much more than a traditional CSR. 1/

@keunwoo if you want to hire a traditional customer service rep—who could, after all, in oversimplified theory, be retrained as a technician—you now have to pay the old-school CSR a wage competitive with the technician she should also be. 2/

@keunwoo the role of the machine is to change the productivity, and (in mostly mistaken theory) therefore the wage associated with alternative uses of the CSR's time. the Baumol story is about the relative productivity of people though, not the productivity of people versus machines. /fin