Labor-based technology and irreversibility

Labour-based and labour-intensive technology

• Labour-intensive technology: a production method that uses a large amount of human labour relative to capital and machines. Labour is the dominant input; machines are hardly used. Example: digging canals entirely by hand.
• Labour-based technology: a method that uses labour as the main resource, supported by light equipment only where labour alone cannot achieve the required quality or is uneconomic (e.g. using a roller for compaction), while keeping quality and cost comparable to machine-based methods. Example: rural roads and trails in Nepal built by local workers under the LEP approach.

Both are suitable for countries like Nepal where labour is plentiful and capital scarce.

Technology is irreversible

Once a technology is invented and accepted, society cannot return to the old way of life, even if the technology has harmful effects. It can only be improved, regulated or replaced by a newer technology. Reasons: dependence, convenience and efficiency, disappearance of old skills and tools, and knowledge that cannot be erased.

Examples:

1. Electricity: After electric lighting, nobody chooses kerosene lamps; the economy runs on electricity.
2. Mobile phone and internet: Banking, education, business and social life depend on them; returning to letters and telegrams is impossible. Even the dangers (cyber crime, addiction) are handled by regulation, not by abandoning the internet.
3. Nuclear technology: After 1945 the knowledge of atomic bombs could not be erased; the world can only limit it through treaties (e.g. the Non-Proliferation Treaty).
4. Motor vehicles and fossil fuels: Despite pollution and climate change, society cannot go back to animal carts; it shifts to electric vehicles instead.
5. Plastics: Plastic causes pollution but is now built into packaging and products; the solution is recycling and bans on specific items, not total removal.
6. Chemical fertilisers and pesticides: Farmers who adopt them find it difficult to return fully to traditional farming because yields drop.
7. Computers in offices: Typewriters and manual ledgers have disappeared.

Because technology is irreversible, its social and environmental effects should be studied before adoption through impact assessment and careful policy.