Most people have never heard of Baumol's Cost Disease, yet it explains why healthcare, education, and live performance tickets keep skyrocketing in price while your gadgets get cheaper every year. In short, industries that can’t easily automate (like a symphony orchestra or a surgery room) still require the same human labor time, while workers in those sectors expect wages that keep up with more productive industries (like manufacturing or software). So even though tech improves, the violinist still takes 30 minutes to play Mozart - and now gets paid more to keep pace with her AI-hugging peers. And guess what's paradoxical? Economic progress in one sector quietly inflates the cost of those that can’t speed up — making your hospital bill the shadow price of better technology.

To make it clearer, As some industries become more efficient and automated, others that rely on human labor - like healthcare and education, become relatively more expensive. For example, a surgeon still needs the same amount of time to perform a procedure, but their wages rise to keep up with the higher earnings in more productive fields like tech and manufacturing. So, while technology makes many things cheaper, it also indirectly drives up costs in areas that can’t be automated. The "shadow price" is this unnoticed financial burden that comes with progress.

And yet people run about crying for "better technology" rather than harnessing the technology in the long run