How many 10x productivity revolutions do we need? At the end of it, will there be only one person left producing everything for humanity in 5 minutes each Tuesday afternoon?
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Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
When we eat the rich.
There is a hole in the heart of every rich person. They try to fill that hole with money, but the hole is never full.
When Elon Musk and every person like him says, “I have enough money”: that is when the people who actually produce value will have reached enough productivity. Not before.
Our economy relies on growth. Whatever it takes. Exponential if possible. When is it done growing? When is a tumor done growing?
When is a tumor done growing?
When the host dies.
I think we’re already productive enough, just not distributive enough.
We’re kind of at a point where the cost of making stuff isn’t very important. It is far outweighed by the cost of moving stuff - not only financially, but environmentally and temporally.
There probably isn’t a lot more refinement to be done in most manufacturing processes, other than very niche things like microchip fabrication. Production machinery can pump out T-shirts or drinking glasses or automobiles faster than people will buy them, so the factories run for shorter periods of time. The only profit margins to be had in manufacturing come from bulk production runs, which is why you can’t order 10 injection molded parts or 50 custom silicon packages - you have to buy like 5000 units just to pay the cost of spinning up the production line.
But logistics… we’re basically killing the planet to solve logistics problems. A massive amount of greenhouse gas production is due to transportation. We need better ways to move things around.
If the environmental damage was accurately priced in, it would be much more attractive to produce locally with local materials and with local knowledge.
It would be less “efficient” in the sense of what a production facility could do in terms of output/input at the gates of the facility, but it would be much more efficient in terms of the overall economy.
Well, I think in that scenario I thought about transportation as included in the 5min/week workload. Basically you click 3 buttons and everything goes wroom on its own from there.
Until we can make everything through the tireless efforts of a single Australian man
As soon as a capitalist has enough money.
Heat death of the universe, got it.
No, just heat death of the planet
Let’s be a little more granular here. Increased production efficiency is good. If we could legitimately just have everyone take turns working five minutes a week and provide for all of humanity that would be great. The problem is how the benefits of increased productivity are distributed. If worker’s pay started at a reasonable livable wage and increased along with their productivity the world would be in a much different situation now. If we had a UBI scheme that allowed everyone to have a minimum acceptable standard of living automation would be much more desirable.
Not a fan of UBI here as a practical solution, but it’s nice as a heuristic vision in discussions. It wouldn’t solve any problems on its own, prices would just adapt and you’re back at 0. That is, unless you put in the effort to fight the political fights for regulation of rent and food prices, working conditions etc. And if you do that well, you don’t need UBI. Anyway, UBI as a concept helps “summarize” where such fights would be needed IMHO, I just don’t believe it would magically make exploitative businesses not exploit everything they can.
About 45 years ago we hit it. Its why its just been layoffs and office fuckery ever since
I’m agree with the consequence but not the cause. Jack Welsh figured out the cheat code to increase short term stock prices by laying off people, regardless of their actual role or value to the company.
Since then, every company has done it whenever they need a quick boost in numbers.
Increasing productivity of workers is met with demand for more production-intensive products. It’s like how every time hardware improves, software becomes more complex to take advantage of that increased capability. It’s like Jevon’s Paradox, but applied to productivity of workers.
One prominent example: our farmers are more productive than ever. So we move up the value chain, and have farmers growing more luxury crops that aren’t actually necessary for sustenance. We overproduce grains and legumes, and then feed them to animals to raise meat. We were so productive with different types of produce that we decided to go on hard mode and create just-in-time supply chains for multiple cultivars so that supermarkets sell dozens of types of fresh apples, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, etc., and end up eating much more fresh produce of diverse varieties compared to our parents and grandparents, who may have relied more heavily on frozen or canned produce, with limited variety.
Never. The line must keep moving upwards. If it doesn’t come from productivity it comes from enshittification, layoffs, offshoring, etc.
To clarify, this is the thinking that is towards the core of the issue.
When do you think your boss is going to have enough yatchs?
The ceo of the shitty place I work already owns two entire islands in Croatia. Guess what, it’s not enough and he wants to buy a third.
Disgusting.
Don’t feed the windego. It only grows hungrier.
This is actually a stupid question. Loaded questions like this are annoying.
