> It is taken by many as an article of faith that there are 10x productivity differences in knowledge workers. If we actually mean that, then 2x differences in

> It is taken by many as an article of faith that there are 10x productivity differences in knowledge workers. If we actually mean that, then 2x differences in numbers of hours worked should be quite sustainable. This might interest you if you haven't heard of it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROWE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROWE Results Only Work Environment - you agree on a set of tasks with your manager, you complete them, you get paid. Doesn't matter when you do it or how long it takes you. That lets people choose to work at a slower pace with more goofing off on Facebook or webcomics, or work in a blaze and hit the beach, or whatever. People who wish to produce manic levels of work can produce more and get paid for it as gauged by results, people who want to work less can complete less tasks can do so and still get paid a reasonable amount. I think there'll be some kinks to be ironed out, but it's more or less the future. > (Oh, more bad news: robots can already do that, and it will only be a few more years before the cleaning company we outsource to figures out how to exploit that differential profitably.) Cleaning floors is notoriously hard to outsource, but the technology-in-theory for automating/roboticizing much more of manual labor is already there. It's why I'd like to see the world get more wealthier - people have a false believe that if there's no more poor people, everything will get more expensive. Pretty false idea - if more people are doing R&D, pure science, engineering, art, programming instead of manual labor, we'll see huge gains in new innovation and can roboticize/automate much of the manual labor away. Hell, when I was in China I'd see like 30 guys with chisels tearing up asphalt which you'd have one guy with a jackhammer doing in the States. The labor was cheaper than the machinery, but as the Chinese get more educated and into high skilled work, that'll change and they'll switch over to jackhammers and whatever we invent next after jackhammers.