8 ms·

That's not correct. In general, the effect of new technology is to increase the output of the economy - we get more stuff. This translates into a higher GDP.

That's not correct. In general, the effect of new technology is to increase the output of the economy - we get more stuff. This translates into a higher GDP. Now, consider your specific example. The effect of the machine would be to free up time for people to do other things. Some of this might be increased leisure (not capured by GDP) , while some of it will be increased output in the economy, which will show up as increased GDP. Your comment about individuals striving to increase GDP is silly - GDP is an aggregate statistic and the result of people trying to maximise their own personal welfare.

maxander 9y ago
If someone invents a machine that does some necessary consumer-level work (say, a washing machine) and the result is not increased leisure, something is Very Wrong. Sure, we could spend the time we save doing dishes on productive labor, but this wasn't time we owed to the workforce in the first place. "Increased activity occupies surplus generated by increased efficiency" works for corporations, which is why economists like it, but not for humans, which is GP's point. In fact, GDP is only of practical utility at all insofar as that equation does not hold, since leisure and autonomy and generally not-being-beholden-to-work is the economic end of "human welfare." There's other points, which I think GP was referencing in a less clear way, about how GDP measures all sorts of economic "activity" that is useless altogether- financial speculation in bubbles, competing advertisement campaigns, etc. But the main point is that GDP is a measure of output, not welfare, and for humans (all else being equal) we're better off the less that we're required to do.
- naravara 9y ago
  >someone invents a machine that does some necessary consumer-level work (say, a washing machine) and the result is not increased leisure, something is Very Wrong. Leisure isn’t free though. Increased leisure time is going to create work/spending in other areas. So you save time on household chores due to the cheap machine, that means you probably end up spending more money on your leisure activities. You buy more books, video games, hiking boots, sports gear, etc.
  - stretchwithme 9y ago
    Or sleep. Or studying. Or taking a walk with a loved one. The point is that a lot of the benefit to us of such an innovation is not going to show up in GDP, even if some of that time is used for fun activities. GDP doesn't count increases in fun either.
  - eropple 9y ago
    > You buy more books, video games, hiking boots, sports gear, etc. Why? I have hiking boots. They'll last me twenty years. I have more books and video games than I could ever read and play already. Why should leisure time be considered a vehicle for consumption of stuff in the first place? Self-actualization isn't reflected in GDP, and yet it actually matters.
    - abalashov 9y ago
      Because capitalism. Even the mountain you hike keeps business hours, requires vehicular propulsion to get to, and charges a fee for parking. Laws and social conventions alike discourage simply standing around doing nothing in particular in most public places, and loitering ordinances sometimes expressly forbid it. There aren’t that many places to go or things to do, both as a matter of practical exigencies and sociocultural rituals alike, which don’t involve some business to transact.
    - Godel_unicode 9y ago
      You're aware that your response here is atypical, and the exact kind of problem that is addressed by behavioural economics, yes? While what you're describing (using new found free time to engage in free leisure activities) is what you see as desirable, it is emphatically not what humans as a population do. When discussing macro things like GDP, the homo-economicus minimax behavior of the few is inconsequential and has no place in a discussion of what would happen. However much we might not wish it so.
      - eropple 9y ago
        OK. So let's keep going. You are correct, what I'm describing is atypical. Why is it atypical? Is it because they need more stuff? Or is it because their brains are under near-constant assault from a barrage of advertising that melts their willpower and creates a link between having a free moment to themselves and consumption, a desperate instillation to keep up with the Joneses? I would contend, and I'd fight about it, that the answer is the latter and that it is an overwhelming, brain-breaking external imposition. And it's in the service of making that particular number that's the topic of that article just a little bigger. We need to stop fucking ourselves up as people and as communities and measures that do not take that into account are bad measures that should not be fetishized. (And they are fetishized. They are drooled over. And yet nobody dies taking pride in how they made GDP bigger.)
- pteredactyl 9y ago
  Who is to say fixing your neighbors machine is not leisure time? With the added benefit of increased social capital ( if I’m going to be clinical about it ).
- james1071 9y ago
  We know what happens when labour saving machines, such as washing machines, were invented - married women, who used to spend most of the day on housework entered the workforce.
kelnos 9y ago
Ugh, that sounds terrible. In my utopia, machines do all the work, and everyone in the world gets to do whatever they want, which will mostly be leisure. Yes, there will be some people for whom leisure means work, and more power to them. I still don't understand the drive to be "productive". What's the point of technology if not to shift the need to be productive away from humans? It sounds like a very sad world to me where people automate their jobs away in order to just find new jobs to fill their time. Of course, that is the world we _currently_ live in, just on a smaller scale than I'd hope we'd eventually achieve. I think it'd be a wonderful world where we can only dream up jobs for a tiny percentage of the population, assuming the wealth created by automation is distributed so people who don't work can still live great lives.
- rland12 9y ago
  I think about this a lot. People 100 years ago, if they teleported to today, would look at our lives, our possessions, the conveniences offered to us every single day by all of this increased productivity... They would probably wonder why we don't cut the hours we've worked by half or more. I don't quite understand it myself. Why does all of the time we've gained go to working, when it seems to me the cost of a "whole lifetime" has gone down by so much in the past 50 years. Machines seem to already do most of the work necessary for a human life for us.
  - imtringued 9y ago
    The benefits are captured by spending more on exclusionary rivalrous goods like land, education and healthcare.
  - kelnos 9y ago
    A sibling poster covered this, but a maybe-not-terrible analogy occurred to me: it's like writing software. Even when you've finished building out all the features you want to build, it's still never done. There might be bugs that need to be fixed, or you might want to make some slow parts of the code more efficient, or users have come up with some new use cases that require you to add new features. It just never ends. It's rare to find a software project that's "done", aside from abandoned projects. I guess people are just never satisfied with some kind of end state. And I guess that's a good thing; life is pretty good these days (if you're reasonably well off in a developed country), but, well... we still don't have our jet packs or hoverboards or flying cars. All progress depends on people not being satisfied with the status quo.

maxander 9y ago

If someone invents a machine that does some necessary consumer-level work (say, a washing machine) and the result is not increased leisure, something is Very Wrong. Sure, we could spend the time we save doing dishes on productive labor, but this wasn't time we owed to the workforce in the first place. "Increased activity occupies surplus generated by increased efficiency" works for corporations, which is why economists like it, but not for humans, which is GP's point. In fact, GDP is only of practical utility at all insofar as that equation does not hold, since leisure and autonomy and generally not-being-beholden-to-work is the economic end of "human welfare." There's other points, which I think GP was referencing in a less clear way, about how GDP measures all sorts of economic "activity" that is useless altogether- financial speculation in bubbles, competing advertisement campaigns, etc. But the main point is that GDP is a measure of output, not welfare, and for humans (all else being equal) we're better off the less that we're required to do.

naravara 9y ago
>someone invents a machine that does some necessary consumer-level work (say, a washing machine) and the result is not increased leisure, something is Very Wrong. Leisure isn’t free though. Increased leisure time is going to create work/spending in other areas. So you save time on household chores due to the cheap machine, that means you probably end up spending more money on your leisure activities. You buy more books, video games, hiking boots, sports gear, etc.
- stretchwithme 9y ago
  Or sleep. Or studying. Or taking a walk with a loved one. The point is that a lot of the benefit to us of such an innovation is not going to show up in GDP, even if some of that time is used for fun activities. GDP doesn't count increases in fun either.
- eropple 9y ago
  > You buy more books, video games, hiking boots, sports gear, etc. Why? I have hiking boots. They'll last me twenty years. I have more books and video games than I could ever read and play already. Why should leisure time be considered a vehicle for consumption of stuff in the first place? Self-actualization isn't reflected in GDP, and yet it actually matters.
  - abalashov 9y ago
    Because capitalism. Even the mountain you hike keeps business hours, requires vehicular propulsion to get to, and charges a fee for parking. Laws and social conventions alike discourage simply standing around doing nothing in particular in most public places, and loitering ordinances sometimes expressly forbid it. There aren’t that many places to go or things to do, both as a matter of practical exigencies and sociocultural rituals alike, which don’t involve some business to transact.
  - Godel_unicode 9y ago
    You're aware that your response here is atypical, and the exact kind of problem that is addressed by behavioural economics, yes? While what you're describing (using new found free time to engage in free leisure activities) is what you see as desirable, it is emphatically not what humans as a population do. When discussing macro things like GDP, the homo-economicus minimax behavior of the few is inconsequential and has no place in a discussion of what would happen. However much we might not wish it so.
    - eropple 9y ago
      OK. So let's keep going. You are correct, what I'm describing is atypical. Why is it atypical? Is it because they need more stuff? Or is it because their brains are under near-constant assault from a barrage of advertising that melts their willpower and creates a link between having a free moment to themselves and consumption, a desperate instillation to keep up with the Joneses? I would contend, and I'd fight about it, that the answer is the latter and that it is an overwhelming, brain-breaking external imposition. And it's in the service of making that particular number that's the topic of that article just a little bigger. We need to stop fucking ourselves up as people and as communities and measures that do not take that into account are bad measures that should not be fetishized. (And they are fetishized. They are drooled over. And yet nobody dies taking pride in how they made GDP bigger.)
pteredactyl 9y ago
Who is to say fixing your neighbors machine is not leisure time? With the added benefit of increased social capital ( if I’m going to be clinical about it ).
james1071 9y ago
We know what happens when labour saving machines, such as washing machines, were invented - married women, who used to spend most of the day on housework entered the workforce.

kelnos 9y ago

Ugh, that sounds terrible. In my utopia, machines do all the work, and everyone in the world gets to do whatever they want, which will mostly be leisure. Yes, there will be some people for whom leisure means work, and more power to them. I still don't understand the drive to be "productive". What's the point of technology if not to shift the need to be productive away from humans? It sounds like a very sad world to me where people automate their jobs away in order to just find new jobs to fill their time. Of course, that is the world we _currently_ live in, just on a smaller scale than I'd hope we'd eventually achieve. I think it'd be a wonderful world where we can only dream up jobs for a tiny percentage of the population, assuming the wealth created by automation is distributed so people who don't work can still live great lives.

rland12 9y ago
I think about this a lot. People 100 years ago, if they teleported to today, would look at our lives, our possessions, the conveniences offered to us every single day by all of this increased productivity... They would probably wonder why we don't cut the hours we've worked by half or more. I don't quite understand it myself. Why does all of the time we've gained go to working, when it seems to me the cost of a "whole lifetime" has gone down by so much in the past 50 years. Machines seem to already do most of the work necessary for a human life for us.
- imtringued 9y ago
  The benefits are captured by spending more on exclusionary rivalrous goods like land, education and healthcare.
- kelnos 9y ago
  A sibling poster covered this, but a maybe-not-terrible analogy occurred to me: it's like writing software. Even when you've finished building out all the features you want to build, it's still never done. There might be bugs that need to be fixed, or you might want to make some slow parts of the code more efficient, or users have come up with some new use cases that require you to add new features. It just never ends. It's rare to find a software project that's "done", aside from abandoned projects. I guess people are just never satisfied with some kind of end state. And I guess that's a good thing; life is pretty good these days (if you're reasonably well off in a developed country), but, well... we still don't have our jet packs or hoverboards or flying cars. All progress depends on people not being satisfied with the status quo.