5 ms·

Maybe productivity metrics aren't a perfect measure of society. On many qualitative dimensions we have a much higher quality of living now because of computers:

• thaumasiotes 8y ago
  Continuing the beer theme of my sidethread comment, I read a piece years ago making the point that the then-current explosion of microbreweries looked like a productivity disaster -- microbreweries produce a gallon of beer for a much higher cost than Anheuser-Busch does, so when an economist working with national-level data divides "beer produced in 2011" by "dollars spent producing beer in 2011", it looks like beer productivity has cratered compared to the golden age of the 1950s. In reality, of course, a can of Budweiser is cheaper than ever (productivity is up) while the populace has become so rich that it's voluntarily spending extra money on what it perceives as higher-quality beer. But there is no conceptual place for this in "beer" productivity statistics.
  • menacingly 8y ago
    This is great, it's one of those ideas I'll come back to later and think about again, applying to different stuff. Economics is such a tragedy, because on the one hand it's so elegant and satisfying, but on the other it seems sufficiently incomplete to be considered broken. Maybe it's the newtonian version of something.
    • xapata 8y ago
      You mean current methods will be replaced by more nuanced and accurate methods. Not that economics will be replaced. That'd be like physics being replaced instead of the methods changing. Newtonian methods had known flaws before relativity replaced them and quantum mechanics expanded that. Current economic methods also have known flaws. We're just waiting for Einstein.
      • menacingly 8y ago
        Correct, of course, and thanks for giving me the wording I'll use instead of mine next time :)
    • thaumasiotes 8y ago
      > it's one of those ideas I'll come back to later and think about again, applying to different stuff The general form of the idea is called Simpson's Paradox - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox The application to the beer example is that as high-cost beers displace low-cost beers from the market, the cost-per-beer-sold rises even as the price of low-cost beer and the price of high-cost beer are both falling.
    • cirgue 8y ago
      > Economics is such a tragedy, because on the one hand it's so elegant and satisfying, but on the other it seems sufficiently incomplete to be considered broken. The study of economics is as much a framework for asking questions as it is for answering them. National-level economic systems are inherently to complicated to do meaningful experiments on, so we don't get to use the tools we normally do to find our way. Economics isn't broken, but the view of economics as a sister to physics is.
      • menacingly 8y ago
        I was being generous hoping it's on a similar path to physics, because even in earlier stages physics produced something other than fascinating thought experiments and directly conflicting advice.
  • bluedino 8y ago
    Is it better for the economy for people to buy coffee from Starbucks or from 7-11? One is much cheaper and frees up money to be spent on other things.
    • wutbrodo 8y ago
      > One is much cheaper and frees up money to be spent on other things. The "other things" that people would spend on are just other vehicles for acquiring utility. If the customer enjoys the better coffee enough to justify the higher cost, then spending on that is exactly in line with "better for the economy".
  • conanbatt 8y ago
    Thats because Utility is a very hard thing to measure, being so subjective and individual.