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> The pandemic is not primarily a supply shock. It is primarily a demand shock. People aren't going outside. That it's not primarily a supply shock (all kinds

by danans 6y ago

> The pandemic is not primarily a supply shock. It is primarily a demand shock. People aren't going outside. That it's not primarily a supply shock (all kinds of products and raw materials are just as available as they were before the pandemic) is yet another indicator of the impact increased automation and labor efficiency in manufacturing has had. It's remarkable - and a bit frightening - how little human labor is required to provide a sufficient supply of goods to a huge number of people.

_jal 6y ago
> It's remarkable - and a bit frightening - how little human labor is required A huge number of jobs are engaged in verification/audit/fraud detection/related activities. "Paper pushers", the cliche goes. An OK book that looks at this (and goes farther than I do, I think making some eventually unsupported claims) is _Bullshit Jobs_ by David Graeber. Worth a read - some of it is quite good. Audit functions will always be needed. That said, I'm pretty sure there will be a lot of job functions that looked "normal" pre-C19, that people will decide no longer need doing, or will be done substantially differently after.
- danans 6y ago
  > A huge number of jobs are engaged in verification/audit/fraud detection/related activities. "Paper pushers", the cliche goes. Agreed, and a lot of the rote work of auditing and fraud detection has been automated. But at some point, this devolves into the problem staying ahead of human adversaries, and that is hard to fully automate. Also, sometimes the slowness and inconsistency of human labor in these situations is itself a barrier to fraud.
  - _jal 6y ago
    Of course, humanity didn't get C19 and suddenly become honest. I'm thinking of it more as a reset - there are a lot of job functions where things are done the way they are because that's how we do things. After pauses like this, people look at those with fresh eyes.
erik_seaberg 6y ago
We aren't providing sufficient goods. We're consuming a backlog that was already produced and waiting, and that won't last.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  [Citation needed]
- JshWright 6y ago
  If you're suggesting there were several months worth of backlog prior to COVID-19, that would imply pretty massive inefficiencies...
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    There weren't; if there were, we wouldn't be in half as much of a bad shape as we're now. "Inefficiencies" is just a greedy optimizer's word for "safety margins", "redundancies" and "buffers". But we're living in a word run by greedy optimization. We're not consuming buffers (those were all cut long ago as "fat"), we're just lucky that the people responsible for logistics - who are right now forced to fly by the seat of their pants - are still managing to route goods around well enough for us to not notice, beyond an occasional shortage or price hike.
pmiller2 6y ago
> It's remarkable - and a bit frightening - how little human labor is required to provide a sufficient supply of goods to a huge number of people. And, yet, we still insist that a "full time" employee has to work 40 hours a week, typically in the form of "butt in seat" time.

by danans 6y ago

_jal 6y ago

> It's remarkable - and a bit frightening - how little human labor is required A huge number of jobs are engaged in verification/audit/fraud detection/related activities. "Paper pushers", the cliche goes. An OK book that looks at this (and goes farther than I do, I think making some eventually unsupported claims) is _Bullshit Jobs_ by David Graeber. Worth a read - some of it is quite good. Audit functions will always be needed. That said, I'm pretty sure there will be a lot of job functions that looked "normal" pre-C19, that people will decide no longer need doing, or will be done substantially differently after.

danans 6y ago
> A huge number of jobs are engaged in verification/audit/fraud detection/related activities. "Paper pushers", the cliche goes. Agreed, and a lot of the rote work of auditing and fraud detection has been automated. But at some point, this devolves into the problem staying ahead of human adversaries, and that is hard to fully automate. Also, sometimes the slowness and inconsistency of human labor in these situations is itself a barrier to fraud.
- _jal 6y ago
  Of course, humanity didn't get C19 and suddenly become honest. I'm thinking of it more as a reset - there are a lot of job functions where things are done the way they are because that's how we do things. After pauses like this, people look at those with fresh eyes.

erik_seaberg 6y ago

We aren't providing sufficient goods. We're consuming a backlog that was already produced and waiting, and that won't last.

pmiller2 6y ago
[Citation needed]
JshWright 6y ago
If you're suggesting there were several months worth of backlog prior to COVID-19, that would imply pretty massive inefficiencies...
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  There weren't; if there were, we wouldn't be in half as much of a bad shape as we're now. "Inefficiencies" is just a greedy optimizer's word for "safety margins", "redundancies" and "buffers". But we're living in a word run by greedy optimization. We're not consuming buffers (those were all cut long ago as "fat"), we're just lucky that the people responsible for logistics - who are right now forced to fly by the seat of their pants - are still managing to route goods around well enough for us to not notice, beyond an occasional shortage or price hike.

pmiller2 6y ago

> It's remarkable - and a bit frightening - how little human labor is required to provide a sufficient supply of goods to a huge number of people. And, yet, we still insist that a "full time" employee has to work 40 hours a week, typically in the form of "butt in seat" time.