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> They’re winning, but everyone’s losing. Huh. Interesting. I think it’s the other way around. Efficiency leads to more convenience and better prices. Thus, I
by baxtr 6y ago
> They’re winning, but everyone’s losing.
Huh. Interesting. I think it’s the other way around. Efficiency leads to more convenience and better prices. Thus, I have more time and money to spend on things that really matter to me. The most basic “item” is for example a dish washer. How many hours and water was wasted before doing this work by hand?
- llimos 6y agoThis is exactly the point he addresses in his final paragraph. Efficiency is great, but up to a point, and we've passed it. Most of today's innovations are not freeing up people's time on the scale that the washing machine or dishwasher did. On the contrary, many of them are using up time without any productivity gains. Smartphones and Facebook have not improved any other part of the economy besides their own. Edit: See this interview which makes the point very well https://www.vox.com/a/new-economy-future/robert-gordon-interview https://www.vox.com/a/new-economy-future/robert-gordon-inter...
- andyfleming 6y agoOr worse, the gains from efficiency improvements aren't benefitting the end-users anymore.
- raverbashing 6y agoAgreed There's a point where more automation does not mean things become easier. Let's take the same dishwasher example. Of course it saves a lot of time for a family of four, for example. Pop it in and you're done. But for example, for a single person, this makes much less sense. Because the time it takes for putting it in the dishwasher, waiting to fill the machine and running the cycle is longer than just washing the damn dishes. No automation is "free". And overautomation causes problems as well.
- Smaug123 6y agoWell, the wall-clock time may be longer, but the human time is much shorter. As long as you have one meal's worth of slack in the amount of crockery you have, the dishwasher wins by a country mile in the amount of effort expended.
- raverbashing 6y agoYes, but as I said, and the math changes for different automations, the time (and ease) vary Automate dishwashing for a 10 party dinner: no brainer Automate dishwashing for one plate, one fork and one knife. Not advantageous Automate generating a manual report that takes 30min and needs to run everyday: no brainer also Automate a report that needs one piece of data that's easy to get and needs to run once a month: does it really matter?
- danjc 6y agoAre convenience and efficiency the ultimate goals to optimise for? Were our ancestors less happy because they had to wash dishes by hand?
- baxtr 6y agoLet’s ask women if they want to go back to hand washing garment
- chii 6y agoYes, because the time and effort spent on the creation of the dishwasher is less than the total time and effort required to hand wash dishes, which means there's now a savings in resources when using the dishwasher, and that savings could be used for more productivity elsewhere (and perhaps producing an even more labour/resource saving device). This eventually avalanches into a state where the absolute minimum resources required are spent for a task, thus allowing more tasks to be done with the finite resources available. This translates to more wealth and quality of life.
- danjc 6y agoExcept for dishwasher factory workers. Progress is inevitable, I'm questioning whether progress actually increases happiness.
- tonyedgecombe 6y agoI still wash our dishes by hand. I quite like doing it, it's almost like a meditation and it doesn't take much longer than using a dishwasher.
- baxtr 6y agoI do that too from time to time. I hate drying dishes, but washing has the same effect on me like you describe. However, I love having the option to just start the dish washer and do other stuff instead.
- bserge 6y agoThen you belong to "they" in this case :D People working like robots in warehouses and factories are certainly not winning. They have neither more time, nor more money.