One of the main goal of “low-tech” is efficiency, where “efficiency” means minimising the wasting of the processes / systems built. This appeals to most people

One of the main goal of “low-tech” is efficiency, where “efficiency” means minimising the wasting of the processes / systems built. This appeals to most people as it is very intuitive. However, I argue that minimising wastefulness should not be the primary concern. This is especially visible in the limit, where the best (most “efficient”) system is the one that does nothing / doesn’t exist, and thus doesn’t waste anything. This seems as an irrelevant theoretical “gotcha” but is very apparent in practice. As people strive to make “efficient” systems, they often realise that it is indeed better to simply not do the thing in the first place.