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“On the backs of others” implies the world is zero sum, which is just dumb. If you come in with an idea that gets 10% more efficiency out of an industry, you ca

“On the backs of others” implies the world is zero sum, which is just dumb. If you come in with an idea that gets 10% more efficiency out of an industry, you can pay more to the laborers for the same work they were doing before and still become a millionaire. The laborers made more money because of your idea while performing the same work. They are better off and still had no part in making the improvement.

AndrewKemendo 4y ago
>still had no part in making the improvement. Please explain how this "improvement" happened without the "laborers"
- kortilla 4y ago
  Lots of ways. Buying cost critical supplies in bulk from cheaper suppliers. Switching from truck based shipping to rail for distance where the flexibility isn’t needed. Those are just the low hanging fruits without any major impact to how work is done. Stepping down into the internals of the business, it’s going to vary a lot but in manufacturing you spend time looking at high failure rate processes, bottlenecks, and single points of failure. Changing these with effectively no change to how individual laborers work is quite common and can significantly improve yield stability and throughput. Going even lower level, it might be as simple as better insulation around a bake process resulting in 50% less energy. You might be interested in reading about the improvements in steel mills where the labor required was reduced by an order of magnitude over the last 50 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_crisis Improvements come without labor all of the time and it’s a frequent point of contention with the labor when it eliminates a role rather than acts as a force multiplier.
  - AndrewKemendo 4y ago
    I love how the answer is "by eliminating labor altogether" I couldn't have explained worker alienation better had I tried
    - kortilla 4y ago
      You air quoted something I did not say. Re-read my comment and at least try to learn how people that improve productivity are beneficial both to society and can be to labor itself.

AndrewKemendo 4y ago

>still had no part in making the improvement. Please explain how this "improvement" happened without the "laborers"

kortilla 4y ago
Lots of ways. Buying cost critical supplies in bulk from cheaper suppliers. Switching from truck based shipping to rail for distance where the flexibility isn’t needed. Those are just the low hanging fruits without any major impact to how work is done. Stepping down into the internals of the business, it’s going to vary a lot but in manufacturing you spend time looking at high failure rate processes, bottlenecks, and single points of failure. Changing these with effectively no change to how individual laborers work is quite common and can significantly improve yield stability and throughput. Going even lower level, it might be as simple as better insulation around a bake process resulting in 50% less energy. You might be interested in reading about the improvements in steel mills where the labor required was reduced by an order of magnitude over the last 50 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_crisis Improvements come without labor all of the time and it’s a frequent point of contention with the labor when it eliminates a role rather than acts as a force multiplier.
- AndrewKemendo 4y ago
  I love how the answer is "by eliminating labor altogether" I couldn't have explained worker alienation better had I tried
  - kortilla 4y ago
    You air quoted something I did not say. Re-read my comment and at least try to learn how people that improve productivity are beneficial both to society and can be to labor itself.