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Seems like a failure to properly attribute productivity back up the labor chain though? If 1 of the 4 infants cared for becomes a high-productivity software dev

Seems like a failure to properly attribute productivity back up the labor chain though? If 1 of the 4 infants cared for becomes a high-productivity software developer, shouldn't the labor productivity number of the teacher partially reflect that? Basically "number of cared for children" seems like a bad metric to score a childcare provider on, rather something like "net social contributions of all children cared for" seems like a more precise metric.

lotsofpulp 2y ago
Humans are not capable of measuring to that level of detail. It should be expected there will be externalities. So far, the only way I have thought of that society can align productivity of raising children well to the actual benefit of raising children well is by scrapping all old age benefits. But even that might not work in reality.
- tech_ken 2y ago
  Well sure but is the conclusion then that the effect is an artifact of the bad measurment, rather than something “real”?
nostrademons 2y ago
Productivity has a simple and unambiguous economics definition: "dollars in" / "hours worked". Software engineering is high-productivity simply because of the ability to resell the same piece of software over and over again, letting one engineer generate dollars in far in excess of the amount they actually work on it. Childcare is low productivity because people pay a certain (customarily low) amount for it, and the dollars in will simply be some small multiple of the price. The sharp inflation in childcare costs today is the market's way of properly attributing productivity back up the labor chain. If people still need childcare, they will pay more for it, forgoing other goods to get it. That raises the dollars in, which makes the productivity numbers for childcare equilibrate to how much society actually values it.
- tech_ken 2y ago
  Gotcha gotcha, that makes sense thanks for explaining

lotsofpulp 2y ago

Humans are not capable of measuring to that level of detail. It should be expected there will be externalities. So far, the only way I have thought of that society can align productivity of raising children well to the actual benefit of raising children well is by scrapping all old age benefits. But even that might not work in reality.

tech_ken 2y ago
Well sure but is the conclusion then that the effect is an artifact of the bad measurment, rather than something “real”?

nostrademons 2y ago

Productivity has a simple and unambiguous economics definition: "dollars in" / "hours worked". Software engineering is high-productivity simply because of the ability to resell the same piece of software over and over again, letting one engineer generate dollars in far in excess of the amount they actually work on it. Childcare is low productivity because people pay a certain (customarily low) amount for it, and the dollars in will simply be some small multiple of the price. The sharp inflation in childcare costs today is the market's way of properly attributing productivity back up the labor chain. If people still need childcare, they will pay more for it, forgoing other goods to get it. That raises the dollars in, which makes the productivity numbers for childcare equilibrate to how much society actually values it.

tech_ken 2y ago
Gotcha gotcha, that makes sense thanks for explaining