How many 10x productivity revolutions do we need? At the end of it, will there be only one person left producing everything for humanity in 5 minutes each Tuesday afternoon?
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This is what I find fascinating about capitalism. It builds on the premise of increasing profit by increasing efficiency and quantity. With that mindset we should strive to improve efficiency until no one needs to work and everything is automated and autonomous, no? That would be the peak of efficiency? But then how would people pay for the products being produced? They cant, it needs to be free, since no one has a salary because theyre not working. But then the CEOs wouldnt make money. So theres no incentive unless your goal is not monetary but to improve the ultimate wellbeing of humanity. Its inherently a flawed concept since the main incentive is monetary, yet we refuse to accept what must be the ultimate goal to be able to keep power above others.
And yes, i know this is very simplified. But still explain to me why we do mass layoffs in favor of AI slop if the incentive is not entirely monetary and for the sake efficiency and or cutting costs. Explain how and who will survive the further we go along? Capitalism at its core makes the rich the survivors. There wont be infinite recursions of 10x productivity revolutions because the workers will die off in the process.
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
There is a hole in the heart of every rich person. They try to fill that hole with money, but the hole is never full.
When Elon Musk and every person like him says, “I have enough money”: that is when the people who actually produce value will have reached enough productivity. Not before.
When we eat the rich.
Once I would probably have said when everybody has enough.
But I have found out that is naive, because looking at billionaires, it’s obvious that people just increase their consumption to the extreme if they can. Apparently we will never have “enough”.With near limitless resources, we will probably want to own our own planets.
The condition of being a billionaire is pathological, and should be dealt with in an appropriate way to pathology.
Most of those people started out as perfectly normal people. It’s the unchecked power that makes people go gaga.
No most did not start out like normal people, By far the most billionaires grew up very privileged. Not just privileged as in not being poor, or not being a minority. But really really privileged.
These people generally grew up in an environment of entitlement, that is way beyond normal people. They think they are entitled to be privileged, and they think they deserve their privileges because they work so haaarrddd and are so brilliant with money because everything is paid for by their parents, and they were never short of money.Bill Gates, his mother was on the board of IBM.
Elon Musk. His father owned an emerald mine in South Africa.
Donald Trump inherited a fortune, and was given a million dollars just to start on and learn the ropes.Common in almost all billionaire stories is that they never had to work for anybody, and they never had to worry about economical consequences of their actions.
Actually, ironically, that would be BETTER than what we have now. Billionaires increasing their consumption would at least mean they’re SPENDING their money on something which is paying SOMEONE.
Instead they hoard and do nothing with it.
I think we’re already productive enough, just not distributive enough.
Let’s be a little more granular here. Increased production efficiency is good. If we could legitimately just have everyone take turns working five minutes a week and provide for all of humanity that would be great. The problem is how the benefits of increased productivity are distributed. If worker’s pay started at a reasonable livable wage and increased along with their productivity the world would be in a much different situation now. If we had a UBI scheme that allowed everyone to have a minimum acceptable standard of living automation would be much more desirable.
Not a fan of UBI here as a practical solution, but it’s nice as a heuristic vision in discussions. It wouldn’t solve any problems on its own, prices would just adapt and you’re back at 0. That is, unless you put in the effort to fight the political fights for regulation of rent and food prices, working conditions etc. And if you do that well, you don’t need UBI. Anyway, UBI as a concept helps “summarize” where such fights would be needed IMHO, I just don’t believe it would magically make exploitative businesses not exploit everything they can.
About 45 years ago we hit it. Its why its just been layoffs and office fuckery ever since
I’m agree with the consequence but not the cause. Jack Welsh figured out the cheat code to increase short term stock prices by laying off people, regardless of their actual role or value to the company.
Since then, every company has done it whenever they need a quick boost in numbers.
Karl Marx enters the chat
Increasing productivity of workers is met with demand for more production-intensive products. It’s like how every time hardware improves, software becomes more complex to take advantage of that increased capability. It’s like Jevon’s Paradox, but applied to productivity of workers.
One prominent example: our farmers are more productive than ever. So we move up the value chain, and have farmers growing more luxury crops that aren’t actually necessary for sustenance. We overproduce grains and legumes, and then feed them to animals to raise meat. We were so productive with different types of produce that we decided to go on hard mode and create just-in-time supply chains for multiple cultivars so that supermarkets sell dozens of types of fresh apples, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, etc., and end up eating much more fresh produce of diverse varieties compared to our parents and grandparents, who may have relied more heavily on frozen or canned produce, with limited variety.
Very interesting question!
The economy doubles roughly every 20 years (since centuries at least), and for me we are already there (living in the EU mind you).
We still need some more for renewables, but that’s about it IMO.
NOW, that is my perspective, maybe people growing up today thinks “just a bit more and I’ll be satisfied”, but I doubt it. You can’t eat 50 steaks a day.
The evident problem we have is that rich people siphon away lots of it, so we still have to get up at 8:30 and drive to work. A gradual transition (people still need to work) seems what would be the best way forward, IMO.
Yeah, I guess I was thinking about this as “If we were to set a productivity goal for humanity, where would that be?” It’s a bit tiring in everyday life (in my line of work but I guess everywhere?) that you can always produce more of everything and there is no point where your todo list is just empty for a while. If it is, just add more items.
Never. The line must keep moving upwards. If it doesn’t come from productivity it comes from enshittification, layoffs, offshoring, etc.
To clarify, this is the thinking that is towards the core of the issue.
When we’ve achieved Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism.
I’d love some FALGSC!
I think a better question is how many more productivity revolutions the world can sustain. We’re probably way past that point.
What we need is efficiency revolutions. We need to do the same with less.
Also, your scenario made me think of this Onion classic: https://youtu.be/rYaZ57Bn4pQ
