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this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
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I love the abstract “productivity”.
Like yo, cancer is incredibly productive.
Demolishing subsistence farms and replacing them with cash crop slave plantations is mad profitable.
I could make thousands of dollars in a day if I just sold everything I own.
Our metrics of economic growth revolve around basically doing all of the above, to varying degrees of figurative vs. literal-ness.
This reminded me of an old joke:
Two economists are walking down the street with their friend when they come across a fresh, streaming pile of dog shit. The first economist jokingly tells the other "I'll give you a million dollars if you eat that pile of dog shit". To his surprise, the second economist grabs it off the ground and eats it without hesitation. A deal is a deal so the first economist hands over a million dollars.
A few minutes later they come across a second pile of shit. The second economist, wanting to give his peer a taste of his own medicine, says he'll give the first economist a million dollars if he eats it. The first economist agrees and does so, winning him a million dollars.
Their friend, rather confused, asks what the point of all this was, the first economist gave the second economist a million dollars, and then the second economist gave it right back. All they've accomplished is to eat two piles of shit.
The two economists look rather taken aback. "Well sure," they say, "but we've grown the economy by two million dollars!"
The story is interesting but not very lifelike. The first economist would be much richer than the first, if they were OK with spending that much money on humiliating someone else. The likelihood that the second economist would accept the same deal is impossible in my mind. That amount of money is just humiliation money to them, not really worth it.
That's not how productivity works. It's basically looking at how much a person can produce with a given amount of labor.
Take that small scale subsistence farmer. Individually, they will live a precarious life. Their country will not have the surplus food needed for other pursuits like building cities, engaging in R&D, developing science, and so on. A smaller and smaller number of people need to be able to feed more and more using less land per person.
Manually copied manuscripts are another example. They were painstakingly copied over by hand in an incredibly low productivity manner. The introduction of the printing press essentially eliminated an art form, but gave rise to practical mass media.
In the present day, computers have been the main form of productivity booster. While arguably social media is a drag on productivity, overall computers open up a broad range of possibilities.
Cancer is incredibly costly to society. Think about it, a single person getting cancer could mean many hours of them being in the hospital. Net zero on productivity
As I detailed above, transitioning from unproductive farms to highly productive farms is necessary. Don't believe me, ask Mao.
That would not be a productive activity since there would be no value added. Arguably there would be less value, since that stuff is likely worth more to you than it is to another person.
The problem in the US is that increasing productivity among individuals is not scaling evenly with increasing benefits for individuals. So despite the success of large scale agriculture or the efficiency offered by computers, it feels like "productivity for productivity's sake" at best or "productivity for the wealthiest individuals' sake" at worst. It is not productive for me to work harder at my job because it does not translate to any tangible benefit for me, my family, or my community. To me, this is what makes "productivity" feel like an abstract concept.
Bro, how could you misunderstand so badly. Cancer is literally uncontrolled cell production in the body. Cancer is highly productive (in the body) but obviously not a good thing to have in your body.