Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better

I love this comment on so many levels ;D

> I've found "efficiency as the opposite of stability" a very powerful concept to think about

I think this concept misses capacity. I my opinion, it is crucial that you always leave some over-capacity to have stability (lets say, you are running at most at 80% capacity). If you then increase your efficiency without sacrifying your buffer capacity, everything is fine. But as soon as your try to run at more than 80% capacity to be more efficient, this slightest problem could have devastating effects.

Dr. Richard Hamming said in his lecture series “Life Long Learning” given at the Naval Postgraduate School: a perfectly engineered bridge would collapse if an extra pound was driven across it. I used to think this was a joke, or at least said in jest. Nope.

Oh dear, I want to rant.

Efficiency is a dimensionless ratio of energy in to energy out. Economics, as formulated, has little to say about efficiency and lots to say about preference relations on utility functions (the texts do tend to hand-wavingly waffle about how markets attain "efficiency" through hypothetically rational actors maximizing utility functions etc., if you want a giggle check out the "fundamental theorems of welfare").

I actually read the fine article, and didn't give up after the first couple of paragraphs.

And in paragraph the third is introduced friction. I dunno, maybe it's because I actually study science, but friction is a well defined thing and the coefficient of same is another _dimensionless_ variable. It seems every time economists want to incorporate a notion from science proper they go for the dimensionless stuff because that way they don't have to go through the whole tiresome rigmarole of ... dimensional analysis. It makes me feel like Tantacrul criticising UI's (check him out on youtube, he's both funny and informative).

Anyway, efficiency is not dangerous, efficiency will actually allow the survivors of the Anthropocene Disaster make it through the coming disaster. Slowing down is not a bad notion because it means most humans can spend more time thinking (quite efficient actually) and less time haring around the planet distracting themselves from the vapidity of their vanity. However life is not better because it is slower, it's better because humans appreciate what an extraordinary (literally and figuratively) opportunity it is to be alive.

As insurance policy against disaster stop listening to economists because they observably don't have a clue (they can't make accurate and meaningful predictions), instead study science, especially physics, because these meanings are measured against reality and the resulting predictions are highly reliable (TANSTAAFL /rant

I think this article is missing something. What it talks about is efficiency of systems, which I think is different than efficiency in process.

Most of what the article talks about is making large systems more efficient for the benefit of the system at large. I agree, this makes individual components of the system more stressed and prone to catastrophic failure at any one point in the system. People within that kind of efficient system are pushed to their limits and breaking points.

However, making individual processes efficient i've found reduces stress on the individuals involved in that process and allows for that slowing down time.

The examples I can think of to back my points up

Previously I worked at a job where the actual process was incredibly inefficient. I ended up working long hours and twice as hard as I needed to. By the time I left that job, I'd increased the efficiency of the process to the point where I was working reasonable hours, had some good downtime to relax or take care of other things I'd had to neglect before.

The overall system at the place though was fairly inefficient, which was a good thing. It meant we were usually a little ahead and could account for things that went wrong.

Another recent example at my current job, we were working with a person who tried to overhaul our inefficient, yet working system. Our processes were efficient enough that we always got what we needed to do done. The person we were working with tried to over engineer an 'efficient' schedule and system for us that in the end caused far too much friction and they ended up losing money and the business relationship between the company I work for and them ended.