Entropy Is Fatal

There are no isolated systems in the context being discussed, i.e. houses and phones and so on. This is an important point: steady-state thermodynamics is a far more complicated beast than closed-system thermodynamics, and moving-state thermodynamics even more so.

Furthermore, how does one distinguish between useful and useless work? Work is work, the value of work is something humans decide on socially. Say people are put to work building a pyramid, so the kings and priests have a nice high place to sit. Egyptian pyramids are impressive, but are they useful? Maybe in terms of some abstract notion like consolidating the power of the state or impressing one's neighbors.

Anyway, here are some solutions to the author's points:

1) Unlimited and uncontrolled growth: match inputs to outputs. Delete as many old emails per day as you receive new ones. If it's important, copy and store securely offline. If you buy new clothes, send an equal amount of old clothes to recycler or the thrift store. If that's too much work, cut back on inputs instead.

2) Decision-makers have no skin in the game: If the decision-maker wants to build a pyramid, the decision-maker should be spending their days building that pyramid alongside their employees. Then they might decide that building pyramids is a useless activity, and perhaps building a bridge or a dam would be a wiser undertaking. Yes, investment capitalism has this problem. Put the shareholders to work on the production line or give them the boot, that's the solution.

3) Momentum is not a source of entropy I don't think. Entropy is more like diffusion than directed momentum. An object impacting another due to momentum could increase entropy, like a car running into a brick wall. Maybe the author is talking about something abstract like 'the momentum of bad habits is hard to break'? Here is where an injection of entropy ('shaking things up') might be helpful.

Physics analogies can be rather overused, in conclusion.

Software: try to build orthogonal features so that maximum value can be obtained with minimum complexity; build tools with well-designed deprecation mechanisms, then have releases where underused/redundant functionality is first deprecated and then removed entirely.

e.g. all the major extension repositories for a particular tool parse the machine-generated deprecation list, scan extensions, and email owners when they use deprecated APIs. Maybe provide "shims" where APIs are internally removed entirely but transitional packages are provided that implement the removed APIs in terms of still-present ones.

Companies: deliberately design policies and organizational structures that are simple and minimize entropy; be prepared to pay some upfront financial costs to do so (e.g. because your policies aren't layers upon layers of hacks that grow every time someone makes a mistake), but reap rewards in the future as incidental costs of running your company are lower and less bureaucracy means workers are more efficient.

e.g. instead of having a bunch of different rules about different kinds of vacation time, consolidate them all into 1 or 2 kinds (normal and medical?) and give everyone a bit extra to compensate for some of the edge cases that were smoothed over.

Governments: legislators should spend some time attempting to "refactor" old laws such that fewer words and less complexity still results in effectively the same legal environment; reduce government functions (as much as some of you may dislike that idea).

e.g. instead of trying to provide hundreds/thousands of different special-case tax breaks for low-income families, use a "sliding" tax rate where e.g. at $1k/year annual income your tax rate is 0%, at $1M a year your tax rate is n%, with linear interpolation between those two extremes (or whatever). Simpler, still somewhat fair, people might actually be able to do their taxes by reading the law, and no suspicious discontinuities[1]. Or something else - with some thought and a little experience in government, I'm sure someone could come up with an income tax system that was an order of magnitude shorter than what the US has now.

[1] https://danluu.com/discontinuities/