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Where has all the productivity gone?

johndcook.com

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Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#151

Post by throwawaylinux »

lkrubner wrote: post #132
throwawaylinux wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But, as a separate issue, the above essay is focused on computers, and so it implicitly raises the Solow Productivity Paradox: why don't computers seem to add anything to productivity? Just going by eye, there is a pretty sharp trend upward from about 1990-2005, which I think roughly corresponds to the period when the bulk of computerization happened in homes, offices, schools, as well as being put to use in many o…

I can not take credit for Solow Productivity Paradox, all credit needs to go to Solow himself. The uptick in productivity between 1995 and 2005 is mostly attributable to 2 sectors: retail finance In retail, it was the era of big boxes, lead by WalMart. Basically, it was the era when big retail learned how to take advantage of big databases to better manage inventory. Sadly, this did not seem to be the beginning of a…

Do you have a source for that? You're saying a productivity increase that amounted to around 20% across the entire workforce is mostly attributable to advances in HFT and logistics in the retail industry?

Even if we ignore that both of those were probably only made possibly with computers, that seems astounding considering retail and finance makes up less than 20% of the economy by GDP.

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#152

Post by charles_f »

reedlaw wrote: post #73
coding123 wrote: post #6

> This is what happened with the introduction of household appliances. Instead of spending less time doing laundry, for example, we do laundry more often. I have thoroughly debunked this commonly referenced saying. I don't have a washer and a dryer any more and I can't go into laundromats because Tide delivers a chemical burn. (Even with 2 empty loads in a row.) No, I hand wash all my clothes and it takes way longer…

I took it to mean people used to wear clothes longer between washes, not just that we do more frequent, smaller loads. It would be interesting to see a comparison showing how much longer an average person should wear the same clothes in order to make hand washing time commensurate with machine washing time.

Agree with that, but then. I have 3 kids and take care of laundry with a wife who wares jeans a maximum of one day in a row (yeah...), it probably takes me between 1 and 2 hours per week, most of it being the folding and sorting. If I were to wash clothes manually, even say, 4 times less, it would still be hugely more time consuming

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#153

Post by perl4ever »

rfrey wrote: post #139
forcry wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>My idea is to have a huge fuel tax, but to return it to each citizen in equal amounts, not use it for general purposes, so that people who really need to burn a lot of fuel can, but those who don't are incentivized not to. Interesting. Have you described it in detail somewhere?

The notion of a carbon tax being revenue neutral is pretty widespread, in fact I think most carbon taxes are designed that way.

I'm unclear on the gap between the "notion" and the protests in France.

The Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fee_and_dividend) is kind of inconsistent - it says that a revenue neutral tax is a "conservative" idea, then it has more about a "universal climate income" under "social justice".

Widespread is not the same thing as generally accepted. I think I've been reading vaguely hostile stuff recently about carbon taxes from vaguely progressive sources, but I'm not sure why.

I'm wondering if progressives are against it because it's considered conservative.

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#154

Post by [deleted] »

dcolkitt wrote: post #21
toomuchtodo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone churning out Tiktok, Clubhouse, and Robinhood while we need more SpaceX and Teslas. I’m unsure how to tilt the equation so solving for hard (necessary) engineering is more profitable (or lower risk) than window dressing.

TikTok, Clubhouse and Robinhood have touched the lives of orders of magnitudes more people than Tesla or SpaceX. Tesla sold half a million cars last year. TikTok provided entertainment for a billion people.

[deleted]

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#156

Post by perl4ever »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #138
perl4ever wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I make about 20% of what people claim the SV crowd earns. I just filled up my gas tank. It cost me about $23, or around 6 cents per mile. Somewhere around $3. I could still afford to drive a fair amount even if gas cost ten times what it does now. There's no guarantee that would reduce demand enough. But if gas was made extremely expensive, then aren't we going to see this, but bigger? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y…

I've come around to the idea that we should put excise taxes on the sale of new cars that use fossil fuels and use the revenue to help working class people replace their existing gasoline cars with electric[1]. The idea is help people do what you want them to do instead of apply the rubber hose. [1] One way to think about that is you force people buying new cars to be carbon neutral by paying to retire existing cars.

The goal is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. In order to do that, it has to be done in a way that the masses will not revolt and eliminate the political leaders who want to prevent climate change.

I think that your suggestion, while I guess it's mainstream and basically what's already being done in most places, is guaranteed to fail in both respects.

If we tax one thing and subsidize another, without any linkage to CO2 emissions, then we will not get the reductions we need.

We cannot reconcile the idea that CO2 is the problem, while maintaining that some CO2 is more equal than others.

Can you explain further why you do not like the idea of pursuing the goal that matters, and prefer substituting one that doesn't?

Do you personally, at work, observe how metrics and KPIs that aren't chosen well, lead to bad behavior?

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#157

Post by perl4ever »

2arrs2ells wrote: post #137
forcry wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>My idea is to have a huge fuel tax, but to return it to each citizen in equal amounts, not use it for general purposes, so that people who really need to burn a lot of fuel can, but those who don't are incentivized not to. Interesting. Have you described it in detail somewhere?

This general idea is called a revenue neutral carbon tax: ex https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2019/07/revenue-neutral-c...

But people seem negative on it recently, and I'm not sure why.

I don't see any feasible alternative and I'm getting cognitive dissonance from people who are getting more vocal about climate change being an emergency and aren't pushing this.

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#158

Post by ximm »

> The Great Dissipation

We should stop reinventing the concept of "efficiency gains can be decreased or even nullified by psychological effects" and instead agree on a term for it. So far I found:

- Rebound Effect

- Jevons paradox

- Le Chatelier's principle

- SnackWell effect

- Induced demand

- Parkinson's law

- Risk compensation

I bet there are many more applications to specific domains.

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#159

Post by perl4ever »

forcry wrote: post #133
perl4ever wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I make about 20% of what people claim the SV crowd earns. I just filled up my gas tank. It cost me about $23, or around 6 cents per mile. Somewhere around $3. I could still afford to drive a fair amount even if gas cost ten times what it does now. There's no guarantee that would reduce demand enough. But if gas was made extremely expensive, then aren't we going to see this, but bigger? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y…

>My idea is to have a huge fuel tax, but to return it to each citizen in equal amounts, not use it for general purposes, so that people who really need to burn a lot of fuel can, but those who don't are incentivized not to. Interesting. Have you described it in detail somewhere?

It seems to be a right wing proposal that's been around for some time. That must be why I either didn't run across it or forgot; I mostly ignore conservative media.

Re: Where has all the productivity gone?

#160

Post by hedora »

forcry wrote: post #142
harryh wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As for "longer life expectancy", all accounts I've read say that we got that early on in the 20th century In the US, life expectancy at birth was around 53 in 1921. Today it's almost 79. That's a nearly 50% increase. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040079/life-expectancy-... It's a particularly interesting time to discount the life extension benefits of modern technology. We just saw multiple vaccines get develo…

>We just saw multiple vaccines get developed and deployed in record time But can you show me the exact breakthrough that came by this pouring of resources into the research, and that enabled such vaccines, by removing blockers that blocked such vaccines for decades?

The main vaccine “innovation” was that the FDA decided to finally approve an mRNA therapy. Moderna’s been trying to get such things approved for about a decade.

So, the “breakthrough” was a brief suspension of questionable bureaucratic barriers. (Temporary suspension of “Dissipation” from the article.)

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