Productivity is such a bullshit idea… Like how do you measure productivity? In GDP? Because in that sense, inflation increases productivity (nevermind that what that really means is that more money moved around simply because everything costs more). Or are you measuring units shipped? What units? In what way could these be equivalent. Output for outputs sake is the definition of bullshit jobs. Most of this productivity people talk about is actually just meaningless toiling for meaningless output. We aren’t building homes or harvesting food or in any way bettering our lives, we are toiling towards tricking rocks into being forced to suffer consciousness or something as closely approximating that as possible. Leave the pretty rocks alone and do something useful, for something other than GDPee growth. In what way is making the number go whirrrrr worth destroying the biosphere? Nobody is happy. The rich are miserable because as it turns out even being the first person to a trillion net worth can’t fill the dad shaped hole in your heart and the poor are miserable because meaningless toil is not a great recipe for fulfillment. This whole system up to and including AI needs to go full sui, so we can get back to picking fleas of eachother’s backs… Or you know, whatever the fuck you feel like doing when society doesn’t have a gun to your head.
Productivity is such a bullshit idea… Like how do you measure productivity? In GDP?
Yes, but normalised for buying power and per capita. Where I live the last several decades saw an increase by +250% in normalised economic output per capita, while at the same time real normalised wages stayed the same. Which marks a stark decoupling of economic output and wages (thus usually also pensions, taxes (public budgets), sometimes health care - all linked to wages) that did not exist before. What happens to all those gains? They get transfered upwards to a few rich people, while the system is now only based on less than a third of the economic output… Alas! “We can’t afford proper pensions, social security or even just maintaining the existing infrastructure anymore” is the most sang song everywhere the neoliberal insanity rules.
And alongside it come fairy tales about demographics (how should the working people afford double the amount of people that need support? easy… when everyone of them is 6x as productive -> see output per capita still more than 3 times as high) and a lot of agitation pitting the “lazy stupid youth” against the “greedy old generation” when in reality they get all fucked over by the same small minority (with the old ones just having a better buffer because they already worked when the system wasn’t that broken).
Long story short: Industrialisation killed so many jobs… but in reality the people still working suddenly made enough to provide for the rest because of massive production gains (and so children didn’t need to work anymore, women could stay home and raise the kids etc). Automation killed so many jobs, yet again the actual productivity per capita massively increased. In general development of tech but also society happened and increased life expectancy as well as productivity side by side. And now we are talking about the impact of AI. Guess what… the problem is again not AI. It’s having changed the system to the point where workers get exactly nothing from productivity gains because we need to push imaginary stock market numbers and shareholder profits instead. Well done Reagan, Mulroney, Thatcher, Mitterand, Kohl and countless others…
Productivity is such a bullshit idea… Like how do you measure productivity? In GDP? Because in that sense, inflation increases productivity (nevermind that what that really means is that more money moved around simply because everything costs more). Or are you measuring units shipped? What units? In what way could these be equivalent. Output for outputs sake is the definition of bullshit jobs. Most of this productivity people talk about is actually just meaningless toiling for meaningless output. We aren’t building homes or harvesting food or in any way bettering our lives, we are toiling towards tricking rocks into being forced to suffer consciousness or something as closely approximating that as possible. Leave the pretty rocks alone and do something useful, for something other than GDPee growth. In what way is making the number go whirrrrr worth destroying the biosphere? Nobody is happy. The rich are miserable because as it turns out even being the first person to a trillion net worth can’t fill the dad shaped hole in your heart and the poor are miserable because meaningless toil is not a great recipe for fulfillment. This whole system up to and including AI needs to go full sui, so we can get back to picking fleas of eachother’s backs… Or you know, whatever the fuck you feel like doing when society doesn’t have a gun to your head.
Yes, but normalised for buying power and per capita. Where I live the last several decades saw an increase by +250% in normalised economic output per capita, while at the same time real normalised wages stayed the same. Which marks a stark decoupling of economic output and wages (thus usually also pensions, taxes (public budgets), sometimes health care - all linked to wages) that did not exist before. What happens to all those gains? They get transfered upwards to a few rich people, while the system is now only based on less than a third of the economic output… Alas! “We can’t afford proper pensions, social security or even just maintaining the existing infrastructure anymore” is the most sang song everywhere the neoliberal insanity rules.
And alongside it come fairy tales about demographics (how should the working people afford double the amount of people that need support? easy… when everyone of them is 6x as productive -> see output per capita still more than 3 times as high) and a lot of agitation pitting the “lazy stupid youth” against the “greedy old generation” when in reality they get all fucked over by the same small minority (with the old ones just having a better buffer because they already worked when the system wasn’t that broken).
Long story short: Industrialisation killed so many jobs… but in reality the people still working suddenly made enough to provide for the rest because of massive production gains (and so children didn’t need to work anymore, women could stay home and raise the kids etc). Automation killed so many jobs, yet again the actual productivity per capita massively increased. In general development of tech but also society happened and increased life expectancy as well as productivity side by side. And now we are talking about the impact of AI. Guess what… the problem is again not AI. It’s having changed the system to the point where workers get exactly nothing from productivity gains because we need to push imaginary stock market numbers and shareholder profits instead. Well done Reagan, Mulroney, Thatcher, Mitterand, Kohl and countless others…