

Let’s Be Less Productive - arnoooooo
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/opinion/sunday/lets-be-less-productive.html

======
jeffool
The thought of eschewing productivity makes me cringe instantly. But that
said, I worry he's not wrong about some things. Our economies don't seem to be
growing fast enough to negate the downsides of things like automation.

Rather than slow down productivity, which surely few other nations would do,
wouldn't it serve us better in the long run to do a better job of splitting up
the work between capable hands? In that vein, I'd be more for dropping the
full time work week significantly, as he mentions offhand. The story mentions
21 hours as a good work week number. I'd like to see that as three 7 hour
days. I'm fine with that. Lots more family/me/we time. Of course, the issue
becomes "compensation".

How are you going to survive off of roughly half of what you made before? The
ideals of a crazy person like me would be "hike up the minimum wage insanely
high, pry money from the pockets of the wealthy" but I doubt much of this
crowd would be with me there. (Based on my casual browsing I think it's fair
to call HN of a, to use American terms, slightly economically Libertarian
bent.) But the US already sees a large disparity between productivity and
compensation ^1, and it seems to be growing.

I'd love to see this discussed here though, if anyone has any insight. We all
agree there are many smart people here. So what happens? We find a magical new
job creating field like the Internet? (Because 3d printers only seem like
they'll increase productivity further.) We let a generation or two pass and
become an even more entrenched class based society?

I'm not asking anyone for answers. I'm just asking for other possible
outcomes. From my (hopefully wrong) view, it seems like we either reduce the
relatively abundant resource of laborers, increase the amount of labor to be
done, or even the two out in some fashion. The author here chooses one avenue
of balancing, I mentioned another. What else would other options entail?

^1 [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/18/wages-
productivity-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/18/wages-productivity-
report_n_837814.html)

~~~
dbingham
On the whole 21 hour work week thing, I think one way to deal with the
compensation issue would be to enforce maximum gaps. By which I mean, write a
law that says the top compensated individual in any company can only be
compensated so many times the bottom. So if an executive wants to be paid
more, after a certain point he has to raise everyone else's salary too. This
would also help deal with the issue of executive salaries being roughly 400x
average wage. Limit that to 50x or 10x. Money would be much more evenly
distributed.

~~~
politician
That sounds like a fine idea, but realize that just before the law comes into
force affected companies will move their operations overseas [1].

Do you support punitive tariffs on foreign imports?

[1]
[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2040142,00....](http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2040142,00.html)

~~~
dbingham
Charging a fine? No. Disallowing the entry of their goods into the US market
entirely unless they obey US labor laws? Yes.

It'd cause all manner of hell on implementation, because it would completely
turn the world economy on its head. Right now we're really dependent on
abusing the hell out of cheap labor and countries that don't have a solid
regulatory structure. So while we sit here and claim to decent labor and
environmental standards we're consuming a ton of goods produced with out them
at a cheap cost. But the world is a single, closed system. At some point, this
is going to catch up to us.

We could use our consumer power to force an equalization in the global labor
market by making a simple declaration: obey our labor and environmental
standards -- and let us confirm that you do -- or you don't get to sell your
goods to our market. Period. Suddenly, outsourced labor looks a lot less
attractive. If you can't abuse the cheap labor and lax environmental laws in
other countries, then there's no reason not to put your production in the US.

Of course, this all depends on the fact that the US is one of the top consumer
markets in the world, and that companies will do anything to avoid being cut
out of it. The window of opportunity in which that's true is closing fast with
the rise of China. And may, actually, already be closed. Of course, if you
could get multiple high consumption countries together and agree on mutual
labor standards to enforce and that any company not fulfilling them would be
kept out of any of those countries then it'd have a lot more power.

And of course, there's always the fact that any companies that refused could
always be replaced by start-ups.

The change over would be a little rough and chaotic, and it's hard
(impossible?) to predict what would actually happen during it. But if we
manage to make it through it, the resulting world would have a level playing
field for labor and environmental practices. It's difficult to predict the
effect it would have on living standards for those of us currently abusing
everyone else. Our living standard might drop a bit as the price of goods goes
up. But then, if this were linked with the previously mentioned law, a lot of
the wealth that's caught up in the top of the economy right now would be
forced down. That wealth would create a lot more consumers with money to
spend, which means more demand, which means more jobs for everyone. So it
could mean everyone's living standards go up -- despite a rise in the cost of
labor and therefor goods.

I'd be really interested to see someone model it.

~~~
politician
Consider that an obvious response by the targeted country to tariffs on their
exports is to erect restrictions on imports from the initiating country - a
situation which can easily result in mutual escalation of trade barriers and
one which the WTO was formed to prevent.

Rather than unilaterally barring goods from entering the US which do not
comply with our labor and environmental laws, a better approach could be to
work within the WTO framework to establish common labor and environmental
standards.

Of course, this is strongly resisted by developing nations who justifiably see
the strict pollution controls as a way to prevent their transition from vassal
states to competitive members of the global economy (see: Carbon Taxes).

~~~
dbingham
Ah, but we're not placing a tariff on any particular country nor banning goods
from a particular country. Rather we're targeting multi-national corporations.
And part of that targeting includes an increased wages requirement. A minimum
wage gap. So countries are really going to protest us insisting that companies
that want to sell goods in the US pay their citizens more? I would they'd be
willing to take the environmental standards if they came linked with a
significant increase in pay.

~~~
politician
When the US outlawed US-based financial institutions from honoring
transactions originating from the worldwide online gambling industry, Antigua
sued the US at the WTO and won the right to violate ~$21M worth of copyrights
(annually, IIRC).

This case illustrates two points, first, targeting companies or industries
rather than their host nations is irrelevant from the perspective of the WTO.
Second, the WTO has some very powerful tools for forcing member nations into
compliance with its rulings.

[1]
[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/21/business/worldbusiness/21i...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/21/business/worldbusiness/21iht-
wto.html)

------
ef4
This kind of alarmism is both very old and economically ignorant.

We have already experienced this scenario multiple times, and it always leaves
us better off. Consider that 200 years ago almost everyone was in farming, and
now it employs less than 2%, thanks to drastically higher productivity.

We didn't all end up unemployed. We invented whole new things to work on. Most
of us are doing things our ancestors would have thought were impossible or
frivolous or just bizarre.

~~~
dbingham
Actually, the farming trend is being reversed. We've realized that the
compromises we have to make in order to produce enough to feed us with only 2%
of the population results in food that is actually killing us and generating
super pests.

The trend is now headed back to more farmers working on smaller less efficient
farms with out machines (or with fewer machines) or chemicals. So don't base
your argument on the example of farming.

~~~
narag
It doesn't seem fair to put all the blame on automatization. I've read here
that high fructose corn syrup is suspect of contributing to obesity and some
other diseases. But is automatization responsible or USA regulations and
subsides?

In general, I'd say that the main factor is that the change of having cheap
and abundant food is not followed by a change in diet. It takes some pain and
a couple generations (in the best case) to adapt.

~~~
joshcrews
Automation is not the cause, but an increase in farmers per capita increases
resistance to unhealthful or immoral food production practices (crowded,
drugged, chemicalled animals; GMO crops, nutrient-depleted vegetables, corn-
raised cattle, raw milk bans).

More people getting into farming could really help turn around American food

------
ecmendenhall
Stuff is not growth, in the same way that money is not wealth (PG gets this.
You have probably read the essay: <http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html>).
Growth is just increasing wealth, but we measure it in terms of stuff (GDP,
factor productivity) because it's easy. There may be natural limits to the
amount of stuff we can produce. But there are, in principle, no natural limits
to the amount of wealth we can produce.

Growth—that is, more wealth due to better technology and higher
productivity—is exactly what enabled the New York Philharmonic to play
Beethoven's Ninth in the first place, instead of farm potatoes or work in a
factory. It's exactly what enables me to buy a ticket and go listen in person,
or spend nothing and watch the performance online, even though I'm not a king
or priest or robber baron! Pronouncements that growth (read: wealth,
innovation, technology, knowledge) must end are as silly as past
pronouncements that we have reached the limits of scientific knowledge and all
that's left is to look in the sixth place of decimals.

In fact, one path to more growth and better wealth is actually more
productivity in the "caring professions" singled out here. Medicine, social
work, and education all suffer from a similar stuff-growth measurement
problem! (Here is one discussion of this argument:
<http://www.economist.com/node/21016577>) We want better health, but we can't
measure it very well, so we rely on healthcare spending. We want better social
services, but it's tough to quantify outcomes, so we measure inputs like
program budgets. We want better education, but we're not sure what works, so
we measure number of teachers and test scores. Despite spending more and
producing more stuff in each area, there has been little growth in the last
few decades.

Professors of economics and sustainable development are both susceptible to
this fallacy.

------
robfig
I could be mistaken, but part of the assumption here seems to be that everyone
is equally good at their job. It seems far better to have the incredible
teachers leveraged as far as possible (to teach the most number of students
while still remaining effective) rather than having everyone chip in their 21
hours and go home. Since this applies in every industry, it seems to explain
why businesses prefer to have fewer (but more highly paid) employees.

In short, this would have happened if it was in anyone's interest. The
employee wants to work more to earn more. The employer gets value out of
consolidating production to the most productive.

~~~
CookWithMe
> It seems far better to have the incredible teachers leveraged as far as
> possible

And your assumption is that the potential leverage is quite big. I doubt it:
I've seen many students profit a lot from 1 on 1 private lessons - from
students 2 or 3 years ahead of them (or even from the same class). They are
arguably nowhere near as good as a teacher who has studied teaching and has
years of experience. Yet they can help the student a lot more because they can
focus 100% of their time on the single student and his individual needs.

~~~
heliodor
He was talking about hours worked, not class size. And he has a very good
point. All the talk in the tech community about the 10x programmer comes to
mind.

------
lmm
Think about it on an individual level. Suppose the economy is such that
there's only demand for 21 hours/week worth of your labour. Would you rather
a) work 21 hours/week b) work 40 hours/week, badly? Because that's what
choosing to lower productivity amounts to.

~~~
marvin
Well, from anecdotal evidence, this is what a lot of people already do. Option
A seems like a much better idea.

------
orangecat
This is a ridiculous article. Assuming the problem exists, he notes the
obvious and correct solution of reducing the time we spend working. Then he
inexplicably abandons that and insists that we deliberately limit our
productivity, so we can keep the holy 40+ hour work week.

 _What sense does it make to ask our teachers to teach ever bigger classes?_

I learned way more in Sebastian Thrun's online courses than most of my college
courses.

 _Our doctors to treat more and more patients per hour?_

If that doesn't compromise quality, then it will lower costs and increase
availability of medical care.

 _The care and concern of one human being for another is a peculiar
“commodity.” It can’t be stockpiled. It becomes degraded through trade._

And humans will have more time to care for each other if we aren't forced to
work unnecessarily long hours by well-meaning social engineers.

------
blindhippo
First thing I thought of when I read about a reduced workweek - especially 21
hours - damn, that would give me time to finish those side projects I've been
working on! I doubt most people have the same approach that I do, but you can
imagine the entreprenurial boost this might have on our society where many of
us are over educated for the type of work we end up doing.

------
AznHisoka
I dunno.. I see a lot of depressed faces in NY subways - the pinnacle of
economic growth.

While those Himalayan villagers and monks don't seem to worry about economic
growth and efficiency.. and they're always smiling.

~~~
orangecat
At yet, you're still in NY. Happiness isn't everything:
<http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=8311>

------
_pferreir_
OK, we could all settle at a lower per capita productivity level, but then
companies that have resources would be able to increase their workforce,
effectively obtaining an even more significant advantage over less wealthy
competitors (who can't afford increasing their staff). This probably means
that many small companies would go out of business.

------
gouranga
Ultimately, it should be: Let's be as productive as long as it doesn't
compromise ethics.

The latter (ethics) is usually too flexible.

------
freshnote
I consider myself highly productive, efficient (when I'm not on HN) and
reasonably smart and informed, and yet I'm not living any better than other
people who don't even know how to turn on a computer and never read books.

In terms of material wealth, I'm way behind many others my age (I don't own
furniture or a vehicle).

Still trying to figure that one out.

~~~
JonnieCache
What is it you're producing so much of so efficiently that somehow nobody is
willing to pay you for?

~~~
freshnote
I get paid, but I'm feeling the squeeze by everyone for lower rates (I do
freelance web design, writing, social media management).

When not doing client work, I experiment with new ideas, products and so on,
and so there are time and development costs and more misses than hits.

Admittedly, I'm not a materialist guy, but my point is knowing a lot of tech
stuff and working long hours doesn't guarantee wealth. I might even be better
off financially if I didn't know this stuff.

~~~
virmundi
It seems like you're getting squeezed because you haven't stayed with the
market. I've seen companies advertise template sites for as little as $100.
The sites are all customizable via a WYSIWGY interface. They are also hosted
for a small monthly fee because none of them will be a huge burden on the ISP.
As a result, this space is moving to more automated, but non-distinct sites.

Are you creating a similar setup? Are you able to compete by having a site
made for $100 in under an hour? If not, you can still make money in this
space, but you're going to have to be high end. Your clientèle will have to be
high end. They will have to be willing to pay high end prices too. And let's
not forget that there are many competitors aiming for this exact space. What
differentiates you from them? Can you buy/merge with them? All things to
consider.

~~~
GFischer
Indeed. I'm working with a company here in Uruguay that can give you a pretty
good website (with CMS, e-commerce and whatever you need) in 3 days, for
probably a lot lower wage than the grandparent poster. And they complain
(rightfully) that they can't compete with India shops.

What's his added value? In an Internet world, all such work where the customer
doesn't see his added value (other than "buy american" or some such) should go
to the country with cheapest skilled labor. Unless he's working in person and
gives that as his added value (neither the Indians nor my Uruguayan friends
will be able to compete then).

~~~
freshnote
I work in person with local businesses, but it's a tough market (and I agree
with what everyone has said).

Right now, I'm looking to get away from web-focused work. That's why I'm
working on my own stuff, but it all takes time.

