What’s it with economists thinking end of growth is the end of everything? Even when productivity growth stagnates that’s literally the highest productivity has ever been. People aren’t suddenly going to become poor because they aren’t richer than they were earlier. There’s no reason end of anything’s growth should spell doom other than greedy people trying to take other people’s pie.
I think the author misunderstood what “anti productivity” people were about. Most people would be okay with producing more with the same amount of work. The problem is trying to produce more with the same amount of people. That is what employers and hustle culture influencers promote, and the only backlash I’ve seen is towards those people.
Never mind, I just read the rest of the article and the author is trying to sell his self improvement class at the end. And he brags about using his secret writing technique (that he also wants to sell to you) while writing the article. I guess that explains why the article is packed with these fillers:
Given the importance of productivity, you would expect a few things to happen:
- It would be the headline of every major newspaper.
- World leaders would be constantly talking about it.
- Knowledge workers and companies would go all out increasing productivity.
Yet, not only is productivity growth rate not talked about, there is a huge backlash against it…
This was one of the least information dense texts I’ve ever read. The entire article can be summed up with “Productivity increased 50x between 1870-1970 and I thought it would increase more since because of the new technologies around but it only increased 2x. If we don’t return to higher productivity increase society might collapse. There are people that don’t like productivity but that’s because they don’t know the merits of productivity and what they’re actually upset about.”
Infinite growth only led to infinite inflation.
I think the problem of declining energy availability is often overlooked
Declining?
For example, if energy prices go up, energy is less available
I don’t follow that logic. You’d think it’s the other way around: if energy is less available, then the prices go up. If that what you meant?
That’s not a thing to care about unless it’s in farming. People need more down time both in consuming and producing.
Nice article, but the choice of “before-after” photos are not the greatest, except for maybe the first one about city garbage collection.
Great tech advancements happened in such ways that make the subjects in the photos wildly different. Plus the photos should be from 2023.
There are mini electrical cars sharing bike lanes available in certain cities.
The rockets are launching satellites that are 50 times smaller and lighter. And sometimes each launch has a dozen of them!
Passenger airplanes practically land themselves these days. The available in-cabin entertainment would have been unimaginable 30 years ago, and there is satellite internet available mid-flight. I admit that the passenger treatment quality has decreased, though (e.g. less legroom.)
The rest of the article is good, though. I haven’t finished reading it - so far it’s about the rich getting richer and getting most of the benefits of the productivity increase. Plus the productivity paradox.
It probably means there is something wrong with data. Productivity is growing very fast.
Although the breathless tone at the start is a bit annoying, it develops into a well written and researched piece. I suspect from your comment you didn’t read the article - it’s worth the time.
Aka: RTFA.
