Productivity

Note: In progress, but referenced elsewhere often enough that I published early.

In 1930, economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that his grandchildren's’ generation would have a 15 hour work week. At the time, it made sense. GDP was rising so quickly that anyone who could draw a line on a graph could tell that our generation would be four or five times richer than his. And the average middle-class person in his generation felt like they were doing pretty well and had most of what they needed. Why wouldn’t they decide to take some time off and settle for a lifestyle merely twice as luxurious as Keynes’ own?

• The cotton gin expanded slavery, not reduced it.

Productivity has increased, but instead of being expected to work less, we're expected to make more. See also Capitalism

Cambodian Fertilizer

There is a story regarding the French arrival in Cambodia. It goes that the French first came and introduced commercial fertilizer to the farmers in the rural country. They demonstrated that with this technology it was possible to grow twice as many crops. A year later, when they returned the French expected to find a community that was producing double the crops, most likely so they could begin the process of colonial exploitation under the guise of trade. But instead they found the same amount of crops as the year before. The French asked the farmers why they didn't use the fertilizer. The farmers stated that they did, and emphasized how nice it was to be able to grow the same amount of crops (enough to sustain the local population comfortably) with only needing to do HALF the work. That is the difference here. It is not "human nature", it is the result of a cult of consumerism.

Widgets per day

The theory of it goes something like this. Suppose you work at the widget factory and you get hired to make 10 widgets a day. It takes you an hour to make a widget, so you work 10 hour days.

Now one day you, clever as you are, find some way to make a widget twice as fast. Now you can make two widgets an hour. Boy howdy, you can go and work 5 hours a day, get more time with your family, and the factory is just as productive.

Not so! Suddenly the expectations change. Now you're expected to make 20 widgets a day, and that has you continue to work for 10 hours. It's the Hedonic Treadmill of productivity.

Tractors

When the tractor was introduced, it was advertised as able to make it so a farmer need only work 2 hours per day to get the same stuff done that he and his team did in one entire day.

Today, farmers still work 8 hours a day. The economy adapted to the fact that the farmer could work 8 hours a day, so he does. Same song, different verse.

We've seen this same story with

• Women entering the work force (and taking on debt)
  • We now act as if every family has two incomes, which makes it hard to live on one income.
• Increased access to communication and travel

Note: the number of workers in US agriculture has dropped form 14 million to 3 million. Increases in productivity don't correlate to more leisure time.

See Also

What we choose to automate
Alienation of Labor
Toward a Leisure Ethic
Mexican fisher
J Letter
Bullshit Jobs
Hedonic Treadmill