Quantity of output matters.
Maximising efficiency when the result is still *less* even if better value per hour still loses.
Less is less.
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We're talking total output times quality, here. For intellectual work, 1 good idea crushes 10 mediocre ones.
Quantity is severely overrated in a lot of professions.
E.g. most of my work is spent correcting bad design documents that could have been done much better, slower.
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Good ideas have to be implemented and implementation is about quantity of output not just elegance or efficiency or lack of mistakes.
Efficiency and productivity is absolutely fundamental don’t get me wrong but you can’t isolate that as the single dime is up to optimise on.
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Don’t know where you got the idea that capitalism is about productivity tho.
It’s about returns on capital. Not the same thing.
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I didn't?
The mythos of capitalism, that they sell you on every level of discourse, is that it makes the most productive, efficient & prosperous society.
The reality, as I already stated, is that it's about the bottom line only. We'll happily hamstring ourselves to increase it.
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I don’t hear that mythos being pushed where I am at least.
Naked capitalism is very bad at capturing externalities. Hybrid forms can be much better.
And far from obvious that there is a better workable system - the right variant of capitalism is the question IMO.
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Sure. I am from a hypercapitalistic country that everyone seems to think is at least part socialist.
All it is is a different distribution of spoils. Fewer billionaires, fewer poor & homeless...
Yeah, it's a pretty specifically neoliberal fiction I think. Chicago magick.
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The specific fiction that deregulated (or really, WTO-regulated) markets represent the peak in efficient solutions (and economic activity).
Social democracy is pretty different, but it's a postcolonial system. Norway without oil profits is not Norway.
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I am a bit concerned that all of these political ideologies and systems are just switching the bandages on an infected wound.
None of them want to treat it before it claims the patient. The climate timeline is... not promising.
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Give you a small example: Norwegian companies doing cutting edge r&d in solar power were shut down by lobbyists a few years ago.
The state has a big ownership stake in the companies behind the lobbying.
Perverse incentives.