Post
Via someone else I skim read https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2026/05/uk-decline-and-stylised-empirical-facts.html this morning and find myself once again being utterly deflated by the repeated use of the word “productivity” and phrases like “output per hour”.
The sensibility behind those words is the soil we till and it is the seed of our cultural death
…O, congratulations on the birth of your new child. You must be already looking forward to the output per hour they can perform.
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The sycamore at the end of our garden is in full leaf. I can’t help but wonder how much productivity it could generate if I were to cut it down.
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The great thing about AI is how much more quickly we can produce things nobody needs or even really wants
@urlyman I recall that the output per hour from my youngest was off the charts until we discovered he was lactose intolerant!
I have some sympathy for the authors of such things as they look to be genuine* in their attempts at informing/people, but their starting point is from a traditional economics belief. I suppose the danger is ending up appealing only to those who have moved away from traditional thinking and bringing nobody new with them.
* I appreciate that this could sound like damning with feint praise, but that isn’t the intention. I don’t know the person so it’s just my opinion, although I do read some of his blogs.
@spanghero The above is not intended as a criticism of Simon, per se. I just wish that occasionally economists could imbue their writing with some kind of wonder.
And now I’m just rambling incoherently
@urlyman Thanks for the clarification. Wrong End Of The Stick could be my specialised subject on Mastermind, or possibly middle of the stick!
…“Ah yes but actually, Simon’s piece is macro analysis and at that altitude one has to deploy shorthands for aggregate dynamics.”
No. No we don’t.
Because every fucking time we lose sight of why we’re doing any of this shit, we’re lost
Economists are truly the preachers of our time. They still say:
"Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth."
but with numbers and "science", so it's more acceptable to the modern audience.
The message stays the same. In a way, it is a message of all living beings on Earth, human or otherwise.
The point of life is to make more life.
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