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james1071

That's not correct.

In general, the effect of new technology is to increase the output of the economy - we get more stuff.

This translates into a higher GDP.

Now, consider your specific example.

The effect of the machine would be to free up time for people to do other things.

Some of this might be increased leisure (not capured by GDP) , while some of it will be increased output in the economy, which will show up as increased GDP.

Your comment about individuals striving to increase GDP is silly - GDP is an aggregate statistic and the result of people trying to maximise their own personal welfare.

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If someone invents a machine that does some necessary consumer-level work (say, a washing machine) and the result is not increased leisure, something is Very Wrong. Sure, we could spend the time we save doing dishes on productive labor, but this wasn't time we owed to the workforce in the first place.

"Increased activity occupies surplus generated by increased efficiency" works for corporations, which is why economists like it, but not for humans, which is GP's point. In fact, GDP is only of practical utility at all insofar as that equation does not hold, since leisure and autonomy and generally not-being-beholden-to-work is the economic end of "human welfare."

There's other points, which I think GP was referencing in a less clear way, about how GDP measures all sorts of economic "activity" that is useless altogether- financial speculation in bubbles, competing advertisement campaigns, etc. But the main point is that GDP is a measure of output, not welfare, and for humans (all else being equal) we're better off the less that we're required to do.

>someone invents a machine that does some necessary consumer-level work (say, a washing machine) and the result is not increased leisure, something is Very Wrong.

Leisure isn’t free though. Increased leisure time is going to create work/spending in other areas. So you save time on household chores due to the cheap machine, that means you probably end up spending more money on your leisure activities. You buy more books, video games, hiking boots, sports gear, etc.

Or sleep. Or studying. Or taking a walk with a loved one.

The point is that a lot of the benefit to us of such an innovation is not going to show up in GDP, even if some of that time is used for fun activities. GDP doesn't count increases in fun either.

> You buy more books, video games, hiking boots, sports gear, etc.

Why? I have hiking boots. They'll last me twenty years. I have more books and video games than I could ever read and play already.

Why should leisure time be considered a vehicle for consumption of stuff in the first place?

Self-actualization isn't reflected in GDP, and yet it actually matters.

You're aware that your response here is atypical, and the exact kind of problem that is addressed by behavioural economics, yes? While what you're describing (using new found free time to engage in free leisure activities) is what you see as desirable, it is emphatically not what humans as a population do.

When discussing macro things like GDP, the homo-economicus minimax behavior of the few is inconsequential and has no place in a discussion of what would happen. However much we might not wish it so.

OK. So let's keep going. You are correct, what I'm describing is atypical. Why is it atypical?

Is it because they need more stuff? Or is it because their brains are under near-constant assault from a barrage of advertising that melts their willpower and creates a link between having a free moment to themselves and consumption, a desperate instillation to keep up with the Joneses?

I would contend, and I'd fight about it, that the answer is the latter and that it is an overwhelming, brain-breaking external imposition. And it's in the service of making that particular number that's the topic of that article just a little bigger.

We need to stop fucking ourselves up as people and as communities and measures that do not take that into account are bad measures that should not be fetishized. (And they are fetishized. They are drooled over. And yet nobody dies taking pride in how they made GDP bigger.)

> Is it because they need more stuff? Or is it because their brains are under near-constant assault from a barrage of advertising that melts their willpower and creates a link between having a free moment to themselves and consumption, a desperate instillation to keep up with the Joneses?

Generally, increasing incomes in developed countries lead to increased service consumption or at most indirect manufacturing. While some of this is "keeping up with the Joneses", I think a lot of it is just rational time valuing.

e.g. I've found that as my income has gone up considerably in the last half-decade (several hundred percent), I am spending more - but not on buying more goods. Generally it is bucketed under:

Spending more to save more time (increased value of time):

* online grocery shopping

* spending more to live close to work

* use of more expensive cab-services (lyft/uber) rather than public transit or biking

* flying direct rather than multi-stop.

* Spending more on childcare to maximize time spent on more intellectually stimulating endeavors (including work) or at times traveling

Higher quality:

* higher end food and restaurants

* more expensive travel options (distance/exotic)

* larger housing units to feel less cramped that also offer time-saving amenities (in-unit laundry, gym/pool, 24/7 package delivery)

I'm getting more leisure -- and directing a lot into the GDP numbe.

This is the only answer that is possible within the narrow view of capitalism. If you have more time, you should spend more, according to them, otherwise the economy will flounder. It's not a surprise then that capitalism societies strive to have most of their population earning only enough so they don't have the temptation of forgetting to spend all the money they receive.

Because capitalism. Even the mountain you hike keeps business hours, requires vehicular propulsion to get to, and charges a fee for parking.

Laws and social conventions alike discourage simply standing around doing nothing in particular in most public places, and loitering ordinances sometimes expressly forbid it. There aren’t that many places to go or things to do, both as a matter of practical exigencies and sociocultural rituals alike, which don’t involve some business to transact.

Who is to say fixing your neighbors machine is not leisure time? With the added benefit of increased social capital ( if I’m going to be clinical about it ).

We know what happens when labour saving machines, such as washing machines, were invented - married women, who used to spend most of the day on housework entered the workforce.

Ugh, that sounds terrible. In my utopia, machines do all the work, and everyone in the world gets to do whatever they want, which will mostly be leisure. Yes, there will be some people for whom leisure means work, and more power to them. I still don't understand the drive to be "productive". What's the point of technology if not to shift the need to be productive away from humans?

It sounds like a very sad world to me where people automate their jobs away in order to just find new jobs to fill their time. Of course, that is the world we _currently_ live in, just on a smaller scale than I'd hope we'd eventually achieve. I think it'd be a wonderful world where we can only dream up jobs for a tiny percentage of the population, assuming the wealth created by automation is distributed so people who don't work can still live great lives.

I think about this a lot.

People 100 years ago, if they teleported to today, would look at our lives, our possessions, the conveniences offered to us every single day by all of this increased productivity... They would probably wonder why we don't cut the hours we've worked by half or more. I don't quite understand it myself. Why does all of the time we've gained go to working, when it seems to me the cost of a "whole lifetime" has gone down by so much in the past 50 years.

Machines seem to already do most of the work necessary for a human life for us.

You might be interested in reading about the hedonistic treadmill, if you haven't already heard of it. Effectively, good things don't make us very happy for very long before we need more.

The hedonistic treadmill is someone's hypothesis. I am very skeptical that it is actually correct, as working around it seems fairly simple (certain video games are a good example).

I would rather we didn't base major social attitudes on someone being convinced that a normal, healthy human wouldn't be able to make themselves happy.

Karl Marx anticipated the machines would allow us to live lives comprised largely of leisure by now, but here we are all working. The thing is, if we were content with middle class living standards of the 19th century we'd be working a whole lot less. So when it becomes possible to do something crazy like build out an asteroid mining industrial complex, or something, will we say 'ahh, we don't need to do that, let's put our feet up', do you think we'll take it easy or will we keep working? I think we'll keep working.

Not just Marx: John Maynard Keynes thought we'd be on a 15 hour week: http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf

The benefits are captured by spending more on exclusionary rivalrous goods like land, education and healthcare.

A sibling poster covered this, but a maybe-not-terrible analogy occurred to me: it's like writing software. Even when you've finished building out all the features you want to build, it's still never done. There might be bugs that need to be fixed, or you might want to make some slow parts of the code more efficient, or users have come up with some new use cases that require you to add new features. It just never ends. It's rare to find a software project that's "done", aside from abandoned projects.

I guess people are just never satisfied with some kind of end state. And I guess that's a good thing; life is pretty good these days (if you're reasonably well off in a developed country), but, well... we still don't have our jet packs or hoverboards or flying cars. All progress depends on people not being satisfied with the status quo.

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