I, Toaster
reason.com
reason.com
"As for "pre-toaster" lives, most people who lived in the age before the toaster could expect to die by about age 40 (the toaster was invented in 1893, when life expectancy in the U.S. was about 43 years)."
I hate when people talk about how people in the last century could expect to die when they were about 40, because that is skewed by the ridiculously high infant-mortality rates. The data that that paragraph links to says it all: if you lived to age 10 by 1900, you could expect to live another 50 years more, i.e. you would most likely die when you were about 60.
Take a good look at the data. At birth in 1890, your life expectancy was only 42 years. At 10 years old in 1900, your life expectancy is now 50 more years, i.e. you've aged 10 years but now you can expect to live an additional 8 years on top of that. Your total life expectancy went up by 18 years just by virtue of having made it through the first 10 years.
By my back-of-the-envelope calculations, this means about 1/3 of babies died before age 10, which seems about right...
Your total life expectancy went up by 18 years just by virtue of having made it through the first 10 years.
Aubrey de Grey makes the same point in talking about extending life further in this talk:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can...
"And where Read expressed awe at the way so many people worked together--motivated only by self-interest--to produce not only pencils, but millions of other products that make our lives better, Thwaites oddly sees waste:"
Good find. There is still a lot of misunderstanding of economics in a lot of posts here, so this article "delights the mind" for many HN readers.
A toaster, on the other hand, sacrifices flexibility for efficiency. It's faster and uses less energy than opening up your stove and making toast on the broiler (a Good Thing), but that's all you can do with it - toast bread products. If you want to have egg with your toast, it's no help at all (unlike your stove, which allows you to cook things in many different ways). If you follow the toaster approach, you end up with a kitchen full of one-purpose appliances which are individually excellent but ultimately cater to peoples' inability to cook. At some point it's worth asking the question of whether having multiple specialized appliances is really more efficient than having one or two that can be turned to many different ones. If you look in the kitchen of a diner or restaurant, there are relatively few fancy appliances but the cooks really know what they're doing.
There's room for both approaches. Programming everything from scratch without libraries would be terribly wasteful. On the other hand, you probably wouldn't respect a programmer who relied solely on library functions and was unable to derive any algorithms of their own, no?
It's really got nothing to do with the versatility and more to do with the size of the heating elements and the space required.
"Perhaps the majority of human activity can be reduced to a desire to make life more comfortable for ourselves, and has thus far led to being able to buy a toaster for £3.99 [among other achievements]. But looking at toasters in relation to global industry, at a moment in time when the effects of our industry are no longer trivial compared to the insignificant when our, they seem unreasonable. I think our position is ambiguous - the scale of industry involved in making a toaster [etc.] is ridiculous but at the same time the chain of discoveries and small technological developments that occurred along the way make it entirely reasonable."
As if "global industry" exists only to create "toasters [etc.]". In agreement with the essay, I think there's a whole lot of context that's being dropped by focusing on a device with relatively narrow purpose.
Toasters do seem to pass that test as well, because most western households have a toaster or something similar. In that sense the market has spoken. But it is reasonable to ask how much bang for the buck (and also for the environmental buck) the toaster delivers compared to other food preparation tools. I suppose your view of the price:performance ratio is strongly correlated with your personal toast requirements.
"Commercial extraction and processing of the necessary materials happens on a scale that is difficult to resolve into the humble toaster. This contrast in scale is a bit absurd—massive industrial activity devoted to making objects which enable us, the consumer, to toast bread more efficiently. However, this ridiculousness dissipates somewhat when you consider that life pre-toasters required stoking the fire when a piece of toast was desired."
Where does he speak of 'waste' here? He speaks of absurdity, to be sure, but only the most steely-minded libertarian, who has diligently eliminated any trace of aesthetic sentiment from his mind in favor of cold market-based reason, could fail to acknowledge that the notion of the great powers of the earth, bringing all their force to bear on the basic stuff of nature, digging and tearing down mountains, all leading to a single $8 toaster, is more or less as absurd as it gets. To point out that NO, STUPID, it's not a single toaster, it's a million toasters! And insulin, too! What are you, some kind of Commie? Is what I would characterize as churlish. And certainly uninteresting. Indeed, even in the middle of considering the absurdity of the toaster Thwaites follows his train of thought to allow for the real value of convenience, as provided by consumer technology.
And again, who would deny that there is a component of helplessness when we can't even toast bread without buying a toaster from a supermarket? Thwaites doesn't sound like an ideologue, he sounds like an artist, whose job it is to consider an issue from new perspectives, and hopefully to cast light on all its components. Balko, on the other hand, is clearly an inveterate ideologue, who misreads ambivalence and curiosity as doubt and its never-far companion, condemnation. I'd rather watch somebody try to build his own toaster than read this kind of boosterism, which thinks it detects a threat to its beloved system and tries to drown out nuance or even-handedness.
I hate to break it to the author of this piece, but toasters and pencils do not magically spring fully-formed from the uncoordinated, joyful, dignified labor of confident Ayn Rand heroes.
A company decides to get into the toaster business. That company then deals with coordinating everything needed to bring the pieces together and put toasters on the market. That company places orders with others which provide raw materials. That company builds or acquires factories and machinery. That company gets workers to build toasters, probably on an assembly line. That company sets up distribution channels.
In other words, the toaster company has to -- gasp! -- engage in centralized planning of how toasters will be produced, distributed and sold. Fortunately, centralized planning and coordination is only doomed to fail when the government does it, right?
And the odds are that most of the people in the chain are not working with much joy or dignity, especially the closer you get to the manufacturing and raw materials. They most likely work not because they find their life's purpose in mining the ore that furthers the wonder of captalism, but because mining the ore is about the only option in whatever place they had the misfortune to be born into.
Of course, when you put it like this it's not a juvenile libertarian's wet dream anymore, and Reason wouldn't want to publish anything like that. But ideology and reality don't often match up (and, to be honest, I've no doubt that if the author of this piece had been born in Stalin's Soviet Union, he'd have used similar logic to extol the wonders of the Glorious People's Ore-Mining Facilities, which bring raw materials from far-flung places to produce the Toaster of the Motherland, in a striking blow to the decadent imperialist capitalist pig-dogs).
Failure.
A toaster company doesn't have to get it all right in order for toasters to be produced. It merely has to come close enough that someone else realizes that a toaster is a good idea, tweaks some features, and does it better. Eventually we end up with a working toaster, even if 99.9% of toaster companies didn't produce a working toaster.
It also helps that the toaster company can rely on the metal-casing company already have gotten most of that right, and the heating-element company having gotten most of that right, and the timer coming having gotten most of that right. It doesn't have to start from scratch for every component of the toaster, only the toaster-ish ones.
The difference between governments and corporations is that corporations can fail. When they can't (eg. Citigroup, GM, and AIG in the current financial crisis), central planning in a corporation is every bit as harmful as central planning in the government. But most of the time, when a corporation fails, other people pick up the pieces, tweak them a bit, and try again with a newer and better corporation. Hell, most of the time the newer and better corporation comes along first and makes the outdated one fail. (See: Toyota vs. GM, Google vs. Microsoft, Microsoft vs. IBM, etc.)
When a government fails, usually lots of people die. At the very minimum, there's lots of misery and uncertainty.
You could argue that one of the greatest things about the U.S. government is its ability to tolerate failure without bringing down the whole government. When a president royally screws things up, like the last one did, he's out in eight years, there's a peaceful transition, and someone new picks up the pieces. Could you imagine something like that happening in Castro's Cuba, Saddam's Iraq, or Communist Russia? For most of history, the modus operandi of governments has been to continue growing in power until they're so big they can't do anything but fail, then have a bloody revolution where the new radicals throw out everything the old guard did - even the parts that worked - and start from scratch. It's hard to make progres like that.
* The ideal size of corporations is an interesting subject. If central planning is so bad, why are some companies so huge? Why do companies get big if small is better? Why aren't we all just individual contractors, rather than employees?
* Free trade is generally seen as 'good' by economists, but a move in that direction may not be a Pareto improvement; i.e. while everyone is generally better off, there may be some people made (significantly) worse off. Technology improvements are the same way: people may be better off using computers than typewriters, but not typewriter repairmen. One strategy to mitigate the worst effects of this would be a bit of redistribution from all the winners, to the losers. Everyone is thus better off than before the move to free trade, or new tech, and the losers have some cushion to fall back on. Of course this presents problems of its own and is a long and complicated debate.
ObCoase.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Coase
I don't know what else has been done in that field. Any pointers?
To be fair, a lot of pre-democratic government structures weren't that bad at handling power transition. Either there was a generally-acknowledged official line of succession, or some kind of council of noblemen who were officially responsible for choosing the king's successor, or some combination of the two. Of course, kings back then also had more practical (if not constitutional) limitations on their power than Saddam had on his power.
For example, in 1987 GE sold its consumer electronics division to Thompson SA, which was owned by the French government.
Also, Zimbabwe.
Of course, we're still doing better then Iran.
Where do they get their iron from? Commodities markets. If I'm not mistaken, even the name of the seller is abstracted away from them (by the financial services industry, which is also not planned by the toaster company).
The manufactured parts (e.g. the plug and switched) may actually require them to care who they purchase from, but all the planning is done by someone else.
And the distribution channels are also, for the most part, handled by someone else. The company sends toasters to Walmart by the truckload, distribution is up to walmart from there on. Maybe the company sends some advertising materials, but that's about it.
The toaster company does engage in planning, but only a little bit. The rest is left up to the markets.
The difference between a government's central planning and the company is that the company have to trade something to get anything done.
While the company may in fact central plan part of their operation, the fact is, the bricks must be traded for something else. The steel, the workers, and everything have to also occur by trade.
This is something that cannot happen by mere "central planning". Each individuals, must decide what will benefit them the most. After all, they could go do something else in the economy that need urgent attention.
Here's a direct quote from the article:
"From the miners to the factory workers to the truck drivers to the smelters to the architects of the factories to the executives that run the companies that fund and organize each step of the process, each and every participant is in the game for his own self interest—to make a living, and to make a contribution that's really only a tiny part of the end result of a product, even one as insignificant as the humble pencil. Pan back until you've framed the entire world economy, and it's hard not to marvel at the wonder and miracle of capitalism's invisible hand."
You want to tell me I'm making stuff up now?
"The difference between a government's central planning and the company is that the company have to trade something to get anything done."
"While the company may in fact central plan part of their operation, the fact is, the bricks must be traded for something else. The steel, the workers, and everything have to also occur by trade."
"This is something that cannot happen by mere "central planning". Each individuals, must decide what will benefit them the most. After all, they could go do something else in the economy that need urgent attention."
OK, you tell me: if you're the guy who lives in a slum in Bolivia and works for slave wage in a tin mine, to what other aspect of the economy can you devote your urgent attention? And, with the lowest GDP on the continent, what are you, your employer or your country getting in return for that resource to make it a worthwhile trade?
EDIT: I see it now. I can see how you might interpret it as that.
In any case, it is doubtful that people care about furthering the glory of capitalism. I think the author is talking about the invisible hand rather than any specific noble cause.
"OK, you tell me: if you're the guy who lives in a slum in Bolivia and works for slave wage in a tin mine, to what other aspect of the economy can you devote your urgent attention? And, with the lowest GDP on the continent, what are you, your employer or your country getting in return for that resource to make it a worthwhile trade?"
What? I don't understand your question.
Surely the worker is mining tin so that he could eventually trade for food. The employer who are getting the tin can then eventually trade for something that they want, no?
There's always attention to devote to in an economy. After all, there's always the never ending needs and wants that must be satisfied and the limited amount of resource that can be devoted toward the unsatisfiable demand of men.
The question is not whether there's enough jobs but rather how the economy can reallocate resources correctly and efficently so that people can find work again.
If the resource allocation remain uncorrected(Examples include overpaying for labor which often happen when minimum wage are enforced), parts of the population may continues unemployed although they may be able or skilled enough to trade their labor on the market.
And, once again: you seem to think that people in places like Bolivian tin mines have options, that they can just move, or be moved, to something else at the drop of a hat. Reality ain't like that.
The existence of a bad situation does not imply that a given solution will make things better.
I note that hell-holes are usually associated with folks who are "doing things for the people".
And, in point of fact, they can "just move", unless someone is pointing a gun at them. That someone is almost always a govt.
"If the resource allocation remain uncorrected(Examples include overpaying for labor which often happen when minimum wage are enforced), parts of the population may continues unemployed although they may be able or skilled enough to trade their labor on the market."
It's very nice to criticize a system because a worker in Bolivia has it rough. You feel very good when you say "Something must be done!", but if by any chance you'd get any power all you'd do with this attitude would be to destroy. The current system works. It puts bread on the table of that Bolivian worker, and on pretty much everybody else's. If you want to change this you _must_ start by understanding the current system and its strengths and weaknesses. To try and replace it, or change it without understanding it can only end in ruin.
And if you look closer at that specific worker you may find interesting things. You may find for example that the reason mining is the only thing he can do is not due to capitalism, but because some local politician decided (much like you) that capitalism is not the way to go. And that the evil foreigners who only want money must be kept far away, and let in only on a leash. So the greedy foreigners can't come to that part of Bolivia and build a car factory which makes cheap Fords and Fiats because well, nobody really wants capitalists to make more money of their backs. So the poor miner keeps on going down into the mine every day.
Free trade is good for poor people. Globalization is good for poor people. Capitalism is good for poor people. When you see them failing, there's usually some politician who thinks that if he controls every aspect of the economy that's still called capitalism.
Now, get in line with all the "but communism was never really tried" folks.
Not surprisingly, it did not work very well. Regulations went as far as dictate the type of products which could be produced, by whom and with what technology. Any newcomer had to obtain licence first and start production later, and any company which had an advantage in inovation only was pretty dead from the start. The incumbents always fought tooth and nail to keep things as they are, and since they had the support of the state they usually succeeded. In one extreme case this meant the execution of 16,000 small entrepreneurs whose only crime was importing or manufacturing cotton cloth in violation of French law. (last sentence is copy paste from Wikipedia).
Now, again, except the state control the economic climate looked surprisingly like today. Which is why there are still countries that proclaim to be capitalist, even when in practice it's impossible to build a successful business without political support. The difference is not semantic, it is very real.
Try and google a bit for Hernando de Soto. I haven't found exactly what I was looking for, but this is ok: http://www.reason.com/news/show/32213.html
Has there ever been a time in recorded history when this was not generally true?
One difference is that when govt does "it", govt typically forbids or at least seriously punishes alternatives. At the very least, govt takes resources from folks who would do things differently.
If I have no interest in your toaster idea, I'm free to develop an alternative and I don't end up supporting your idea. When govt develops a toaster, I pay for it even if I think that it's dumb, and govt is likely to place restrictions on my alternative.
Govt solutions are also less diverse. This takes two forms.
Each company will take a somewhat different approach to toasters while govts pick an approach and run with it. Since each attempt has roughly the same odds of success, taking multiple shots tends to produce a better "best" result.
It's also the case that one size doesn't fit all. Different companies end up optimizing their product for different users, increasing overall satisfaction. If there's only one product in a given space, as you get with govt solutions, said product ends up not satisfying a significant fraction of people and it has "flexibility" that gets in the way.
Folks rant about monopolies, but govt is the biggest monopoly of all.
Another wrote your kernels, plus an army of programmer.
Some guy halfway around the world wrote the Ruby intrepreter more than a decade ago.
Another wrote your build tools.
Several indiviuals wrote several different package management tools and you use it all. (apt-get, rubygem...)
Somebody wrote your browser and someone invent the language in which Hacker News was written in.
Yeah, even as hackers, we are all "helpless" and that's a good thing. It mean we can focus on writing new software instead of reinventing the wheel.
As software developers, the software stacks we use are a great example of the decentralised 'invisible hand' aspect of markets. Nobody planned the transition from Assembler to C to Java to Python (etc), there's no panel of experts deciding that we're all going to start programming in X language from next year or some government department building the One True Language/Framework/OS. The fact that most of what we use is free is largely irrelevant, because time and effort are not free and all trade is about each party's perception of relative, not absolute, value.
... then they would have more efficient Gulags?
The most important feature of a market is not money, but decentral decision making and feedback. Also freedom from tort plays a part.
All things that the Soviet Union surely lacked. (And they did have money. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_ruble)
More over, since the population do not have the same taste, wants, or preferences the central planner must cater to all tastes. Since even group with the same preferences are made of individuals, the central planner must also produce enough to satisfy all the needs.
He must balance all parties' conflicting needs and wants and must decide what to produce and not to produce since the end that there are only so much resources to go around.
Pretty tall order isn't it?
There's a link to the downloadable PDF (it's disabled on Scribd) for the pack rats.
This article, "I, Toaster", turns it back around and places the art piece parallel in meaning to "I, Pencil".
[There, fewer words.]
Something do not scale well without central planning.