FW: [GBlist] re. Piece of the "pie" and other guilt trips

[Gilbert Midonnet <gilbert.midonnet@btec.com>]

Title: RE: [GBlist] re. Piece of the "pie" and other guilt trips

Sorry to continue this thread , I know it's off topic  -- but a few additions

 

mule driven grinding wheels allow individuals to be more productive than grinding grain by hand. (including the extra cost of building the mill, and everything involved in keeping and caring for the mule)

the 10th century invention of cams, combined with water powered mills, greatly added to the productive ability

same too the with the rise of windmills and tide-powered mills.

 

the printing press made increased the production of text by over 100x (barbara eisenstein) compared to handwritten manuscripts. Not to mention the increased accuracy and the ease in diseneminating charts of figures and illustrations. As our techniques have improved one person can now produce 100x more printed material than 16th C printers.

 

One person in the NYTs printing room can produce 1000x more words / day than can a scribe. Imagine handwritting or typing the NYTs. How long would it take?

 

Are there other factors involved? Yes of course.  Would we be better off if we placed newspapers in public squares so many people could read the same copy? etc...

 

 

The purpose of this post is to address the issue of productivity. I state it again. Because of technological advances one person can easily be 1000s times more productive than another.

 

Again -- this does not mean that the person is better, or that the productive effort would  not  be better spent elsewhere. It is a comparision of productive output v productive output.

 

-- How many newspapers (words) were printed per person? 

(The question of whether we should have printed them is a different, although related, question.)

 

-- How many tons of  X (steel, sheetrock, bricks) were transported from place A to place B. 

(Again the issue is not whether the building should or should not have been built, or have been built differently; that is an important, valid issue but not one that directly relates to the productive ability of the people transporting X.) I would argue that with all the ancillary efforts required to keep the machinery intact that, as with the upkeep of the mule in the first example, net productivity has improved many fold.

 

-- glm

 

 

 

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