As with the ongoing global energy and CPU manufacturing crises, we can clearly see that a significant proportion of what we call productivity improvement has actually come from identifying and cutting corners, in manufacturing, logistics, and commerce. We can buy goods more cheaply because customers don't care about an in-store experience. A car costs less if the buyer is willing to wait several months for it, instead of the car sitting in the dealership lot. But a lot of the corners we have cut are actually things we didn't think we'd have to face, or things we thought we'd muddle through somehow, or just costs we handed off to people who weren't in a good position to complain. A lot of people seem to think that chaos and suffering are great catalysts of innovation, and not just chaos and suffering. We are now enjoying the fruits of having terminated our health insurance policy because we weren't sick at the time and our car insurance policy because we hadn't crashed the car yet.
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As with the ongoing global energy and CPU manufacturing crises, we can clearly see that a significant proportion of what we call productivity improvement has actually come from identifying and cutting corners, in manufacturing, logistics, and commerce. We can buy goods more cheaply because customers don't care about an in-store experience. A car costs less if the buyer is willing to wait several months for it, instead of the car sitting in the dealership lot. But a lot of the corners we have cut are actually things we didn't think we'd have to face, or things we thought we'd muddle through somehow, or just costs we handed off to people who weren't in a good position to complain. A lot of people seem to think that chaos and suffering are great catalysts of innovation, and not just chaos and suffering. We are now enjoying the fruits of having terminated our health insurance policy because we weren't sick at the time and our car insurance policy because we hadn't crashed the car yet.