Sunday 31 May 2020

Weekend Reading: Spare Capacity vs Efficiency - continued ...

Further to this long-running occasional C@W theme, here's an apposite Graun piece. 
Coronavirus is our chance to completely rethink what the economy is for
And split an infinitive or two.  By someone called Bull [sic], a professor of cunning History of Art [sic] and Ideas at Oxford University, it's very scrappy.  No particular thesis that I can discern.  But it throws a few, errrr, ideas into the pot.

There you go.

ND

6 comments:

Thud said...

I was happy before and I want it back the way it was thank you.

andrew said...

He makes the point that if you over optimise something it may outperform now but underperform if anything changes.

Again
And again
And again

This is not a new idea. The extinction of the dinosaurs was not fhe first example.

Two themes he did not develop that i wish he had were kn kne scentence form
1
Optimisation does not lead to efficiency; consider the dodo
2
Efficient species and civilisations have been continually overwhelmed by 'barbarians at the gates'; in a globalised society where there is no (even notionally) terra icognita for the discontented to go and become barbarians, what then - do we wiat for a meteorite?

E-K said...

If you want a something done give the job to a busy man.

If we'd had a busy manufacturing economy we wouldn't have been exposed to a foreign virus and would have been better able to deal with it anyway.

There was nothing cost effective about outsourcing in the end, was there ? And it's only handed it all to Leties anyway. (Boris is a Lefty.)

If we were a manufacturing economy mainstream parties couldn't entertain Greenism as voters wouldn't want it and being a mere 'service' economy with new social distancing measures has left us among the most economically exposed in this crisis.

What to do ?

Admit that lockdown was a mistake and lift it totally forthwith. I believe that the CCP were playing mind games with us in Wuhan.

If vulnerable people want to continue to self shield then support them in doing so but on a voluntary basis.

Then we have to plan for the really bad one. The Black Death that is inevitable if we carry on as we are.

Nick Drew said...

andrew - may not be needed to get your drift, but -
?? were kn kne scentence form ??

shall be returning to your themes anon

andrew said...

Do apologise
Posting from phone meant to write

were in one sentence form...

Anonymous said...

"there was nothing cost effective about outsourcing in the end"

Just as there was nothing cheap about cheap labour, from back in the 50s and 60s to the present day. But the whole point of cheap labour is that other people pay the price.

I bet white Americans wished they'd picked their own damn cotton, but the elites didn't ask them then, either, just brought them in.

On that subject, it looks as if all the "Cummings broke lockdown!" people were abandoning social distancing en masse yesterday. Whatever happened to "no large gatherings"?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-52868465

"Protesters linked arms by the US Embassy"