PRODUCTIVITY & PROGRESS, CONT'D
Reader Kjell Hagen writes from Oslo:
Thanks for your texts on productivity. I am a Norwegian economist, with an earlier career in a Norwegian oil company, and at the consulting firm McKinsey & Co.
Even at supposedly leading consulting firms, like McKinsey, productivity is a rare subject. Usually the focus is on short-term, "flashy" strategies like M&A, internet strategies etc. It is strange, because systematic productivity gains are usually a super-potent competitive weapon. Just look at e.g. Wal-Mart, Dell, or Toyota.
Looking back a hundred years, the productivity (and therefore the average income) in Western countries has gone up 7 times, in all countries where the politicians have managed to not get in the way. The same 7-fold increase is true for the 100 years preceding, so that we now have approx. 50-fold the average income we had in 1800. That is a pretty big story, and is the one that will be talked about in 500 years. Especially because the productivity gains of humanity were practically zero in the centuries, and milennia before.
Productivity gains are difficult to measure year-by-year, and as you probably know, numbers may be revised later. I think the huge gains in America may be revised somewhat down later, but still it is the biggest story around, because of the direct link between productivity growth and growth in average income.
In a followup email giving me permission to post the note, Kjell writes that "It really is the story of the century, but too 'slow-moving' compared to all the 'instantaneous' news, I guess." I think that's exactly right. By the time productivity increases are visible, they aren't "news." They're just life.
On TechCentral Station, Arnold Kling suggests that the media bias toward negative news probably hurts coverage of productivity gains. That's almost certainly true. His second argument, that anti-Bush bias is at work is far less convincing. This story didn't get coverage during the Clinton administration either. It's not a political story. It doesn't come from Washington. That, not partisan bias, is the political problem.
Finally, Jay Manifold, blogging on Chicago Boyz, ties together a number of recent themes. He also makes an important point, which I mistakenly thought was obvious when I wrote my review of David Brooks's On Paradise Drive: "The trick is to realize that the pursuit of enough trivial goals can add up to an epic quest -- or, rather, that even an epic quest can be broken down into a large number of relatively trivial goals."
I have nothing against great dreams--and certainly nothing against ending starvation, curing cancer, or spreading democracy, all of which I favor. (The means are another story.) What bothers me is Brooks's failure to recognize that the progress of our civilization has in fact depended on incremental improvements and his persistent denigration of quests for excellence that are unmotivated by eschatological visions. Among the narrow specialists Brooks lightly mocks are not just "water choreographers of casino fountains" but also a woman who has "devoted her life to small robots," a man who "dedicates himself to growing nanowires only a few atoms thick," and a woman who "is working on a technique to place new genes at specific spots on plant chromosomes."
I think Brooks's narrow vision also helps explain his peculiar stance on the war in Iraq, first avidly supporting it and then, when it got a little tricky, distancing himself. The glamour of war--great goals achieved by noble means--appealed to him. The reality of war, and of postwar reconstruction, turned out to be a bloodier, more expensive version of the nitty-gritty enterprise he disdains. War turns out to have more in common with Six Sigma quality (a buzzphrase he drops in for laughs, with no apparent knowledge of its meaning) than with debating Plato or erecting monuments.