Towards an era of reducing Productivity?

Recently my friend Anthony sent me a YouTube link to watch an excerpt of a lecture by Jordan Peterson regarding productivity. To my understanding, JP was making the following thesis:

1.    Most people (that’s about 95-99%) are mostly wasting their time, thus rendering their life unimportant for themselves and the society as a whole.

2.    In every aspect of life, the great achievers are a very small percentage (1-5%)

3.    Even if one drills down to this 1-5%, only a small percentage of the work of these top people really matters. And he gave the example of composers like W. A. Mozart, or L. van Beethoven who wrote quite a large number of pieces, however only a small number of them are listened, whilst the rest are almost ignored.

JP portrayed a picture of humanity consisting of mostly unproductive humans that they will leave no significant mark on this planet after they are gone.

As everything in life, it depends on which angle you are looking to this problem. Indeed, a very small percentage of the artists are successful. Where by success I define the interest/demand for their works of art. Similarly, out of billions of people, very few manage to become successful businessmen. Where success here is defined by the growth and value of their businesses. According to JP, all these successful people are productive because they put their time and effort to a good use and manage to achieve great success.

There is no doubt that under this prism JP is right. From the billions of people that are live at any instance, only a few really “matter” in the above sense and these ones are the most “productive”.

But let us look at this problem through another prism. The definition of “good” needs the presence of “evil” and vice versa. The definition of “success” needs the one for “failure”. Similarly, the success of the 1% in business, for example, needs the spending of the 99%. Or in another way, Jeff Bezos needs the billions of mostly “unsuccessful” consumers in order him to be “successful”. And Beethoven needed his very unsuccessful mother and father to come to existence and become one of the greatest composers.

For whom an artist creates? Who will appreciate, who will consume his/her art, if not the thousands of “irrelevant” people? How could all these different “Gods” exist without the millions of people believing in them?

Indeed, JP is right. Most of us spend our lives doing mundane or trivial things such working to keep a family and raising children, living in a rat race between paycheck and debts, mourning for our broken dreams, feeling frustrated because we perceive ourselves as “unimportant”, or live happily in a cloud of ignorance and futility. But we are all necessary, and we all play a role in the organized chaos of life.

If we consider humanity as a platform, I think that we all can agree that, this platform has an amazing capacity for achievements. This is clearly demonstrated in the change of dynamics of a population when the latter is organized in a city. A population scattered in small communities is much less likely to produce new ideas or new foundational concepts of thinking. A city is an inherently dynamic, metabolic entity engaged in continual exchange of matter, energy, ideas, concepts etc. Large, organized social systems like cities are complex adaptive systems (CAS). And, a CAS is a system in which a perfect understanding of the individual parts does not automatically convey a perfect understanding of the whole system's behavior. In CAS, the whole is more complex than its parts, and more complicated and meaningful than the aggregate of its parts.

And this analogy, has some kind of inherent fractality. Organized social systems when communicate in multidimensional ways create larger, even more complex,  adaptive systems. Just think how Internet transformed our societies. Through this prism I tend to believe that the  “irrelevance” of the 99%, as described by JP, is valid when we value the individual humans but is completely wrong if we consider the whole system.  Which means that JP’s conclusions are correct in the micro view but totally wrong in the macro view.

Here I have to admit that my friend Antony did not send me this YouTube video to make me think all these, although it did. In fact, he sent it to me to make me ponder on what this could mean for our company and provoke some consideration.

During my professional career, I had the opportunity to serve in leading positions of small teams of 10 people to large organizations of 10,000. I can tell you from my experience that the larger the organization gets the more inefficiencies are built within the organisation that creep inside the overhead cost. It is true.

However this is true for the part of the organization that is not forming a production machine. What I mean by that is that the personnel that is part of the production line have less chances of reduced productivity as they form part of a chain. In the case of a shipyard for example, where I have some experience, out of the say 2500 staff, the 2200 are production personnel where every morning are given specific tasks to deliver and they generally do so. The 300 are executives and admin personnel that have a “supportive role” in the organization and hence their scope is broader, and their daily tasks/deliverables less clearly defined. And this is where the inevitable inefficiencies are forming.

In the case of a shipping company, I tend to believe that on board a vessel the inefficiencies are less than at the office. On board, each crew member has to deliver daily tasks that are clearly defined and inter-depended with other crew members tasks. Such structure has, inherently, a higher degree of efficiency. These are the actual “production” personnel. They load cargo, navigate and discharge cargo, which is exactly the service that a shipping company sells. Looking at the office, the personnel is “supporting” the actual “production” which takes place on board. And for the same reasons I explained above, the inefficiencies are part of the office’s reality. The broader and more general someone’s tasks are, the higher the inefficiency built in. In that sense, the most inefficient member of our company is me, the managing director!

Inefficiencies are reduced by the use of automation, data, AI and all these tools that are available. However, we all know very well that panacea is wishful thinking. Plus, I have seen myself that too much of automation leads to more inefficiencies - because systems cannot, still, replicate human mind (that’s another subject altogether). And in Shipping, for example, every day you have to take myriad decisions based on insufficient information that are also ever changing.

My conclusion is that inefficiency is inherent to the human endeavour, no matter which form this endeavour has. Only pure nature can probably achieve zero inefficiency. Take for example the phenomenon of photosynthesis. There is no actual waste. And even new discoveries demonstrate that, possibly, photosynthesis involves quantum mechanical effects, exactly because “life” follows always the most efficient path.

And then take any human engine or machine. You will be happy to achieve 40% efficiency.

Now if we take again a macro view, as our societies and businesses are entangled in more complex and multidimensional ways, and as AI and robots will undertake a large part of the production process, it is reasonable to forecast that human average efficiency will decrease further, Or not?

Again, it depends on the angle of view and the definition of efficiency. If we try to imagine the future society as a small variation of its past architecture, then indeed this is the case. For it is more than obvious that as technology gradually seizes the production process, large part of the human population will be rendered useless.

But if our future society has a different architecture? If finally, the technological advances of humankind deliver what it was promised to us humans, the promise to regain what is the most valuable asset there is: Time. The asset we started losing with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and we completely abolished when credit card was invented.

If, and I say if, finally our economic/financial system drastically changes in a way that will put to better use the human capital. That is if the new financial system is not based on human work and human consumption in a self-feeding cycle catalyzed by debt then may be humans will be finally given the task they are designed for: to think!. And in such imaginary future society, children will not study in schools and universities that prepare them for a World that is no more. Young people will not panic with their CV’s in hand to find a job for the paycheck to pay for debts that only grow and live a life that can be described in a short paragraph.  In such society humans will be engaged from cradle to grave in a continuous holistic development and production of information.    

Wishing you a nice and efficient day ahead, 

Kostis