Software is too valuable, too high potential. It's production methods too creative, too subjective, and insufficiently legible.

So... We can't afford not to do it. Sometimes we can't do it, and we can't afford not to just pretend we're doing it.

Do we really need to quantify the number of firms who's main declared priorities involve producing technology (eg "AI") that they have no idea how to make and no chance producing? I mean those who communicate this clearly to the board, the employees and such. Many/most aren't even tech companies. Their little teams that coordinate salesforce integration & automate google sheets are tasked with tasks somewhere between "winning ycombinator" and developing AGI in 5 months.

The reason might be a penchant for "growth stories." It might be something else, but we know it is. Maybe someone said "why aren't we just using AI to cut our CS costs in half?" Maybe no one had a convincing retort.

"I am near absolutely convinced that the vast majority of our species' ability to produce things of value for the human race is just utterly squandered at large companies."

So... I studied economics circa 2004. A conservative school, during the peak of certainty in particular economic ideas. A very rational view of microeconomics... firms, prices, etc.

Anything outside that paradigm was weird "alternative theory" and we learned the famous polemics to address the obvious rhetorical questions.

I've gone back to most of those polemics over the years. I think they have some answers for us... Especially thought from the 1920s

Anyway... I no longer think the model predicting that our species (or industry/company/etc) ability to produce things should be a limiting factor is totally wrong.

Sometimes our actual ability is the limiting factor. Those problems get solved though. The rest of the time, other factors are limiting us and utilizing our productive potential is irrelevant.

Eg smartphones. They were a hit. In about a decade they went from yuppie toy to prevalence among subsistence farmers. They got good, and cheap, fast. That's technology being efficient.

Once everyone has a decent smartphone, that market has peaked. The "classical model" predicts that prices should now freefall. The market can't get bigger, but that shouldn't make price performance halt. Prices should take over as the driver of price performance now.

^FYI The classical model's definition of "technology" is pretty much "price performance" and it is treated as a black box.

Irl, hat's not how this works. A commodity business model is not the next step. There's no incentive to go this route at all.

The model T had a similar life journey. Rapidly reducing prices until market peak, then a different business model... one that wasn't really about efficiency anymore. Henry Ford hated it, but he did succumb eventually.

That means we are no longer pursuing efficiency. Wasting productive potential is default, when in this mode.

At least from the perspective of the individual firm... Efficiency is only the paradigm sometimes... Times when supply (the companies' output) is factor limiting profit, share price, reward...

The rest of the time, it's demand.

Take retail banking. I am sure, if the population of earth was growing 20% YoY... retail banking would keep pace. Accounts & credit cards for everyone would be no issue.

They wouldn't need to scale their workforce by 20% pa. Banks/banking would get more efficient instead... especially if competition is weak.

That doesn't mean that in a "normal" state, where banks have limited growth potential... Those efficiency gains are not going to happen. It doesn't matter what technology exists. Retail banks are not going to slowly shrink, as efficiency gains make it possible to operate with half the revenue/employees/buildings.

That flavour of "pursuit of efficiency" does not exist, at scale, irl. Only in the model.

The model, assuming that flavour should exist, concludes that efficiency gains cannot be made because technology doesn't allow it.

Longshortlong... The phenomenon beneath, tech operations being a shishow... that's what it looks like when firms try to do less with more... the alternative to efficiency.