Masters of Efficiency!
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I read this post by @edicted yesterday that made me think about efficiency.
Efficiency! This all important metric of a business’ value, and even our worth as human beings. What are you if you aren’t an efficient worker? Isn’t it right and proper that the most efficient (not to mention most ruthless and profit driven) businesses and therefor business owners are the ones to rise to the top of the pyramid of power? That is what the system we live in is designed for after all, how could that system be wrong?
What would we do without mass produced, nutritionally void, chemically “enhanced” food? Without factory farms how would our civilization be able to support cities so that we could serve the bankers and CEOs in their palaces? Without the production line and the conveyor belt how would we get our Dorritos and Cokes and bottled water? Without giant factories who would pollute our ground water so that we need to drink bottled water and who would pollute our oceans and rivers and without the village sized fishing trawlers/packaging plants where would we get our fish sticks and who would have emptied the oceans of fish so quickly that the populations can’t replenish themselves, providing a need for fish farms?
Without the Dorritos and Cokes and Twinkies and all the environmental pollutants spewing forth from our fantastic factories of fabulous fuckery making the world so delightfully sick, how would the pharmaceutical industry support itself?
We Need Efficiency!
Without a drive for ever more efficiency our whole system crumbles! And really what would be better than having all of our needs provided for us by robots? The ultimate in efficiency? Why not produce all of our food in a lab so we don’t need to rely on the inconsistencies of nature? Nature is the ultimate in inefficiency with it’s redundant systems and complexity indistinguishable from chaos… Get rid of it!
This post wasn’t going to be a sarcastic rant when I first thought about sitting down to type, but sarcasm is the wit of the witless or something something bla bla so I guess we know where I stand at least.
What I was going to say was that quality of life is more important by far than and quite separate from efficiency. Not that making something more efficient is inherently bad, it can be very good, but I think it is a bit of a mind fuck in our society. We are socialized into believing that pursuing efficiency at the expense of exploitation of people and resources is some kind of noble endeavor and that all of the externalized costs of doing business with a push for maximum efficiency in order to ultimately produce maximum profits for a minimum amount of people are just the eggs broken for the omelet. The cost of doing business. I’m not evil, I only poisoned your water so I could make more money not because I’m a bad person… Damn, ranting again.
I must be some kind of miserable fuck ;)
Anyway doing a little work is not a bad thing. Heck even a lot of it. It can be great and fulfilling if you are doing something that is meaningful, that you enjoy, that isn’t hurting anyone else and that maybe even adds value and beauty to the world you live in.
Maybe living in harmony with the earth’s processes and valuing the rights of other lifeforms is not the most efficient way to live, but sacrificing a little efficiency can potentially provide huge returns in quality of life.
I know this isn’t your typical LEO post but I think it’s a valid perspective on business none the less. Not that I’m accusing anyone here of this sort of mindset, here in decentraland I’m probably preaching to the choir but anyway, that’s my 2 cents worth.
Hopefully in the future if you read anymore of my writing (if I write anymore of my writing…) it will be less vitriolic. There’s a time and a place for everything and those flowers and unicorns types do get a bit annoying, but there’s got to be some middle ground right?
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