00100	OPPORTUNITIES TO INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY
00200	
00300	
00400		In order to afford new inventions like those in this
00500	book, in order to have more leisure, and in order to bring the
00600	standard of living of the whole country up to the level of the
00700	present upper middle class, productivity has to be increased.
00800	It must be immediately faced that an increase in productivity
00900	is genuine only if it allows the same thing to be done with
01000	less human labor.  This will dismay someone who believes that
01100	there is a fixed amount of work to be done and that an increase
01200	in production per worker will result in an increase in
01300	unemployment rather than an increase in leisure.  Fortunately
01400	this fear can be laid to rest by the observations that the
01500	large increases in productivity that have occurred so far
01600	have not led to permanent unemployment.  Economic theory also
01700	tells us that the level of unemployment can be controlled by
01800	fiscal and monetary policy.  Therefore, we shall assume that
01900	increase in productivity is an unalloyed good, but after discussing
02000	the opportunities for increasing it, we shall devote some
02100	attention to the temporary dislocations particular improvements
02200	may cause and how to mitigate their undesirable effects.
02300	
02400		Some areas of human activity experience regular increases
02500	in productivity and others do not.  Which do and which don't is
02600	not determined by a law of nature but depends on the state
02700	of technology, on social organization, and on whether there is
02800	a desire to increase productivity.
02900	
03000	MANUFACTURING
03100	
03200		Manufacturing is the classical area for productivity
03300	improvement.  Its productivity has both a technological and
03400	a social component.  The differences among manufacturing
03500	productivities in different countries stem from both causes.
03600	Thus there are many cases in which a country like the Soviet
03700	Union uses an identical technology to the U.S. (for example
03800	when the plant is purchased from the U.S.) but obtains a much
03900	lower productivity from the technology.  A first approximation
04000	to quantifying this phenomenon might be to say that the
04100	productivity is the product of a technological productivity
04200	with a social efficiency and that the social efficiency is
04300	characteristic of the country and sometimes of the industry
04400	within the country.  We will guess that the social efficiency
04500	of the U.S. and Japan is .8, Britain is .6, and the Soviet
04600	Union is .5.  In this section, we shall be mainly concerned
04700	with the technological component of productivity.
04800	
04900		In general, the productivity of manufacturing
05000	in the U.S. follows the possibilities admitted by technology
05100	rather well, but there are some remarks worth making:
05200	
05300			a. The technology of manufacturing productivity
05400	(as distinct from peripheral topics like quality control and
05500	operations analysis) is not developed as an academic discipline.
05600	There are no experimental production lines and almost no professors
05700	of production technology.
05800	Most likely, there is a substantial missed opportunity here.
05900	
06000			b. The area of fastest productivity improvement
06100	is in the manufacture of electronics.  Unfortunately, this is
06200	a consequence of a technological situation, the possibility of
06300	integrated circuits and the possibility of printed wiring that
06400	cannot be transferred to the manufacture of mechanical devices.
06500	
06600		c. Much of the increase in manufacturing productivity
06700	has been achieved by economies of scale in making very large
06800	numbers of identical objects.  This has substantial costs in
06900	the quality of jobs and in rigidity of product design.  Computers
07000	provide a potential means of getting the economy of mass
07100	production with individuality of design.  Numerical control
07200	and computer control of machine tools is a first step in
07300	this direction and the automatic assembly machine will be
07400	another.  Because of special opportunities,
07500	the manufacture f electronic devices can do this easier than
07600	the manufacture of mechanical devices.
07700	
07800	RETAIL TRADE
07900	
08000	ADMINISTRATION
08100	
08200		1. Not doing it.
08300	
08400		2. Making computers talkto each other
08450		
08475		3. Wiping out the brokers and other parasites.
08500	
08600	PERSONAL SERVICES
08700	
08800		1. Law and medicine - better access to information.
08900	
09000		2. automated design and diagnosis.
09100	
09200		3. Teaching
09300	
09400	DOMESTIC
09500	
09600		1. Delivery
09700	
09800		2. Cleaning and putting away.
09900	
10000		3. Child care.
10100	
10200		4. Food preparation.
10300	
10400		5. Maintenance and repair.