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C00002 00002	TECHNOLOGY FOR IMPROVING PRODUCTIVITY
C00007 00003	OPPORTUNITIES TO INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY
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TECHNOLOGY FOR IMPROVING PRODUCTIVITY


Why increase productivity?

	America is the richest  country in the world today,  but from
the  standpoint  of  100  years in  the  future,  it  is  a poor  and
underdeveloped country.  Here are  some of the ways in which  America
is underdeveloped:

	1. Many people work very long hours for low wages.

	2. We  cannot afford  to rebuild  obsolete housing.   Perhaps
100  years from now it will be normal  for a family to buy a location
and scrap the house that happens to be located there  and build a new
one that suits its needs.

	3. Vacations are  much too short.  A person  ought to be able
to do  the work  required to  suppport himself  and his  family in  a
small fraction of his life and use the rest to do what he likes.


What about unemployment and people not knowing  what to do with their
leisure?

	Each  increase in productivity since  early in the nineteenth
century  has  given   rise  to   worries  of  permanently   increased
unemployment.   In  fact,  there  seems to  be  a servo-mechanism  in
society  that adjusts  employment to a  level slightly  less than the
size of the  labor force.  This  mechanism works better than  it used
to  with increased  understanding of  how the  government  can affect
employment, but  it still  doesn't  work well  enough.  Nevertheless,
fluctuations in unemployment as a whole  are rather uncorrelated with
increases  in  productivity,  although  technology  often does  force
people in particular occupations to find other jobs.

	In my  opinion, a  number of  social changes  might ease  the
problem. In the first place, tinkering  with the money supply and the
interest  rate does not allow enough  control over employment without
other  adverse effects  such  as  inflation.   Here  are  some  other
mechanisms that might be used.

	a. Government  purchases and sales of  commodities other than
agricultural.   Hopefully, the  commodities chosen  would be  durable
and non-obsolescing.   It should be organized  in such a way  that no
industry would depend permanently on a government support program.  

	b.  Every job should have  a definite price  depending on the
industry, length  of  service, and  time  till  retirement.   When  a
worker  takes a  job,  he will  know  that his  employer  is free  to
eliminate  the job  at  the given  price. An  industry that  does not
expect to  change  will set  a high  price for  the  job and  workers
interested in security will concentrate there.


OPPORTUNITIES FOR INCREASE IN PRODUCTIVITY

	An  hundred years  ago,  more than  half  the population  was
engaged in agriculture, and now the percentage is about five.  
This increase in productivity has permitted most of the population
to switch to other activities.
OPPORTUNITIES TO INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY


	In order to afford new inventions like those in this book, in
order  to have more  leisure, and in  order to bring  the standard of
living of the  whole country  up to  the level of  the present  upper
middle  class,  productivity  has  to   be  increased.    It  must  be
immediately faced that an increase in productivity is genuine only if
it allows the same thing to be done with less human labor.  This will
dismay someone who  believes that there is a fixed  amount of work to
be done and that an increase in production per worker will result  in
an  increase in  unemployment  rather than  an  increase in  leisure.
Fortunately  this fear can be  laid to rest by  the observations that
the large increases  in productivity that have  occurred so far  have
not led  to permanent  unemployment.  Economic  theory also  tells us
that  the  level of  unemployment  can  be controlled  by  fiscal and
monetary  policy.   Therefore,  we  shall  assume  that  increase  in
productivity  is   an  unalloyed  good,  but   after  discussing  the
opportunities for increasing  it, we shall  devote some attention  to
the temporary dislocations particular improvements  may cause and how
to mitigate their undesirable effects. 

	Some areas  of human activity experience regular increases in
productivity and others  do not.   Which  do and which  don't is  not
determined by a law of nature but depends on the state of technology,
on social  organization, and on whether there is a desire to increase
productivity. 

MANUFACTURING

	Manufacturing  is   the  classical   area  for   productivity
improvement.  Its productivity  has both a technological and a social
component.   The differences  among manufacturing  productivities  in
different countries stem from both causes.  Thus there are many cases
in which a country like the Soviet Union uses an identical technology
to the U.S. (for example when  the plant is purchased from the  U.S.)
but obtains a  much lower productivity from the technology.   A first
approximation to quantifying this phenomenon might be to say that the
productivity is the  product of a  technological productivity with  a
social efficiency and that the social efficiency is characteristic of
the country and  sometimes of the  industry within the  country.   We
will guess that  the social efficiency of  the U.S. and Japan  is .8,
Britain is .6, and the Soviet Union is .5.  In this section, we shall
be mainly concerned with the technological component of productivity. 

	In general,  the productivity  of manufacturing  in the  U.S.
follows  the possibilities  admitted by  technology rather  well, but
there are some remarks worth making:

	a.  The technology of manufacturing productivity (as distinct
from peripheral topics like quality control  and operations analysis)
is  not   developed  as  an   academic  discipline.     There  are  no
experimental production lines and almost no professors of  production
technology.  Most  likely, there is a  substantial missed opportunity
here. 

	b.  The area  of fastest productivity  improvement is  in the
manufacture of electronics.  Unfortunately, this is a  consequence of
a technological situation, the possibility of integrated circuits and
the  possibility of printed wiring that  cannot be transferred to the
manufacture of mechanical devices. 

	c. Much  of the  increase in  manufacturing productivity  has
been achieved by  economies of scale in making  very large numbers of
identical objects.  This has substantial costs in the quality of jobs
and in  rigidity of product  design.   Computers provide a  potential
means of getting the economy of mass production with individuality of
design.  Numerical control and computer control of machine tools is a
first step in this direction  and the automatic assembly machine will
be  another.   Because  of special  opportunities, the  manufacturer of
electronic  devices  can do  this  easier  than  the  manufacturer  of
mechanical devices. 

RETAIL TRADE

	1. The robot store

ADMINISTRATION

	1. Not doing it. 

	2. Making computers talk to each other
	
	3. Wiping out the brokers and other parasites. 

PERSONAL SERVICES

	1. Law and medicine - better access to information. 

	2. automated design and diagnosis. 

	3. Teaching

DOMESTIC

	1. Delivery

	2. Cleaning and putting away. 

	3. Child care. 

	4. Food preparation. 

	5. Maintenance and repair.