It’s often said that competition is good for consumers, as businesses will compete based on price, quality, or both, which leads to better goods or better prices for society. Efficiency is seen as being good for economic progress, too, and increases in technology are said to make things cheaper for individuals over time.
But I’m starting to notice some odd twists to this:
- People have more stuff than ever before. It seems that rather than efficiency making our lives cheaper, efficiency simply makes things cheaper, then we go out and spent the same amount of money on more things. Most of those things never serve a functional role in our lives, being relegated to closets, basements, and garages.
- Rather than efficiency driving the cost of things down, people simply demanded new features. Basic washers and dryers can be had for cheap, but a lot of people grow “tired” of these and upgrade to wifi-enabled, feature-packed monstrosities, for god-knows-why. Rather than pay $800 for something, they pay $3,000 instead. (Plus, that’ll be $10/month to use the washer app, or whatever…).
See, I don’t know anybody complaining about the cost of most manufactured goods. What most people seem to struggle with is the cost of houses, rent, food, healthcare, and gasoline. If efficiency is a such a wonderful thing, why haven’t the prices for these things dropped more?
There two general ways to lower price: decrease costs through efficiency, or decrease costs through a reduction in the quality of the materials. There is of course a third way: decrease profits, but we can’t talk about that, lol (and this is coming from someone who is more conservative on economic matters).
I do see a pattern, though. For one, we DID decrease the cost of houses: they’re called mobile homes. Love them or hate them, they were generally cheaper than stationary homes. I think what happened was there was a huge backlash to them because they threatened the status quo, the “value” people had wrapped up in traditional houses, and they were ultimately ostracized to the point where today, they are generally thought to decrease in value over time, because they are thought to decrease in value over time, because…well you get the point. Everybody thinks they suck, so they suck, because everybody thinks they suck.
Also, on that note, innovative housing largely isn’t adopted. People like the status and prestige of homeownership in the traditional sense, so even forgetting the difficulties of zoning laws, tiny houses never really took off (also, where are you gonna put all that stuff from the storage room?)
I mean, I’m being kind of cheeky here, but think about it. Manufacturing can find new materials that perform the same function for a fraction of the cost, and that increases efficiency, lowering prices, but are there any houses in your neighborhood constructed of anything other than concrete, wood, and other standard materials? Probably not. As wages increase, the cost to build increases. Don’t forget that even if houses are cheaper than they used to be, people demand larger and larger houses, which likely offsets the cost savings from any improvements. Do you want a two bedroom, one-bathroom house with no garage? Probably not, but a lot of people in the past would have been overjoyed to own such a property. But we don’t really build those anymore.
Likewise with cars. If we had focused on how cars were built in the 1980s, we could probably have a fully-automated factory build everything for us, and new cars would be stupidly cheap. But a lot of money was reinvested in R&D for safety features, and this was a good thing. But nowadays, people want their cars hooked up to the internet, so systems have been configured to do just that. Gas mileage has increased, too, but now more people want electric vehicles and self-driving vehicles. No benefits of efficiency for you!
[I do get that efficiency has made electric cars cheaper, I’m just looking at the macro level, and the fact that some people actually believe $70k for an electric vehicle is a good deal]
And healthcare, well…let’s just not even go there. Not today.
See, though, all of this gets really complicated, really fast. But while some people can preach efficiency all day long, and libertarians can relish the downfall of various jobs, how actually better is our world becoming? Again, if we don’t see gains in affordable housing and the other big expenses, what really does it matter that our toasters only cost $20 now instead of $30? Doesn’t this seem an absolutely trivial issue compared to other things?
(On that note, very few people seem to enjoy their jobs, or their jobs are terribly exploitative. I think if businesses were barred from being exploitative – if that can even be done – people might generally be happier, which would be a public good, but I do suspect this is more complicated than it seems at first)
I don’t know. This topic could take dozens of directions, but I’m just ruminating. I think there really are advantages to be had in modern society – I’m not trying to be a Luddite – but it’s important to realize that most people never get to see the true advantages of things because they aren’t really looking for those advantages. Why have a small house paid off in 10 years when you could own a mansion after 30 years? Why have a compact car when you could have a truck the size of a small apartment and drive around all day in it? Why have a functional washer and dryer when you could instead monitor your wash cycle from the pisser at McDonalds?
On the contrary, the modern stove is an amazingly efficient machine, but hardly anybody uses it, opting for $10/meal takeout on a regular basis, or delivery services that throw the ingredients together for a premium. I’m not saying those can’t be good, only that that insanely efficient invention – the oven – often doesn’t get nearly the amount of attention it deserves.
And again, none of this is to say that true struggles don’t exist, quite far from it. Only, if we’re going to hold efficiency up as some archetypal goal for society, we should probably think first about what efficiency truly means in the context of improved livelihood.