Waste

When I was young, one of the hot topics for speculation was the possibility of much more leisure. Automation was the key – the more we had the less we’d have to do. Sounds okay in principle, even now, but has it happened?

Well as with most of these time series questions, it depends on your starting point. Some of us have achieved the goal of more leisure by retiring between the ages of 55 and 60, the so called baby-boomers. But now we are told it was always unaffordable and future generations will have to work much longer than we did.

Leaving aside the unfairness of it, and it is unfair, why hasn’t the leisure materialized for all? As usual I’d say there are lots of reasons, from investment returns to unexpected longevity to antibiotics, but the one I’m posting about here is the waste incurred by servicing an over-complex society.

When I grew up in the fifties, very little was wasted. Waste not want not was a necessary guide to daily life. Food was eaten, vegetable scraps went on the compost heap and the only thing not consumed was animal and fish bones. We had no central heating, no fridge, freezer, phone or TV set. Milk and beer bottles were all recycled and old newspaper went into lighting the fire or was threaded on a loop of string in the outside toilet.

As for work, well my impression is that jobs in the fifties reflected a post-war culture of frugality. What was done was worth doing – on the whole.

As time went on and we became far more prosperous, we also became far more wasteful. I don’t mean the kind of material waste that recycling nuts go on about, but more a case of wasted effort. It seems to me that the productivity gains which made us more prosperous are to a large extent being wasted in doing what isn’t worth doing.

Instead of more leisure, we have more people involved in useless activities. Rather than try to list them out though, I prefer to set the problem of wasted effort in the context of complexity.

Complexity is one of our great social constructs – possibly our most important modern social construct. As a society becomes more complex, the new complexity has to be serviced. Not only that, but those people who service the new complexity acquire a vested interest in even more complexity, because that creates more business. We have a vicious feedback loop here and don’t know what to do about it.

If the industrial revolution had made us into a nation of engineers, then all would be well, because we’d simplify our way out of our difficulties as a matter of social policy. We’d look at our own society via powerful engineering metaphors. But we aren’t a nation of engineers, and don’t have those metaphors.

Social metaphors are important because they frame our concepts, but our ruling elite don’t have them, or at least they don't have any that are worthwhile. The Big Society for example. The guy next door fitting out his kitchen can do better than that, but Dave, Nick and Ed can’t. They have the wrong background and mix with the wrong people.

Our political elite barely understand engineering, let alone the possibility of engineering complexity out of our society. Or at least, engineering it to manageable level.

I don’t mean trained engineers here of course, just rational people who see merit in simplicity. But practical folk never think of climbing the greasy pole do they? Ironically enough, it’s too greasy for them.