Ed wong article in the Atlantic. Its the novelty of the virus to an un-vaccinated system that is so deadly. Most likely
the pandemic ends when everyone has been eposed to the virus at some point or another. Then it will be endemic.
We have better protection in place but have thrown out other forms of transmission protection that give us time.
Time to understand the virus, and not allow more variants to develop. But if its inevitable that we come into
contact? why not try and get it over with? Could still over run hospitals it seems. Time also to reach the
unvaccinated so they can be better protected.
Article by austin vernon on why software has not increased productivity as expected
:blog:
He outlines two forms of technology General Purpose technology, like electricity, cars etc. packing complex technology
into a product so that other producers an easily implement it.
Management technology are more abstract notions that must be adopted, like efficient assembly lines. There is an
asymmetry that benefits GPT but not management tech. Its difficult to adopt, you bear the burden, as opposed to
GPT which is easy adopt.
”A company contains many processes that create value for its customers. Management technology determines how good the
company is at organizing its resources to produce value."
"Generic software might not mix well with the company’s core processes. Because the software added to excess capacity,
the only way to earn a return is by layoffs. Companies are laying off workers that understand how to interface with
their unique processes!” normally the core processes are also the comparative advantage.
”It is almost impossible for a third-party software provider to reorganize an industry’s core processes. If they did,
they would be a first-party company. We want an assembly line, but we get a mallet and file subscription instead. “
To have an impact we need assembly lines
TFP (Total factor productivity)
Under some simplifying assumptions about the production technology, growth in TFP becomes the portion of growth in
output not explained by growth in traditionally measured inputs of labour and capital used in production
”According to economic theory pre-1937, it was not obvious why companies existed. Economists thought markets and
prices organized the economy, yet companies with internal central planning were the bedrock of the economy. Ronald
Coase realized companies (or “firms”) existed because transactions and contracts taking place on the open market
had costs in time, money, and uncertainty.” The way I intuit this is that in theory, if want rice. I could get
rice from say, China but I would expend a lot of time getting in touch with people, money on transportation to get
it to me etc. A company here exists to perform all those transactions for me. Both the time and the money. As long
as their transaction costs are less than open market transactions (what people buy for it as well as possibly
costs that are associated with the market (?)) they make a profit.
I think the argument is that large organisations are needed to map complex transaction costs and processes
”The high upfront costs contribute to slow market share growth. Each incremental customer requires increasing
amounts of effort to build the service they need. Because the software is so custom, it is near impossible to
integrate across different companies in a value chain.”