Society and meta-levels

[chess]

It occurred to me, while walking home through a building site, just how complicated our society has become.

The concept which struck me was this - I work as a tester for a company which produces software which people use to make using a piece of someone else' software easier, the other piece of software in turn mostly being used as the back end to some other kind of application software, which is usually something used in the administration of some actual productive activity. Despite being several meta-layers down from anything which directly relates to actual physical production or processing of Stuff, I make an excellent living doing this.

It strikes me as quite strange and unsettling that our corner of the world has enough overproduction to allow me to do this, especially while some people are still scratching in the dirt for a living, with basically no infrastructure supporting their efforts.

Comments

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Isn't it more the case that it's like a triangle where there is a small amount of stuff that achieves a lot at the top, and lots of stuff that the other stuff is built upon at the bottom?

All this 'overproduction' is leading to more efficient (well, correct) software that will make the system the software supports / creates more efficient. As a whole this leads to great efficiency overall.

[king-of-wrong.livejournal.com]

Maybe more like a pyramid than a triangle, and the welfare state definitely has some Ponzi aspects...

[marble.livejournal.com]

At least there's some physical production or processing at the end there. I often used to think similar thoughts when I was producing voice recorders, and they end up mostly being used in customer service (sort of an extra, aside from the real production), or insurance (even worse, money changing hands for things that might happen), or, of course, spying, none of which really help society at all, at least, not in the way that growing a crop does.

[theinquisitor.livejournal.com]

But, once you have more than about 3 people doing something, it probably becomes more efficient if some of their effort is devoted to 'meta' things - even if it's just simply making sure they don't overlap, to start with.

I contend that the 'overproduction' is partly *because* of the meta, not despite it. I'm pretty sure we make at least as efficient a use of our land as third world contries do (modulo the fact that we then produce less efficient foodstuffs, in an efficient fashion, and actually poduce less nutritional value).

[passage.livejournal.com]

British farmland is perhaps the most productive in the world, this is because we have an excellent climate for farming as well as a very scientific approach to farming.

Well, the bits that we farm, the bits with houses on top of them work a little differently.

[chess]

It also strikes me as unfortunate that places which are really good for farming grow quickly and then people build houses and factories and so forth on top of all the really good farmland, rather than building over places that are really difficult to farm. OTOH I don't know how expensive transporting food is - if it's very expensive it makes sense to put people right next to farmland, even if that does mean taking up the farmland a bit.

[ilanin.livejournal.com]

The other problem is that most of the areas which aren't good for farmland are that way because they're somewhat mountainous or at least undulating, which makes building stuff there annoyingly difficult.

[passage.livejournal.com]

Good point.

Until recently Britian has had more farmland than it needed, because we've made each acre so productive, however there are plans to have ethanol as a significant component of our fuel in the near future and there isn't actually enough farmland in Britian at the moment to do it. Weirdly the whole 'I refuse to give up my car' thing may force us to give land back to farming.

Or we could just import the stuff.

[passage.livejournal.com]

Speaking as someone in the business of food being moved around the country: looking at the second law of thermodynamics hard enough will quickly convince you that one of the most enrergy consuming activities is organisation.

To make organisation possible food actually gets moved quite a long way regardless.

If there's a Tesco sitting next to a farm the flour will have had a far more circuitous route than corn leaping over the fence.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

It also strikes me as unfortunate that places which are really good for farming grow quickly and then people build houses and factories and so forth on top of all the really good farmland

Do they?

[king-of-wrong.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you're almost ready to buy into the "noble savage" thing. Shall I give the Khmer Rouge a call? ;)

Seriously, though, most western economies are based around services, brokerage (acting as a middle-man in the supply chain) and arbitrage (exploiting market pricing differences). Only one of those - services - has any intrinsic value, and even that value is highly variable.

In the end, the economies are supported only by exploiting others which, despite all the talk of laissez-faire capitalism, would be destroyed by a truly free market. If prices equalised, arbitrage would become impossible, and without cartels the market would squeeze away the margins on brokerage. But, since no government is likely to let that happen, and it'd take decades for the systems to collapse anyway, there's no sense in worrying about it. Be aware of your place in the value chain, but expect that the world will still be here tomorrow...

Or, if you're feeling worried, make sure you have a skill which has always had marketable value. Admittedly, the distaff half of the population has a historical advantage there - some things never go out of fashion.