Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Efficiency (let’s call it hyper efficiency) is abounding. Maybe it isn’t always good.

Amazon delivers wonderful cloud computing with their Amazon Web Services (AWS). They have found a way to activate virtual computers on demand, run them, deactivate them, and start over again. They have rooms of real computers that they share among millions of users. They start, allocate, reallocate, and so on in microseconds. The efficiency of their operations is amazing. Amazon is not the only company that provides such hyper-efficient cloud computing.

Many companies today are operating at efficiencies that mirror those of the cloud computing providers. They have reduced staff to a minimum while still providing goods and services. Unemployment has grown, so those people who have jobs are faced with either job loss or lower wages. We all choose the lower wages.

Articles about such hyper-efficient businesses abound. One is here and another here.

Perhaps we have become a bit too efficient in business. We have reduced the number of employees to some minimum value. A side affect is that we have reduced the number of consumers for our goods and services. What benefit is there to offering high-profit, low-cost goods and services and there are almost no persons with the jobs and money to be consumers?