This is an example of how appearance-based and feeling-based a lot of the activities of businesses are.
If you look at previous social orders its very obvious how much activity served a social function vs a real physical need related to survival. The pyramids, for instance. While there’s a bunch of things you could say about their role in the ancient Egyptian religion, and the effect of the make-work on Egypt’s economy/society, I don’t think anyone could argue that a giant pile of stones could physically help anyone put food in their belies or keep them warm at night; and when you get right down to it it seems pretty clear to me that the root cause of the pyramids is the ego of the guy in charge.
And yet there are many people who will tell you that everything a modern business does is maximally efficient. I would argue that this is pretty clearly not the case. One of the most blatant examples is dress codes and air conditioning. Cooling a large office building is not a small expense, and yet many businesses opt to have their employees wear hot suits (even their non-public facing employees) and turn down the temperature lower than it otherwise would need to be. You could extend that idea to the design of the building itself: a glass box is not the easiest thing to heat and cool. You could even extend it to the existence of the office building in general: while larger buildings are easier to heat and cool per unit area than a bunch of small ones (because of the square cube law), and there are certainly benefits to agglomeration, many office buildings are enormously tall and therefore enormously expensive (as construction costs do not grow linearly with height). Additionally, a lot of these buildings are built on some of the most expensive land that exists, which balloons their cost even more. I’m not saying that I think high rises are completely useless, but I do wonder if they need to be as common as they are, especially now that the internet exists (but lots of other people have talked about that).
Its interesting to note though that because businesses are supposed to be efficient, and the more efficient they are the better they are (more powerful, cunning, brutal, manly, etc) businesses adopt an aesthetic of efficiency. The use of LLMs is one example of this (using a new technology has the aesthetic of efficiency even if it measurably makes productivity worse) but it extends to a lot of the things businesses do. Even a lot of their architecture and industrial design fetishizes efficiency without actually being efficient, IMO.
This is an example of how appearance-based and feeling-based a lot of the activities of businesses are.
If you look at previous social orders its very obvious how much activity served a social function vs a real physical need related to survival. The pyramids, for instance. While there’s a bunch of things you could say about their role in the ancient Egyptian religion, and the effect of the make-work on Egypt’s economy/society, I don’t think anyone could argue that a giant pile of stones could physically help anyone put food in their belies or keep them warm at night; and when you get right down to it it seems pretty clear to me that the root cause of the pyramids is the ego of the guy in charge.
And yet there are many people who will tell you that everything a modern business does is maximally efficient. I would argue that this is pretty clearly not the case. One of the most blatant examples is dress codes and air conditioning. Cooling a large office building is not a small expense, and yet many businesses opt to have their employees wear hot suits (even their non-public facing employees) and turn down the temperature lower than it otherwise would need to be. You could extend that idea to the design of the building itself: a glass box is not the easiest thing to heat and cool. You could even extend it to the existence of the office building in general: while larger buildings are easier to heat and cool per unit area than a bunch of small ones (because of the square cube law), and there are certainly benefits to agglomeration, many office buildings are enormously tall and therefore enormously expensive (as construction costs do not grow linearly with height). Additionally, a lot of these buildings are built on some of the most expensive land that exists, which balloons their cost even more. I’m not saying that I think high rises are completely useless, but I do wonder if they need to be as common as they are, especially now that the internet exists (but lots of other people have talked about that).
Its interesting to note though that because businesses are supposed to be efficient, and the more efficient they are the better they are (more powerful, cunning, brutal, manly, etc) businesses adopt an aesthetic of efficiency. The use of LLMs is one example of this (using a new technology has the aesthetic of efficiency even if it measurably makes productivity worse) but it extends to a lot of the things businesses do. Even a lot of their architecture and industrial design fetishizes efficiency without actually being efficient, IMO.