[ghshephard]

Ah, I see what you are getting at. I guess, you would also say, that storage density hasn't improved 1000x in the last 20 years, but "increased". And that the rate of death from automobile accidents per 1 million miles traveled since 1950 hasn't improved, but, "decreased".

I guess I wanted to combine both an objective and subjective assessment in a single word, which admittedly while not precisely accurate, got across my meaning.

I was actually hoping you were going to give me a traditional marxist response that we should not seek to decrease the amount of labor per unit of production, (that decreasing the amount of work per bushel of wheat is not an improvement) - I had an answer for that!

[davelnewton]

I actually would say increased/decreased in those situations, but I think most people (myself included) would also say those were improvements--they don't come with any significant costs, whereas large-scale ag does have associated, often negative, side-effects.

Tragically for our "argument" I believe doing less work for the same output is a good thing, at least in general. But even that has associated costs that aren't always "good" given current conditions :/