[jwmhjwmh]

The increasing prevalence of "dead labor" (maybe another term for it is "fixed capital"?) depends on the changing processes of production. An example of the process is the switch from human-powered hoeing to animal-powered ploughing in agriculture (animals count as dead in this case, I guess.) Ploughing is more efficient, but requires more investment.

[PaulHoule]

"Total Factor Productivity" is one way economists struggle with it. To maximize prosperity we need to be efficient with social capital, financial capital, labor and other factors of production: it is now a multiple-objective optimization problem for which there is no longer an equilibrium solution and thus it evades assigning a specific number to "Total Factor Productivity".