[coldtea]

>Enabling the same production with fewer workers (or, equivalently, greater production with the same number of workers) is the definition of a productivity increase, not something that constitutes a difference in kind from a normal productivity increase.

Of course. But "greater production with the same number of workers" vs "the same production with fewer workers" is already a difference in quantity (of both production, and, the thing pertinent to the discussion, of workers).

And there's also "greater production with fewer workers" - where you get to have your employer pie (fewer workers) and eat it too (still get greater production).

[philwelch]

Yes, but you’re just reiterating the basic Luddite argument, and taking IMO a blinkered perspective by looking at it from the perspective of a single firm rather than the economy as a whole. Often, increasing labor productivity in a given category actually increases the total quantity of such labor demanded in the economy due to the Jevons effect. If you increase output per worker by 10x, sometimes the product becomes cheap enough that the quantity demanded goes up by 100x and the economy ends up needing 10x as many workers. (Numbers for purpose of illustration of course.)

In other words, sure, there’s a limiting factor in terms of how much software the world actually wants, but the more software we can produce per programmer, the cheaper software gets and the more software the world wants. There is still eventually a limit here, but it is a lot farther away than it looks.

[TrueSlacker0]

I'm not sure why your getting down voted so much. This is literally what Henry Ford and others did. He raised wages for staff to be the highest in manufacturing, then improved their throughout by streamlining and removing wastes, then he lowered the cost of cars to customers making the market for them change from a few per year for only the ultra wealthy to what it is today. Thus expanding the needed workers.

[mistermann]

Did you run this by the risk, global relations, and legal guys/gals?