Customer Delusion Is Really What Drives Profit
The shift from an efficient and better world to a dark and dangerous one driven by greed is what endangers us all.
Looking back at the technological enhancement of the past, in brief as we don’t have all day and this isn’t a book, the most salient thing is how in generally processes have improved over time.
Now, if you’ve read any of my articles previously you’ll know I’m definitely not talking about software engineering processes — they most definitely don’t always improve over time, indeed and many of them do end up taking a turn down a dead end and even then won’t stop when they reach a brick wall and just keep repeatedly driving into it¹.
What I am talking about however, are processes involving increases in efficiency in the real world — instead of mining coal by hand we now use bigger, better, and more efficiency machines for example, which is pretty much the same for any resource extraction going on in the world today.
Over time I can see how improving efficiency often goes hand in hand with improving safety, working conditions, and ultimately keeping people safe but, more recently, improving efficiency has become something primarily more about maximising profit, making profit more quickly, and discovering even more ways to make even more profit.
