we are over saturated with economic thinking ..at this point when I hear efficiency or competitiveness a suddenly have an uncontrollable reflex of throwing up
I get the hatred of excesses wrt finance/economics, to a point. Though I can't help but see comments against efficiency in general as a shift in the needle towards policymakers who bask in nimwittitude.
We're not over saturated with it, because in another universe: paper currency failed the vibe check because not-thinking-about-stuff was en vogue. I'm glad we live in this one.
> nimwittitude
Is that the intellectual level of a witling?
That legit happened a few times in history until it stuck. Paper currency was invented and abandoned many times in history so we sort of do live in the timeline where it failed the vibe check, it's just such a good idea people kept trying it afterwards.
Healthy employees do better work than unhealthy ones and happiness is a key component of mental health. Hence efficiency improves when employees have better working conditions.
how about transitioning to a non-commercial, cooperative "resource-based" economy then? we could need some help..
In terms of pollution/environment? probably not efficient
The real question is: "Is Santa (thermodynamically) efficient?" https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~andrew5/cute/engineer_santa.txt
Hey I'd forgotten about Marginal Revolution! I used to follow this blog several years ago, thanks for the reminder!
Good article.
I feel like it was more efficient in the past before Amazon. Now everyone buys online, you buy from Amazon sometimes you don't realize the product you just puchased wasn't even from Amazon but a third party seller. The product sometimes fake.
The dependency on the 4th quarter is just dumb.
Delivery is a lot more efficient than each person driving to the store.
Is that always true? Definitely if you are buying things from one place, but what if I drive a few km into town (in a hatchback), buy multiple things from multiple shops and drive back, how does that compare to getting multiple deliveries made by much larger vehicles?
Then there is that far greater amount of packing used for deliveries. The box you would find in the shop is packaged inside another box, often much larger. Then there is the far higher rate of returns.
IT may be true, buts its not obvious to me that it is.
I would not underestimate the amount of resources necessary to support this brick-and-mortar stores model. You need to deliver those goods to each shop, then handle the returns of unsold items... Not to mention costs of employees (and their costs) — but that may be debatable, of course (creating jobs).
Yes, there are logistics behind shops. It is going to vary a lot with what you buy and from whom. Food is likely to be delivered from somewhere local AFAIK so its not going to simplify the logistics.
Buying from a shop does not necessarily mean driving to the shops: at the moment (and in some places I have lived in in the past) there are quite a few things I buy from local shops I walk to. In some big cities I would take public transport to buy anything that was not heavy (and really heavy things would be delivered anyway, of course).~
The point of want to make is that its not invariably true and in many cases it is not obvious it is true - you need to know how the supply chains work.
Also the ease of buying stuff increases, so more stuff needs to be produced and transported.
It's been pointed out to me that how much stuff you buy is usually a function of your income, it may not matter how you get it.
A weak function is also a function. Also if your income is higher you probably buy stuff that is more expensive.
it is, but its not linear - the proportion of incomes spent falls as incomes get higher.
Yes and also spent on more durable items.
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Interesting question but how would you prove any of it without a lot of natural experiments?
By adding a new gifting holiday in midsummer, for load-balancing. It's called "Amazon Prime Day".
It might get tricky. Midsummer already has a spending stimulus. Summer vacation is when people spend their money on tourism.
Imagine how much money Amazon could make if they invest money into convincing people that they should spend it on gifts instead of travel.
Who cares about tourism industry if you can take their money.
Maybe gift giving is lower environmental impact!
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