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Efficiency

Societal metrics demonstrate the idea of assessing different systems, but require a lot more work and research to be usable. Assessing DC is attempting to apply the metrics using general knowledge and logic. The ultimate goal is to have metrics that are purely assessed with data. For now this is a very draft approximation.

Financial Incentive Motivates People To Be Efficient

If an individual/company work harder/more efficiently they can make more profits. This helps efficiency. The reverse effect can be seen in some government agencies where being more efficient provides no benefit and so these agencies tend to be very inefficient.

Efficiency Can’t Be A Goal

The goal is never efficiency but to make money. For example, we make an abundance of cheap appliances since people will readily buy them. However, as they are cheap they fail quickly and the resources invested quickly go to waste. This may be profitable for a company, but his highly wasteful for humanity in the long run.

Competition Is Inefficient

There a multiple companies making washing machines in isolation. They perform the same research and spend lots of money competing on advertising. They also use similar amounts of resources doing things like shipping products. Overall this is a lot of duplication of effort.

This issue is also seen at a governmental level where there is lots of wastage due to competition between parties. Further more, parties sometimes pick inefficient policies because they need a policy that is in opposition to another major party.

Most Labor Is For The Already Wealthy

Even when work is conducted efficiently under DC the majority of the benefit does not go to the greater good, but to the already wealthy. Efficiency is not just the resources spent to amount produced, it is also how useful is what is created and who benefits from it.

Lot’s Of Rent Seeking Behavior

Rent seeking is activities that shift wealth around but don’t create new wealth. As wealth is being expended by these efforts and no wealth created, the result is that wealth is being destroyed. Rent seeking behavior is increasing in DC as the finance and banking systems expand. The opposite of this, scientific research, which generates the most wealth for money spent is a relatively small part of a DC economy.

The Result

Ultimately DC is not very efficient at converting labor into value for all people, or setting up efficient systems and technology that have a minimum amount of wastage.

Assessment: 4/10