Being Efficient Will Save You Money

But at what cost?

Yes, being more efficient saves you money.

But at what cost?

Business owners work with limited time and resources, so they need to be efficient. That's fair.

However, the cardinal sin here is assuming that efficiency means no tradeoffs, or, at best, that the tradeoffs are always worth it.

Modernity has made plenty of tradeoffs and assumed that progress for progress's sake must be good. We assume that increasing both speed and quantity is always better.

Is that really true?

William J. Levitt gave us the suburbs. Are the suburbs really better than the traditional mixed-use development pattern? I suppose we all enjoy our long commutes.

Le Corbusier gave us brutalist structures. Are sharp angles and lack of ornamentation really better than Victorian buildings?

Henry Ford gave us the assembly line. Is reducing a man to a single task, repeated hundreds of times a day, really better than allowing him to be an artisan?


It's more efficient to build whole neighborhoods of the same house.

It's more efficient to build soulless structures with zero ornamentation.

It's more efficient to have each worker do a singular task for eight hours a day.

But did it really build a better future?



We're now at a crossroads. Using AI is (probably) more efficient than hiring an entry-level worker, and business owners have to make a choice.

This isn't to say AI is universally bad. I think it has its place. It can certainly be useful for bootstrapped founders who truly can't afford to make any hires. I'll be honest, I occasionally use ChatGPT for searches, and I enjoy my AI notetaker. Maybe this is just my cognitive dissonance

You can probably argue that entry-level workers should just upskill. AI is improving the overall economy, and a rising tide lifts all boats. An improved economy leads to a better life for the average American. Some people always get left behind when it comes to progress.

I'm not unsympathetic to that argument. AI developments create jobs, certainly. I'm just not sure that the argument holds. Not if you look at the last hundred years in the US.

Are we better off in some ways now than we were a century ago? Absolutely

Is some of that because of a larger and more global economy? I think so

But did our economic improvements come at a cost? 100%


AI optimists will probably say this is a bad-faith argument against LLMs. That our current situation isn't even comparable to the Model T. We're smarter now than we used to be, and AI is just a tool that promotes human flourishing.

It certainly can be a tool that promotes human flourishing. The only issue here is that the biggest obstacle to human flourishing tends to be humans.

Even in the age of mass manufacturing, we still have artisans. There are certainly fewer, though.

It seems like hubris to think the same won't happen to knowledge workers if we allow it.

Progress is often good. So long as we know what we're progressing towards.

Thanks for reading,

Joe