My family watched Miracle on 34th Street a couple years ago. Aside from being generally impressed with how well it's aged, I was particularly impressed with the office technology on display (pneumatic tubes etc).
In Victorian London, mail could be posted up to 12 times per day.[1] That's about as often as e-mail can be turned around.
Bronze Age merchants exchanged clay tablets with remarkable throughput.[2]
On the consumer side...
I live in Silicon Valley. My grandparents had better access to services than I do — fresh milk delivery, an MD that came to their bedside, and an electric trolley — in the 1930s in a town of 12k ppl. My grandfather was a driver for a laundry service, my grandmother taught piano. [3]
But maybe the most fundamental issue here is that productivity is 'measured' by dividing GDP by hours worked. But work seems better characterized as a mechanism that distributes, rather than creates, GDP.[4]
A lot of those jobs ultimately became redundant for people. Milk delivery makes no sense when you can choose your bottle down at the grocery store next time you're there. Bedside care became impractical as medical technology advanced, and electric trolleys are pretty cumbersome (especially alongside city streets).
Eventually, we realized that we could cut out the milkman: we laid off a lot of people in the process, but I'm sure the ice deliverymen are thankful that they no longer need to haul 25 pound bricks up New York staircases anymore.
Ice delivery is the only valid example of a reduntdant job here. My grandparents bought milk at the grocery store, too. And I get milk delivered with Instacart. Medical technology did not make bedside care impractical. Quite the opposite. More can now be done from the bedside. Not that a typical doctor's visit involves any meaningful use of technology. Of course there are many other reasons why bedside care is superior.
FYI trolleys were phased out due to auto oil and gas conglomerates buying and phasing out trolley companies and lobbying local governments to drop support.
In Victorian London, mail could be posted up to 12 times per day.[1] That's about as often as e-mail can be turned around.
Bronze Age merchants exchanged clay tablets with remarkable throughput.[2]
On the consumer side...
I live in Silicon Valley. My grandparents had better access to services than I do — fresh milk delivery, an MD that came to their bedside, and an electric trolley — in the 1930s in a town of 12k ppl. My grandfather was a driver for a laundry service, my grandmother taught piano. [3]
But maybe the most fundamental issue here is that productivity is 'measured' by dividing GDP by hours worked. But work seems better characterized as a mechanism that distributes, rather than creates, GDP.[4]
[1] https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/24089/victorian-mail-del...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRcu-ysocX4
[3] https://twitter.com/clumma/status/1297571626901331968
[4] https://twitter.com/clumma/status/835581829654536192