Productivity replaces No-productivity

The Power of Productivity, an excellent book by William W. Lewis of the McKinsey Global Institute has recently served as a marvelous lead for contemplation while on the bus here in Ecuador.  The bus, similar in shape and function to any bus you may now have as an image in your head, was driven by a man and his two sons while three other people collected money, arranged luggage and ran through the streets looking for riders.  It doesn’t always require six people to operate a small bus down here, but it is often more than I am used to and this example serves to draw out the productivity juxtaposition here.

It would be fine if you want to compare this experience to a bus experience in a higher-income country such as in Europe or the US, though I am going to continue with a more precarious contrast.  Google recently released the beta version of a program that guesses what web pages you are going to visit (from your past habits), preloads them (while you are using the web for other things), and then records how much time it saved you by having the pages preloaded. 

Lewis writes about a 12-year microeconomic study of several countries that he carried out that does an exceptional job at explaining how activities of higher productivity replace activities of lower productivity, and also exposits how excessive regulation and big government lead to lower levels of productivity.  Lewis beleives one major ideological differences between countries which reflect these atributes is the respect of consumer preferences over other special interests.  (Here is a related post on blogs and consumer power.)  I will be posting more ideas on these topics soon.