Why We Fear Efficiency: The Paradox of Modern Work

The Productivity Paradox: Why We Fear Efficiency

Imagine this: 50,000 years ago, a group of hunter-gatherers invents a tool that lets them hunt in half the time. What’s the tribe’s response? Relief. Less time hunting means more time resting, creating, playing, or caring for others. No one protests. No one worries about "job loss." Optimization is a communal win.

Fast forward to today. A company automates a warehouse process and lays off half its workers. Stock prices go up. Public anxiety rises. Workers fear for their livelihoods. The very thing that once promised shared leisure and prosperity—increased efficiency—now triggers fear, resistance, and uncertainty.

This is the paradox: why do we fear optimization today, when it once meant collective benefit?

This post explores that contradiction, how we got here, and what might need to change for efficiency to once again feel like freedom.

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From Tribe to Market: What Changed?

To understand the paradox, we need to identify what's fundamentally different between the hunter-gatherer context and our current economic system. What conditions made optimization a benefit then—and a risk now?

1. Scale and Fragmentation of Ownership
In small groups, inventions and improvements benefit the collective. If someone invents a better fishing spear, their family and tribe thrive alongside them. Ownership is immediate and social.

In a globalized economy, however, the inventor (or capital owner) is often disconnected from the people affected by the invention. If Amazon develops warehouse robots, the benefit accrues to shareholders—not to the laid-off workers or broader society.

2. No Natural Mechanism for Redistribution

In tribal societies, wealth was often perishable (meat spoils), and survival depended on communal sharing. The physical and social conditions enforced a kind of egalitarianism.

Today, wealth is durable—stocks, land, intellectual property—and can be accumulated and protected. There's no inherent mechanism that redirects efficiency gains to the public. Without legal or institutional redistribution, optimization simply benefits those already holding capital.

3. Legal Protection of Accumulated Wealth

Modern economic systems are designed to shield capital. Laws protect property, inheritance, and capital gains. This allows wealth to compound across generations with little obligation to redistribute—even if that wealth was built on underpaid labor or exploitative systems.

In tribal settings, extreme inequality was practically impossible: the richest hunter couldn’t hoard vastly more than others because of limited storage, constant movement, and social norms of sharing.

4. Jobs Are Still the Gate to Survival

This may be the deepest shift. In modern societies, most people rely on jobs not just for fulfillment, but for basic survival—food, housing, healthcare.

So if optimization eliminates a job, it doesn’t just free time; it erases income. The problem isn't the automation. The problem is that there's no backup system.

• In some cases, this leads to absurdities: bullshit jobs (David Graeber) emerge—roles that exist primarily to keep people employed. Or we see the commercialization of previously non-commercial tasks: parenting advice becomes a subscription app, hobbies become side hustles.

Automation frees time—but our system doesn’t let people enjoy it. So it creates insecurity instead of leisure.

Ideas Toward a Different System

Whats the goal of society? In my opinion its enabling everyone to have a fullfilled and happy life. Let’s imagine a world where optimization benefits everyone. That doesn’t require returning to tribal life. But it does require redesigning the rules. Here are a few directions.

1. Expand Capital Ownership
If workers own a share of the company, automation doesn’t threaten them—it benefits them. Cooperatives, employee ownership schemes, or national wealth funds can help align incentives.

• Example: The Mondragon Corporation in Spain is a federation of worker-owned cooperatives. Employees vote, share profits, and reinvest collectively.

This is still capitalism—but with broader access to capital.

2. Separate Income from Work

If jobs are scarce due to automation, income needs another source. Universal Basic Income (UBI) proposes giving everyone a baseline, no strings attached. It doesn't eliminate work—it removes desperation.

• Example: Alaska’s Permanent Fund pays every resident a small annual dividend from oil revenues. It’s not radical. It’s just a new way to distribute shared wealth.

3. Redistribute Gains via Institutions

So how about progressive taxation—say 80% on ultra-high incomes? Some will argue this violates freedom. But what kind of freedom allows one person to profit from a system where millions lack opportunity or security? Today’s system sells the illusion of equal opportunity while embedding deep structural inequality.

In the end, we have to reduce the incentive to exploit others at scale.

5. Set Global Rules—and Reduce the Incentive to Exploit

Without binding international standards, companies shift production to where wages are lowest, rights weakest, and pollution cheapest. That’s why a shirt is sewn in Bangladesh under near-slavery conditions, while profits flow to the Global North.

Ethical businesses get punished by competition. To prevent a race to the bottom, we need global worker protection, corporate accountability, and enforceable ecological laws.

Fairness can’t stop at borders—and neither should taxation. Ultra-high incomes and extreme capital gains should be taxed progressively, even globally. Not to punish success, but to reduce the systemic reward for exploiting others at scale.

This isn’t utopia. It’s the minimum needed to stop optimization from turning into extraction.

4. Work Should Match What Society Needs—Not More
Today, many people work far more than necessary—while others are underemployed or excluded. The environment suffers. Social cohesion erodes.

So why not flip the question: how much work does humanity actually need to prosper? Then divide that work fairly. Let each person contribute a reasonable share—and be compensated with the prosperity we can afford collectively.

All time beyond that should be free for care, creativity, rest, or exploration.

This isn’t a fantasy. It’s a rebalancing. Just as retirement became normalized in the 20th century, reduced work hours could become the norm in an era of rising productivity.

A Final Mirror

Imagine if the cavemen had today’s system.

One hunter invents a spear. Instead of sharing, he hoards all the spears. The others can only hunt if they “work” for him. He pays them a fraction of the meat while keeping the rest. Soon, the tribe depends on hunting only for him—he gets rich, they get scraps. Eventually, they no longer hunt for food, but to keep access to the spears.

How long would that last? Probably not long. They’d revolt—or just walk away.

That story isn’t ancient fiction. It’s a mirror.

Efficiency should liberate. If it doesn’t—if it breeds fear, unemployment, inequality—then the problem isn’t the optimization. It’s the structure it operates within.

To prevent productivity from becoming predatory, we need new rules. Global worker protections. Enforceable environmental laws. Corporate accountability across borders. Without them, ethical behavior gets punished, and the race to the bottom continues.

And we must reduce the incentive to exploit at scale. Ultra-high incomes and concentrated capital gains should be taxed—heavily, progressively, and even globally. Not as punishment, but as balance. If we don’t redesign who benefits from optimization, we’ll keep fearing the very thing that should set us free.