Industrial efficiency once meant removing costly materials (like platinum in lightbulbs); today it increasingly means removing costly people from processes. The same zeal that scaled penicillin or cut bulb costs now targets labor via AI and automation, with replacement jobs often thinner and remote.
— This metaphor reframes the automation debate, forcing policymakers and firms to weigh efficiency gains against systematic subtraction of human roles.
2026.01.08
75% relevant
The episode’s critique of replacing relational/communal friction with optimization aligns with the existing idea that contemporary efficiency efforts often 'remove people' from processes; the podcast extends this to cultural and civic life (reading, community rituals) where removing human intermediaries reduces social capital.
Aporia
2026.01.04
68% relevant
Winegard’s lament that efficiency removes necessary human effort and social binding maps to the idea that modern efficiency often substitutes away people (labor, relational ties) as if they were a costly input to be eliminated, with social and economic consequences.
Leah Libresco Sargeant
2025.10.08
100% relevant
The article’s platinum‑in‑lightbulb history and its claim that 'people are the platinum' when imagining fully automated homebuilding.