What If the Work We're Busy Automating Is Needless?
June 19, 2026
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogjune26/needless-work6-26.html
. . .
As a thought experiment, let's consider two things:
1. Let's define the highest value technology as devices that operate reliably with little maintenance for many decades, without extracting any money from their owners beyond operational expenses such as electricity or fuel.
For example, the coffee maker, rice cooker and microwave on our counter are 25+ years old and still functioning reliably with zero maintenance costs. Our 1998 car is 28 years old and has required only modest maintenance to date, and given its condition, it can easily function reliably for another 12 years, a 40-year period of service.
Why this is the highest value technology is self-evident: the devices make the highest and best use of the resources consumed in their manufacture because they are durable, long-lasting and require minimal maintenance. In financial terms, since the technologies don't require the owners to pay any more than the purchase price and operational costs, the owners' costs are predictable and modest, leaving all the income they earn beyond the purchase price and operational expenses available for other uses.
All technologies that fail to meet these standards are inferior or defective. That is also self-evident.
2. Let's imagine a new law requires everyone to wear a Silly Hat in public. This requirement generates a vast and highly profitable surge in economic activity, pushing Gross Domestic Product (GDP), business profits, employment and taxes up.
The legal-regulatory sector is suddenly busy defining what qualifies as a Silly Hat, launching lawsuits challenging the laws requiring Silly Hats, codifying regulations regarding the safety and quality of Silly Hats, litigating claims of defective Silly Hats, hiring vast numbers of compliance, oversight and enforcement personnel, and so on.
The fashion industry leaps into action to design haute couture Silly Hats, designer Silly Hats, Silly Hats promoted by celebrities, Hello Kitty branded Silly Hats, and so on.
Retailers rush to market Silly Hats, offering discounts on cheap Silly Hats manufactured overseas, and promoted the "latest fashions" in Silly Hats.
Not to be outdone, the finance sector quickly generates a bubble in stocks relating to the manufacture and marketing of Silly Hats. The Silly Hat Index soars, minting thousands of mega-millionaires.
I think you see where this is going: the entire economic boom generated by completely needless Silly Hats is real, but the hats have no real value. Okay, now please take a deep breath.
I consider it self-evident that much of our economy is nothing more than Silly Hats that we call something else that sounds less silly. The percentage of our economy that actually produces life's essentials is a fraction of the share devoted to marketing, PR, unproductive "engagement," legal and regulatory busy-work, meetings, junkets, conferences, billions of needless communications, shadow-work required to deal with all the needless complexity generated by all this needless activity, and so on.
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Yes, I am in total agreement with this, I try to only buy things which will last and make them last, and I note that society needs much less labour than we are giving it in order to keep our infrastructure going.
In the UK, an ordinary crappy brick built house will last 150 years, yet we pay the banks for them over and over and over again every time we move.
If you consider what we actually need, and how much time we'd actually have to spend producing it in a fair society, we'd only work two days a week.
We could choose this if we wished once we shed the cabal, or we can choose tech acceleration and space travel too with not much more work.
It's all the cabal.
I agree with you.
Take the Cabal out of our lives, and allow the inner and outer corruption from their influence to fade, and the world will look very different and vastly better.
https://files.catbox.moe/areq35.gif
u/propertyOfUniverse
Uh oh!
Window air conditioners and dehumidifiers top my list. They used to work for decades, now it’s like they are designed to die within three years. They claim to be more energy efficient, but if you add in the energy to manufacture them, the energy they consume running at suboptimal levels, and whatever energy is consumed scrapping them, there is no way they’re more efficient.
I have a fridge that is from the 80s original equipment for a condo built in 1983- it outlasts all the other appliances AND the furnace .
We have two fridges from the 1950's on our farm. They are only used in the summer now,but still very impressive.
There is a company in China who are remaking classic American cars. They are taking an original and completely taking it apart and duplicating every component. The USA needs to make cars that last a lifetime.
There are quite a few old US cars in New Zealand, they were imported as their suspensions could stand up to the rough NZ back roads when the Euro cars couldn't at all.
Same as Cuba. They had to pass a law that wealthy buyers could not buy them to take off the Island..
Joke's on them. Classic american cars barely made 100k.
Peak durability for much of our manufacturing happened around 1995 - 2005. So many of those things are Buy it for life kind of quality. Ever since then, we've been subjected to constant over regulation and enshitification.
I've been through 6 can openers in the last line 8 years. My parents still have their original can opener from when they originally moved out of their parents house. It's insane the quality drop.
Plus all this throw away, extreme consumerism creates more slaves around the globe and longer hours for every one. The more you purchase the more you enslave others.
Go get the EZ-DUZ-IT Deluxe Can Opener. It will outlast you.
I have my reliable P38 !
Durable goods. Id, overtime a time, offer tax credits to individuals who buy durable goods from newly formed Companies and Manufacturing. They have to be owned and operated by long standing Americans. If they flip the company to a Globalist Corporation. All tax credits come due asap. The brand loses a special status..
The only reason for this is the import shitting machine.
CHY-NA
Until we cut that away, or tariff the products to force even competition, American made products of great quality will still seem absurdly priced
A fridge/washer/Dryer that lasts 30 years vs 4 would be nice
Thank you.
Came here to say that.
My parents had the same olive green washer & dryer for 30 years. It shook my bedroom when mom overloaded it with my grass-stained corduroys.
Their mustard yellow electric range NEVER needed "sensors" or new heating elements. Their matching fridge that sounded like a gassy yak was trying to digest spoiled milk, lived on until the R12 Freon compressor lost a bearing after munching on one too many dust bunnies.
Incandescent light bulbs.
ALL Appliances need to be durable goods - INCLUDING your vehicle, which is ALSO an appliance.
The last 10-15 years specifically have shown the most expensive, least durable vehicles EVER produced GLOBALLY.
They're impossible to service yourself in many cases, NONE of them can keep a damned transmission in them & they're OVERPRICED & broken before you've even paid it off.
Totally unacceptable at this stage in the game. EVERY motor vehicle world wide should be a marvel of engineering, efficiency and longevity - PERIOD.
The art of polishing a turd does NOT qualify as being "marvelous"
Well said.
This only makes sense and it would be done if only we didn't have a monetary system that was based on extracting all the wealth from society and putting it in the pockets of the money printers.