Economy can be positive-sum, i.e., the more people work, the more everyone gets. Do you think the UK in particular is in a situation where instead if you work more, you are just lowering wages without getting more done?
Not quite. I think people working more do get more done, but it ends up lowering wages and decreasing the entropy of resource allocation (concentrates it to the top). If you’re looking for the good of the society, you probably want the greatest free energy,
The temperature is usually somewhere between 0.2 (economic boom) and 1.0 (recessions), and GDPTotal Assets≈0.1 in the United Kingdom. I couldn’t find a figure for the Theil index, but the closest I got is that Croatia’s was 0.295 and Serbia’s was 0.369 in 2011, and for income (not assets) the United Kingdom’s was 0.268 in 2005. So, some very rough estimates for the free energies are
The ideal point for the number of hours worked is where the GDP increases as fast as the temperature times the decrease in entropy. I’m not aware of any studies showing this, but I believe this point is much lower than the number of hours people are currently working in the United Kingdom.
Economy can be positive-sum, i.e., the more people work, the more everyone gets. Do you think the UK in particular is in a situation where instead if you work more, you are just lowering wages without getting more done?
Not quite. I think people working more do get more done, but it ends up lowering wages and decreasing the entropy of resource allocation (concentrates it to the top). If you’re looking for the good of the society, you probably want the greatest free energy,
GDPTotal Assets+temperature⋅(TheilT−lnpopulation).The temperature is usually somewhere between 0.2 (economic boom) and 1.0 (recessions), and GDPTotal Assets≈0.1 in the United Kingdom. I couldn’t find a figure for the Theil index, but the closest I got is that Croatia’s was 0.295 and Serbia’s was 0.369 in 2011, and for income (not assets) the United Kingdom’s was 0.268 in 2005. So, some very rough estimates for the free energies are
0.1+0.2(0.268−17.9)=−3.4(United Kingdom, 2005)0.05+0.5(0.295−15.3)=−7.4(Croatia, 2011)The ideal point for the number of hours worked is where the GDP increases as fast as the temperature times the decrease in entropy. I’m not aware of any studies showing this, but I believe this point is much lower than the number of hours people are currently working in the United Kingdom.