In his newly found spare time, Joe goes back to the basement, and devises several new inventions:
- A machine to make copies of typed documents (much of Suzy's time is spend sending out product use instructions, recall notices, safety warnings, and return authorization forms, as Acme's products are famously powerful but unreliable, and for some reason tend to be used by individuals with sub-par intellect but superior creativity and motivation).
- A word-processing machine, making document creation, editing, and mail-merging require far less effort.
- A spreadsheet and reporting tool, making entry of numerical data faster and more accurate, and calculation of sums and averages trivial.
Soon Suzy and Tom note they too can do their jobs in a fraction of the time, and the inventions spread through their departments too. Suzy and another soon-to-be-mom make a deal to interleave maternity time, each taking a year off entirely while the other works 3-4 hours per day covering both jobs, before falling into a 2-hour-per-day routine for the long term. Suzy's management is happy, as the accuracy and thoroughness of the work has improved, and Tom's boss is happy that fewer errors appear on tax reports.
As the years roll on, the robots spread, as workers buy Joe's inventions to ease their own workloads, and across the nation workers find themselves with more free time and more money than they'd dared to believe. Happily, costs of cars and Acme products fall as well, as quality improves, rework drops, and production efficiently rises as the workers improve their robots.
Clearly the Gedankens live in an alternative reality, and a simplistic one at that. Still, why must savings from automation and labor-saving tools accrue to the capital side of the equation instead of to the labor side?
What would the Gedanken's lives have been like in our world?
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