alt Hacker NewsYou’re describing redundant effort from competition as waste. Is it a waste of effort when both people try to get the same job and only one succeeds?
Is it a waste of effort when two companies try to make the best electric car?
If it is wasteful what does aw orld look like where nobody ever spends resources on a goal which overlaps with someone else?
I think you’ve misunderstood what I’ve written here. Graeber’s book might make it clearer for you, he probably did a better job of explaining it than I do. It’s about spendy Red Queen’s races, not just trying to make something better or trying to compete in general. The application of the idea to military spending is pretty much standard and uncontroversial stuff (hell, it was 100-plus years ago) while his observation of a similar effect in some notable component of ad spending is novel (at least, I’d not seen that connection made before).