> Modern cars work, let’s say for the sake of argument, at 98% of what’s physically possible with the current engine design. Modern buildings use just enough material to fulfill their function and stay safe under the given conditions. All planes converged to the optimal size/form/load and basically look the same.
Is this all true? I'm somewhat sceptical of extrapolating that broken processes and waste don't also occur in other industries. A quick Google search says around 30% of building materials delivered to building sites is wasted. I've also seen some pretty impractically designed buildings in my city that probably waste a lot more energy and people's time than they should.
"let's say for the sake of argument" is doing a fair bit of work here. But the point is that we had text editors (similar to the ones we have today) back when CPUs were capable of maybe a few millions of instructions per second. CPUs can now do tens or hundreds of thousands as many instructions, but a text editor today uses several percent of that CPU.
That would be like shipping a square kilometer of forest to the job site to build one house.
The construction industry and modern cars could be more efficient, but their waste is measured in percent, not orders of magnitude.
Is this all true? I'm somewhat sceptical of extrapolating that broken processes and waste don't also occur in other industries. A quick Google search says around 30% of building materials delivered to building sites is wasted. I've also seen some pretty impractically designed buildings in my city that probably waste a lot more energy and people's time than they should.