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THE ORIGINS OF EFFICIENCY
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Trends in US Construction Productivity
(This is a chapter of a longer report I’m working on that summarizes and expands the last several years of my work on construction productivity.
Feb 12
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Brian Potter
73
17
6
Do Commodities Get Cheaper Over Time?
This American Enterprise Institute chart, which breaks down how price changes for different types of goods and services in the consumer price index, has…
Jan 22
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Brian Potter
127
43
13
The Surprisingly Long Life of the Vacuum Tube
The last several decades of technological progress have, in large part, been about finding more and more things we can do with semiconductors and the…
Jan 15
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Brian Potter
131
28
10
How Did TVs Get So Cheap?
You’ve probably seen this famous graph that breaks out various categories of inflation, showing labor-intensive services getting more expensive during…
Jan 8
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Brian Potter
193
30
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Should US homebuilders emulate Sweden?
A common sentiment I see with folks interested in improving US homebuilding is that we should try and emulate Sweden.
Jan 1
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Brian Potter
137
83
7
How Accurate Are Learning Curves?
We’ve talked several times on this substack (as well as in my book), about the learning curve, the observation that costs of a produced good tend to…
Dec 24, 2025
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Brian Potter
100
21
7
How Bell Labs Won Its First Nobel Prize
Bell Labs, as we’ve noted before, was for years America’s premier industrial research lab.
Dec 18, 2025
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Brian Potter
126
13
11
Stagnant Construction Productivity Is a Worldwide Problem
We’ve spent a lot of time examining the problem of construction productivity in the US — the fact that, across a variety of different metrics…
Dec 11, 2025
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Brian Potter
109
107
12
How a Government Think Tank Trained The First Generation of US Software Developers
The US government had a hand in creating much of the early computer industry.
Nov 26, 2025
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Brian Potter
129
10
12
How ASML Got EUV
I am pleased to cross-post this piece with Factory Settings, the new Substack from IFP.
Nov 20, 2025
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Brian Potter
127
21
9
What Is A Production Process?
Chapter 1 of my book “The Origins of Efficiency”
Nov 13, 2025
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Brian Potter
82
15
5
Strap Rail
The early history of the United States runs along with the first years of the railroad.
Nov 6, 2025
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Brian Potter
153
4
7
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