What We Lose When Productivity Becomes Sacred

When Block CEO Jack Dorsey announced 4,000 layoffs this week, he didn't apologize or hedge. He celebrated. The cuts, he explained, would enable "a new way of working" with AI tools and smaller teams. His stock surged 24%. Wall Street cheered. And 4,000 families faced sudden uncertainty.

Dorsey predicted most companies would follow within a year, remaking themselves around algorithmic efficiency rather than human collaboration. He's probably right. But his confidence exposes something we rarely name: our economy increasingly operates on a theology of productivity, where efficiency is virtue and cost-cutting is righteousness.

The ancient Israelites were warned against sacrificing their children to Molech. We would never do that, we tell ourselves. Yet we have built systems that sacrifice human dignity on the altar of shareholder value and call it progress. We automate away not just tasks but people, then congratulate ourselves for moving faster.

This isn't about opposing technology or romanticizing inefficiency. It's about recognizing what—and who—we're willing to discard in pursuit of optimization. The Christian tradition offers a different calculus: that people are not resources to be allocated but image-bearers to be honored. That a society is measured not by its productivity metrics but by how it treats those it deems expendable.

Block's layoffs will boost margins and please investors. But they also pose an uncomfortable question: What does it profit a company to gain the whole market, if it loses its soul?