Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist (2012)

dothemath.ucsd.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 174 posts

Re: Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist (2012)

#21

Post by TaylorAlexander »

pmalynin wrote: post #10

I think the dismissal of space colonization over a period of 400 years is...unreasonable. We could move all production to Mars for example and only consume the shipped resources. Sure that’s one doubling right there, but we could continue this process.

Mars does look a lot closer in 2019 than it did in 2012. Back then it seemed like no real plan existed, except for one little company not a lot of folks believed in. Now we’ve got billionaires in a space race and suddenly it seems obvious that we’ll colonize space to some degree even in the next 100 years, likely with some aggressive growth. We’ve only recently come off the gloomy decades after Apollo where space exploration was so muted compared to the glory days.

Re: Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist (2012)

#22

Post by evdev »

jbotz wrote: post #16
evdev wrote: post #11

Am I missing something, or hasn't energy per capita in the developed world already stopped growing? As well as population growth in rich societies?

Energy consumption has not stopped growing in rich societies... so long as the economy grows, energy consumption grows. The relationship isn't perfectly linear only because the available metrics are imperfect, but if you have any data that outright contradicts this rather reasonable assupmtion, please show us.

https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...

Re: Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist (2012)

#23

Post by jbay808 »

scythe wrote: post #14

Tom Murphy's website occasionally comes up in futurist circles. His general point that unbounded exponential growth is impossible is obviously correct, but I find his condescending attitude tiresome and he often exaggerates the apparent validity of his pessimism through questionable arguments. For example, he first insists that the conversation about energy consumption be confined to Earth and ignore space exploratio…

I agree that the tone of straw-manning an economist who may or may not exist, but either way cannot elaborate upon or defend their own arguments, is pretty distasteful.

That said, I think you misunderstood the point of dismissing space colonization. That was done to examine the consequences of that assumption, not as an assertion that space colonization can't be economical.

Many people might think exponential growth can continue even without expanding into space, and trying to dispute this opinion without first drawing a line would just result in confusion as the discussion retreats into "but we'll just expand into space then!".

None of this hemming and hawing about infinity answers the real question...

In what world was that the real question? The one where limits to growth are a broadly accepted fact acknowledged by politicians, economists, and business leaders?

Re: Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist (2012)

#24

Post by Chathamization »

> per-capita energy use has surged dramatically over time

Per capita energy use seems to be declining in advanced economies[1].

> But if energy became arbitrarily cheap, someone could buy all of it, and suddenly the activities that comprise the economy would grind to a halt...There will be a floor to how low energy prices can go as a fraction of GDP.

That seems to be a bizarre understanding of how the economy works. Advances in efficiency or energy production aren't going to be stopped at some point because people are worried about someone buying up all the energy. You're not going to get an inventor to say, "Hey, this new product would be too efficient, I'm not going to introduce it to the market because then energy is going to get so cheap that someone will buy it all up."

And someone could already try committing energy blackmail now if they really wanted. Pepco powers Washington, D.C. and parts of Maryland, and Exelon bought them for $6.8 billion. Some one, or a group of people could pay that and try to blackmail the government. Of course, they wouldn't get anything for it but a quick trip to prison.

[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.PCAP.KG.OE?locat...

Re: Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist (2012)

#26

Post by monocasa »

pmalynin wrote: post #10

I think the dismissal of space colonization over a period of 400 years is...unreasonable. We could move all production to Mars for example and only consume the shipped resources. Sure that’s one doubling right there, but we could continue this process.

Even more likely than Mars production IMO is micro G production that drops finished goods into various gravity wells based on demand. At that point you provide interesting new manufacturing capability to Earth with all of it's capital available in return in a way that also let's you significantly more easily support colonization efforts elsewhere.

IMO, that's Space X and Blue Origin's goal. The first one to become Weyland Yutuni will also anoint the first trillionaires even without the colonization efforts.

You can see Space X leading the game here with their work on Star Link. That gives them experience managing a constellation orders of magnitude larger than any before, and shows the overall strategy of leveraging extra capacity in a way that people on Earth will continuously pay for, in order to bootstrap serious micro g infrastructure.

Re: Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist (2012)

#27

Post by jbay808 »

Chathamization wrote: post #24

> per-capita energy use has surged dramatically over time Per capita energy use seems to be declining in advanced economies[1]. > But if energy became arbitrarily cheap, someone could buy all of it, and suddenly the activities that comprise the economy would grind to a halt...There will be a floor to how low energy prices can go as a fraction of GDP. That seems to be a bizarre understanding of how the economy works.…

I think we'd need to look globally, because it's easy to outsource your energy intensive activities.

If I buy my bread from a baker, I can say I don't need any energy to run an oven anymore, but that doesn't imply that when the baker gets as wealthy as I am the world won't need ovens anymore.

Re: Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist (2012)

#28

Post by [deleted] »

Chathamization wrote: post #24

> per-capita energy use has surged dramatically over time Per capita energy use seems to be declining in advanced economies[1]. > But if energy became arbitrarily cheap, someone could buy all of it, and suddenly the activities that comprise the economy would grind to a halt...There will be a floor to how low energy prices can go as a fraction of GDP. That seems to be a bizarre understanding of how the economy works.…

[deleted]

Re: Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist (2012)

#29

Post by philipkglass »

jbay808 wrote: post #27
Chathamization wrote: post #24

> per-capita energy use has surged dramatically over time Per capita energy use seems to be declining in advanced economies[1]. > But if energy became arbitrarily cheap, someone could buy all of it, and suddenly the activities that comprise the economy would grind to a halt...There will be a floor to how low energy prices can go as a fraction of GDP. That seems to be a bizarre understanding of how the economy works.…

I think we'd need to look globally, because it's easy to outsource your energy intensive activities. If I buy my bread from a baker, I can say I don't need any energy to run an oven anymore, but that doesn't imply that when the baker gets as wealthy as I am the world won't need ovens anymore.

Chathamization linked to a graph of energy use per capita in the US, showing that it peaked in the 1970s. In 2015 it was 6804 kgoe per capita, well below the peak of 8438 kgoe recorded in 1978.

CO2 emissions are a decent proxy for primary energy in our present fossil-dominated era, and when accounting for CO2 embodied in imports, the US does look worse. But it doesn't make a big difference:

https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-largest-co2-import...

"Despite the large total of CO2 imports and exports, US emissions are only 6% higher and Chinese emissions are 13% lower when CO2 transfers are taken into account."

If the energy/CO2 really should be increased 6% to account for imports, that would put American energy consumption at 6804 * 1.06 = 7212 kgoe per capita in 2015, still lower than in the 1970s.

Re: Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist (2012)

#30

Post by age_bronze »

There's an underlying assumption that economical growth has anything to do with physical limits. Economical growth is a lie we tell ourselves so that innovation has its incentives, while everything else that's there because it must be there (because it will always have a demand), such as energy (but also food, real estate, etc.) just piggybacks with a similar 'fake growth' that really arises only from the fact these things are just as valuable as before. The threat for the lack of supply is just enough to keep businesses that can't really 'grow' still grow. It will still be exponential growth so long as the leading innovation companies are growing and everyone else is just corrected for inflation.
Post reply on HN