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Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

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Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#161

Post by TeMPOraL »

andrewmutz wrote: post #153
qsymmachus wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incorrect. Every economic output requires material inputs. > I can create digital goods and services which people buy Your digital goods and services require physical machines to run on. These machines are made of physical materials, including some rare earth minerals that are costly to extract. These machines require energy to run, which also requires material inputs. > I can even give massages all day, and…

You haven't rebutted the parent poster. He said "Some people say growth can't happen forever, and all growth comes at environmental cost". Pointing out that "Every economic output requires material inputs" doesn't mean that there are limits to growth or that you can't have growth without environmental cost. As an example, if you have a resource that you consistently get more efficient at operating, you can consistent…

This is an accounting trick, though. It works because people are willing to pay for a massage and not for whatever the person was doing. But to actually grow the economy, you have to continuously retask that person to ever more profitable activities.

You can also create growth by moving money in circles increasingly fast. Question is, how far we can push bullshit jobs before people get fed up with it? I'm not convinced that "forever" is the answer.

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#162

Post by TeMPOraL »

seibelj wrote: post #80
qsymmachus wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There must be a level of economic production that falls below the level of emission that can be absorbed without contributing to climate change You're right, there absolutely is such a level. The important point is that to stay at or below that level, you have to give up on the idea of perpetual, infinite growth. The inputs and outputs must remain constant. My point was that there's no such thing as "immaterial" gr…

There is indeed perpetual growth. As long as the economic transaction benefits both of us, as all non-coercive economic transactions are, then the result is net-positive. This is why free trade is a good thing - we decide to trade because it benefits both of us. If trading resulted in a loss for one of us, we wouldn't trade.

To have economic growth, you have to actually grow the amount of trade being done. Can't see how you could do that forever - despite the best efforts of advertisers and companies engaging in planned obsolescence, who are largely responsible for the climate shitshow, people will at some point hit a consumption limit. You can play accounting tricks on GDP to some extent, but I'm not convinced this is enough. If value becomes completely detached from reality, people may lose faith in money, and the whole thing will just crash and burn.

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#164

Post by panpanna »

benibela wrote: post #160
r00fus wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not consistent. Sometimes they $/lb sometimes they price $/item - for the same class of item. It's as often design to mislead and prevent comparison as it is to inform you that "store brand is definitely cheaper than name brand". Since none of it is mandated, they do only what benefits their bottom line or they are publicly pressured to.

They do that in the EU/Germany, too €/item, €/100g, €/1kg are all common

In 99% this is _not_ a EU thing.

Maybe some German law?? Or just common practice in Germany?

Edit: I think I confused your response with parent. I understand price/kg is a thing although I didn't knew it was mandated by law. What I don't understand is being forced to use some odd unit like price per 500g.

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#165

Post by freeflight »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #116
pjmorris wrote: post #96

Someone I know posted a picture of an empty rolodex today, saying that they'd moved their friends to 'the cloud.' I'm sure you can look at your phone apps and see other things that would've been physical objects ten or twenty years ago. So, that's one way material use has, at least, shifted. There are two other trends that worry me more. One is visible in the freezer section at the grocery store; a "half-gallon" of i…

In the EU, shops are required to display the price per , i. e. all coffees have a (usually smaller, but readable) Euro/500g price. There used to be an even more drastic law proscribing certain sizes and disallowing all others. Flour would only be available in 500g and 1kg bags, for example. They got rid of it, possibly because they got sick of people making fun of EU regulations (that's what happened with the famous…

Sadly it doesn't translate very well to every kind of grocery item.

Kitchen paper towels and toilet paper can still give you a pretty good math exercise to figure out what's more affordable.

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#166

Post by TeMPOraL »

anon1m0us wrote: post #149
r00fus wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I prefer buying bulk when I can (with reusable containers/bags [1]). Bulk Coffee + airtight/cool storage hasn't resulted in bad coffee for me. Why put up with deceptive packaging? [1] Yes I know that most of that product came arrived in even more packaging, but doing what I can for now.

I guess what I am learning about myself lately is that I have the power to lie to people and convince them to do things they don't want to do or don't know better. People know this about me. They know it almost instantly. I sense it in them. I sense the same about other people. They have that power over me. However, I make an effort not to. Or, when I do, I work especially hard to steer them in the direction of their…

I stand with you here. I recognized something like this myself - I phrase it as "I want to live in a world of cooperation, of win-win deals", but there are still people who prefer to exploit others, play "win-lose" games.

That's why I despise the advertising industry so much. They're all playing win-lose games with society, and the collateral damage slowly eats at the base of what keeps our societies together.

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#167

Post by Consultant32452 »

anon1m0us wrote: post #149
r00fus wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I prefer buying bulk when I can (with reusable containers/bags [1]). Bulk Coffee + airtight/cool storage hasn't resulted in bad coffee for me. Why put up with deceptive packaging? [1] Yes I know that most of that product came arrived in even more packaging, but doing what I can for now.

I guess what I am learning about myself lately is that I have the power to lie to people and convince them to do things they don't want to do or don't know better. People know this about me. They know it almost instantly. I sense it in them. I sense the same about other people. They have that power over me. However, I make an effort not to. Or, when I do, I work especially hard to steer them in the direction of their…

I'm interested in your thoughts on one public policy example of this. Back when AIDS first hit, the community of scientists and public policy makers said that while it was starting in the gay and drug community any moment it would hop into the general population. They knew this was a lie, but told us this because they didn't believe Americans would spend money helping gays and junkies.

I've come to understand that to varying degrees a lot of public policy works this way.

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#168

Post by freeflight »

tialaramex wrote: post #131
IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the EU, shops are required to display the price per , i. e. all coffees have a (usually smaller, but readable) Euro/500g price. There used to be an even more drastic law proscribing certain sizes and disallowing all others. Flour would only be available in 500g and 1kg bags, for example. They got rid of it, possibly because they got sick of people making fun of EU regulations (that's what happened with the famous…

Is coffee really per 500g? That's a weird quantity. I'd expect kilo or 100g. The UK used to require bread to be 400g or multiples (so a regular sized loaf of bread is 800g) but it eventually got rid of that rule. Obviously years ago (this rule was hundreds of years old) it will have been some amount in an obsolete unit rather than grams, but once metrication happened the bakers picked 400g as the replacement size. I'…

500g coffee packs are pretty much the regular size in Germany too, at least for pre-ground [0]. Packs with whole roasted beans are usually on the bigger end.

[0] https://www.idealo.de/preisvergleich/OffersOfProduct/354801_...

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#169

Post by ChuckMcM »

em500 wrote: post #109
ChuckMcM wrote: post #53

From the article: It suggests that economic growth in a mature economy does not necessarily increase the pressure on the world's reserves of natural resources and on its physical environment. Jesse Asubel has been looking at "dematerialization" for a long time[1] but it has only been relatively recently, now with a couple of decades of additional data to look at, that it is getting the attention I think it deserves.…

> So economists do the same thing, they take some ratio of numbers that seem to be tracking the 'size' of the economy and then run that trend out 50, 100, 500 years. Very few academic economists do 30+ year extrapolations, let alone 50, 100, 500. The vast majority of long-term growth macro-economic literature are attempts to explain/model the large observed differences in outcomes in GDP/capita between different coun…

Fair point, I withdraw any assertion that in published papers economists over extend their numbers. It has been my experience that in the reporting on those papers I have seen much less restraint. And yes, I'm aware that survivor bias may mislead in this regard.

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#170

Post by TeMPOraL »

magduf wrote: post #87
bgorman wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A desktop from a decade ago can still run productivity software, especially if you run Linux or another operating system that doesn't cut off support for non-technical reasons. It is true that some physical resources are going to be required e.g. electricity - but in general we are wasting tons of precious resources building "disposable" devices like cell phones that are used for only 2 years to do tasks that have li…

>but in general we are wasting tons of precious resources building "disposable" devices like cell phones that are used for only 2 years to do tasks that have little economic value. This is wrong in two ways. 1) Cellphones don't just last 2 years; lots of people have older models. Sure, a bunch of people get rid of theirs after 2 years, but then they go to the secondhand market, where people like me buy them for a sma…

> 1) Cellphones don't just last 2 years; lots of people have older models. Sure, a bunch of people get rid of theirs after 2 years, but then they go to the secondhand market,

Increasingly less so. On one side, you have cheap subscription plans that bundle usable (not too decent) phones, on the other hand, phone life is shortened by a combination of planned obsolescence, software bloat, and lack of security updates. Short sales cycles is what manufacturers plan for and actively work towards.

> Frequently, older phones eventually find their way to developing nations where people can't afford the latest iPhone.

I might be wrong, but I'm not convinced. Shipping costs money, phones are cheap, and both battery and flash memory have pretty short lifetimes now. A good chunk of phones are barely operational after 2-3 years.

RE benefits of smartphones, it's all true, but you can't run economic growth on it forever. Smartphone transformation happened. It's mostly done. Itself it won't fuel further growth. Production of hardware and software might, but that is not free in terms of energy/resources.

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