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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

#251

Post by NeedMoreTea »

tialaramex wrote: post #243
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bread used to always be 1lb (454g) and 2lb (908g) loaves. They shrank a little with the move to metric. :)

"used to be" prior to World War 2. The loaves shrank (and ingredient quality worsened) as part of rationing. After the war better ingredients became available but loaves remained 14oz, which is slightly less than 400g. Conveniently 14oz is not enough under 400g to count as "undersize" in the regulations, so generously filled 14oz tins produced compliant 400g batches when Britain went metric.

Hmm, never knew that. :)

I knew of the Bread Act that set it 1lb/2lb, and the Middle Ages origins that worked "backwards" - when the price of the loaf was fixed and the weight of the loaf was varied as the price of wheat changed.

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

#252

Post by bpodgursky »

uoaei wrote: post #214
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being way over dramatic. 99% of the time the unit makes sense and is the same for comparable products.

That may be your experience based on what you shop for and where you do it. America is way behind Europe on this. 99% of the time I go to Safeway, I have to bring out my calculator because the reference volume/weight is different from the other items on the same shelf.

Safeway and other grocery chains all list price per ounce next to the price.

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

#253

Post by [deleted] »

uoaei wrote: post #214
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being way over dramatic. 99% of the time the unit makes sense and is the same for comparable products.

That may be your experience based on what you shop for and where you do it. America is way behind Europe on this. 99% of the time I go to Safeway, I have to bring out my calculator because the reference volume/weight is different from the other items on the same shelf.

[deleted]

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

#254

Post by prawn »

chrisseaton wrote: post #228
toast0 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't eat all the ice cream in one sitting. If this random ice cream[1] is an indication, serving size is half a cup, so a half gallon should provide 16 servings. If you like the flavor, why not buy 16 servings at a time; if you live in a household with four people, that's 4 sittings of ice cream. [1] https://www.target.com/p/breyers-original-ice-cream-natural-...

In the UK I don't think even the largest ice cream comes in more than 1 litre. Most is around 0.5 litres. And even that for a family seems like a hell of a lot of ice cream. One litre is a crazy party volume of ice cream. A half-gallon sounds absolutely bonkers. https://www.waitrose.com/ecom/shop/browse/groceries/frozen/i...

Ice cream in Australia is available in 4L tubs down to smaller tubs for premium brands or more exotic flavours. Doesn't seem excessive given it (ideally) takes over a week to get through.

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

#255

Post by PenguinCoder »

pm90 wrote: post #249
mobilefriendly wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've optimized for the wrong things-- short-term profit while making the products crappy. For example almost all of the household appliances I've purchased in the past 7 years have failed because of poor design and inferior plastic parts. My expensive oven doesn't have enough insulation around the electronic control and its failed from heat, etc etc.

More anecdotes. While you complain about your Owen, the efficient supply chains built across nations has enabled keeping costs low enough for Americans with stagnating wages to afford a reasonable standard of living.

Then maybe we should focus on fixing the wage stagnation problem, and not kicking the can.

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

#256

Post by dane-pgp »

mrep wrote: post #233
TeMPOraL wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pessimistic outcome of climate change isn't "wild exponential predictions", though. There are well-understood mechanisms, the margin for temperature increase beyond which modern society collapses is pretty thin, the exponent comes primarily[0] from our economy which has an assumption of exponential growth built-in and will collapse if it suddenly turns into s-curve, and we also have a model of a runaway warming f…

What climate change effect [0] do you think will cause societal collapse or result in mass horrible deaths? [0]: https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/

> For example, at the end of the last ice age, when the Northeast United States was covered by more than 3,000 feet of ice, average temperatures were only 5 to 9 degrees [Fahrenheit] cooler than today.

If 4 degrees Celsius of global cooling (relative to the current climate) can cause large parts of the US to be covered by 3,000 feet of ice, then it's not unreasonable to think that 4 degrees Celsius of global warming could have an equally destructive effect on agriculture and society.

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

#257

Post by spodek »

freeflight wrote: post #184
nostrademons wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read those and conclude "Physics is not a particularly relevant constraint on economic growth." His energy analysis concluded that at 2.3% growth rate and current technology, we would need to use the entire energy supply falling upon the earth's surface within 275 years. Improving technology might be able to stretch that to 400 years. Within 1400 years, we would need to use the entire energy of our solar system. Bu…

The demographics issue makes this whole situation such a massive paradox. On one hand, we want all those extra humans to generate "economic growth" to keep our perpetual growth train going. On the other hand, the environmental consequences of that seem already unbearable for our biome right now. It's like we want to have our cake and eat it too, it just won't work. If we want to "save the planet" then we need to let…

Many human cultures have lived without growth.

Economists and others who think growth is necessary to distribute goods don't know what they're talking about or have ulterior motives.

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

#258

Post by dane-pgp »

goatlover wrote: post #219
IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The heat-trapping behaviour of CO_2 was first accurately measured in the 19th century, and all climate change models do actually predict convergence, not linear rise. It's just that the point of convergence is not one compatible with civilisation as we know it.

How does anyone know what temperature rise is or isn't compatible with civilization as we know it, within the range of predicted temperature rises? One of the problems is that civilization is dynamic. New technologies come along, people change their habits, etc.

The effects of temperature rises on crop yields could lead to very negative outcomes, given expected population growth and the hard limit of humans' minimum caloric intake.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/for-crop-harvests...

Perhaps rich countries can mitigate the likely increase in food prices, but it could destabilise large regions of the globe.

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

#259

Post by pm90 »

PenguinCoder wrote: post #255
pm90 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More anecdotes. While you complain about your Owen, the efficient supply chains built across nations has enabled keeping costs low enough for Americans with stagnating wages to afford a reasonable standard of living.

Then maybe we should focus on fixing the wage stagnation problem, and not kicking the can.

I mean, YES, of course we should. That’s what I’m arguing for. Tax wealth better, use the generated revenue to improve people’s lives in scientifically proven ways (Ie provide healthcare, poverty assistance, more funding for education). Let’s accept that our world has changed, but let’s use the benefits of that efficiency by building a more equitable and just society.

But we won’t. Most societies that become too successful suffer a similar fate. They become too polarized, and destroy the very foundations of what them great.

I do hope the US is different. Most of humanity has lived under authoritarian rule. For a brief period of time it seemed like a democracy could be the most powerful country in the world. But that’s fast unraveling...

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

#260

Post by G_T_T »

clairity wrote: post #117
gumby wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is simply incorrect. Every economic output requires material inputs...There is simply no such thing as "immaterial" economic production. Parent post was talking about marginal cost of production. E.g. where once we'd buy servers to run services on, we now share servers rented "by the cycle" from providers who amortize the cost over many users. Idle servers can be running at-the-moment economically valuable cod…

i'm partial to the labor theory of value, not for pricing (which is better modeled with marginalism, as you speak to), but for an intrinsic value by which we can evaluate how well a particular market might be working. a well-functioning market should tend toward the intrinsic (labor) value of a good (if, for example, relevant information is widely available and known, competitors can easily enter and exit, distortion…

How do you determine if the market price is tending toward the labor value of a good if there is no clean way to map from labour-hours to prices?
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