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Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

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Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#51

Post by ericmay »

virmundi wrote: post #27
atemerev wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, which country would you want to depopulate first?

Europe, Japan and the native population of the US have elected themselves. Africa probably won’t have the population boom since education is spreading, which tends to slow reproduction rates. Problem is solved in about 30 years with the death of the boomers and the non-replacement rates.

What worries me is will we do enough damage in 30 years that it doesn’t matter? And will economies be able to adjust? Even if this happens, do we get to a steady state of 10bn? 9? I think our global population should be closer to 1bn if we want an ideal world.

Also boo to those who are downvoting you about the US comment. Either you can’t read or you’re intentionally not reading. The OP was referencing people who are citizens in the US who do it have as many kids as immigrants and without immigration would be below replacement rates.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#52

Post by goatlover »

chii wrote: post #17
mytailorisrich wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can have sustainability and prosperity. It's a triangle: prosperity, sustainability, population. Choose 2 (and obviously if you don't choose sustainability the sh*t is going to hit the fan at some point anyway). The key issue is the global population. (Edit: We're discussing life on this planet. Colonising space obviously means that human population may continue to grow, but not on Earth and not using Earth' resou…

why can humans not expand interplanetarily? Then, inter-stellarly, then finally, inter-galactically?

If humans can expand inter-galactically, then it likely it would have happened already by some other species, given the size and age of our galaxy. But since we're not part of some prior alien galactic empire, it's probably not feasible. And we would also be able to see the energy output from other galactic civilizations nearby. But we see nothing. Not from Andromeda, not from anywhere in our local cluster.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#54

Post by yohsii »

chii wrote: post #15
_red wrote: post #2

Debt-based monetary systems will skew towards ever increasing growth.

The way I think of it is that in order for debt to exist, interest on the debt must be paid. But to pay interest, you must create more value than the debt you incurred, otherwise you'd not have enough to pay the interest! But the other side of debt is somebody's deposit. So if you summed the debt, it must be equal to all deposit. So from where would the interest come from? It must come from new production. But intere…

seems like there's never enough money in the system to pay all debt and interest. always requires new loans. a bit broken really

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#55

Post by mech1234 »

Lots of people underestimate the degree to which economic growth fuels good life outcomes for wide swaths of people.

-Even though many people live paycheck to paycheck at many different income levels, enough income growth can get you out of a paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle and enable you to have real financial autonomy.

-One thing that has stuck in my mind over the last few years is that one of the worst outcomes of unemployment is when people feel useless as a person- leading to psychological problems and behavioral problems.

-The pace at which we solve real, useful problems grows with economic growth.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#56

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

ericmay wrote: post #43
atemerev wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, which country would you want to depopulate first?

In a perfect scenario you’d just have people have fewer babies. The issue is that countries want growth at all costs - the incentive is always more, bigger, faster.

> fewer babies

That is happening.

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/#growthrate

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#57

Post by nickik »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #11
julbaxter wrote: post #8

Can we have prosperity without growth? No. Can we have sustainability with growth? No. Then we can not have prosperity and sustainability. Can we afford not having sustainability? No. Then we can not afford prosperity.

We can have sustainability and prosperity. It's a triangle: prosperity, sustainability, population. Choose 2 (and obviously if you don't choose sustainability the sh*t is going to hit the fan at some point anyway). The key issue is the global population. (Edit: We're discussing life on this planet. Colonising space obviously means that human population may continue to grow, but not on Earth and not using Earth' resou…

> It's a triangle

That is wrong. In fact we have a much larger population, in many ways human life is more sustainable then it ever was and its easily more prosperous then in the past.

Just like in the 60s the people over-hyping population growth are just as fundamentally wrong as the people who wanted to force cut of trade and foreign aid to India to force them to adopt population control matters.

These same terrible dangerous and fundamentally wrong ideas pop up over and over again.

In fact, with a growing population humans have been using less of earths space. More people live in much denser areas. And even with billions more people we are far below the peak amount of agro culture land. In fact all over the western world wood and wild lands are growing.

With Nuclear, Solar, Wind, Water energy the environmental impact will be far less then what we currently have (and countries with nuclear had for a long time). We could double and triple world population again and there would be no energy issue other then a temporary scale issue.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#58

Post by adolph »

b0rsuk wrote: post #28

Growth is an international arms race. I think the biggest problem is that economic growth gives countries a (military) advantage. If you opt out of growth-based economic system, your neighbors will have more army or resources or manpower. They will eventually invade you or dominate you economically. This is similar to the situation Africans were during Industrial Revolution. Europeans needed a lot of workers for fact…

Perhaps a shorter way to put it is that without growth the allocation of resources is zero sum. In a fixed sized pie any increase for one slice is a decrease for another. This begins a downward spiral since defection rather than cooperation is rewarded.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#59

Post by hannob »

Reason077 wrote: post #42
hannob wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually the question most people have been asking for the past decades. The answer is: The world has tried and failed and there's some serious questions about the plausibility of that endeavour. The question whether growth==good or maybe just.. it's more complicated than that and we may be able to get more quality of life without growth is far more interesting.

Have we really tried? Firstly, despite a lot of talk and bluster, politicians around the world have done very little to regulate against climate change and other environmental issues. Secondly, many of the technologies that will make this possible - renewable energy, electrification, energy storage, etc, are only just now beginning to reach the mainstream. Many of them seemed like science fiction in past decades.

> Firstly, despite a lot of talk and bluster, politicians around the world have done very little to regulate against climate change and other environmental issues.

Interestiong question is what's cause and effect here. You could argue politicians haven't done more against CC because they always shy away from doing anything that might harm the economy.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#60

Post by Double_a_92 »

Reason077 wrote: post #18

Perhaps a better way to phrase the question would be: Can we have economic growth, improving prosperity and quality-of-life, while reducing our environmental impact?

Probably not, because most people want a warm home, some means of transportation, food (especially meat), and other plastic consumer goods. You can't really change human nature, and you also can't fix that by some economic trickery. The only way is to find some technological solution.
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