Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth? • Hacker News Board

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#91

Post by CaptArmchair » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 1:12 PM UTC

atemerev wrote: post #16

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…

So, which country would you want to depopulate first?

Decreasing population is a function of increasing prosperity.

Prosperity includes increase in literacy and general education levels of the population. Most notably, women will have less children and shift towards actively taking jobs, opening businesses, research, civics,...

Lower birth rates and an ageing population then become a challenge to tackle.

Those who age stop actively working - adding direct economic value as taxes or as marketable goods & services - and their income is replaced by a pension provided by a public social security system and/or a pension fund they contributed to.

Now, this is where some will throw their hands in the air and yell "Doooooommmm! A dwindling active workforce can't possibly create enough wealth to sustain the pensions of those that don't!". hey then go on predicting how entire economies will collapse and how everyone will end up becoming working poor.

But that narrative hides tons of naive and downright wrong assumptions.

Like, how literally everyone should, can and will retire at 65 and spending their golden years on long holidays. Or, how it's impossible for anyone over 60 to be as productive or flexible as a 20 year old. Well, you can come up with a ton of other stereotypes.

In reality, tons of people over 60 or even 70 are able and willing to work and contribute to society. For instance, guess who makes up for a lot of the volunteering force in charities, public services and (libraries, archives, social work,...)? Young retirees. These are important fields that are publicly underfunded, and so retirees take up an important place here.

But you also find seniors taking up jobs again simply because their state pension is insufficient to make ends meet. That happens too.

The big challenge in this isn't the elderly population, it's adjusting our work culture to include older age cohorts. Because right now, workfloors and work in developed nations is entirely geared towards young people in their 20s, 30s and 40s.

The other big challenge is wealth inequality in general. As long as the system is geared towards extracting wealth to the top at the expense of the workforce - labor rights, minimum wage, healthcare,... - it's only to be expected that older people will drop out earlier rather then later.

So, that's basically what we're looking at. If you can balance an economy between sustainability and prosperity, you also solve the problem of population.

Now, guess what you need to do that? A proper, healthy social democracy that puts humans as their top priority. Not the interests of a few elites.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#92

Post by aww_dang » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 1:12 PM UTC

ericmay wrote: post #76

nickik wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His point is that you need less human labor to produce the same amount of stuff. Thus with a growing population you have ever increasing productivity, helping you offset potential negative effects of population. That is just one of the effect that work together to over and over again prove the 'over-population' crowd wrong.

> Thus with a growing population you have ever increasing productivity, helping you offset potential negative effects of population. I’m not sure I follow. How will we prevent over-fishing for example? Traffic? Deforestation? I think you can blunt the effects of overpopulation for humans (we probably won’t starve) but at what cost? How will specialization affect human health and happiness? Are people who specialize i…

Fish farms, new more efficient methods of transport and agroforestry.

Consider all of the time saved with today's technological advancements and specialization. Years ago peasants would lay idle on near starvation diets for most of the winter. During the growing season they would work from dawn until dusk, just to enjoy a sustenance lifestyle.

So while work may not be as meaningful as we would like, our leisure time is increasing. Mass automation will likely provide even greater leisure and cheaper goods.

All of this ignores the rampant inflation of the money supply, which is silently taxing our leisure, labor and consumption. There are many who would like to increase this and would do so by indulging the fears you listed at the top of your comment.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#93

Post by beefield » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 1:13 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #78

beefield wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is something wrong with your premises. There is no rule of law nor nature that interest must be paid. Negative or zero interest are completely possible.

but if someone loaned out money to somebody else, you'd expect that they'd ask for interest payment. negative interest rates seems like it's an impossibility (in the sense that only a central bank is willing and able to charge negative rates) for normal commercial loans. And if a bank charged negative rates on deposits (higher than it costs to keep cash safe in a secure safe!), then i suspect people will just withdra…

In Denmark you can take a mortgage and "pay" negative interest rate [1]. That is, you pay less back than what you borrowed. I fully agree that most people would expect the interest rate to be positive, but their expectation is no rule.

Actually I am very sure interest rates have no causal relationship with continuous growth. The one (and only?) thing where the the continuous growth requirement comes from is that most people do not want to be unemployed. That is the choice you need to make. Do you want growth or unvoluntary unemployment?

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/12/danish-bank-is-offering-10-y...

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#94

Post by jotm » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 1:14 PM UTC

b0rsuk wrote: post #44

pacala wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of interplanetary transportation costs, due to physically unavoidable planetary gravity wells, the existence of other inhabited planets has essentially zero effect on the prosperity of the average Earth inhabitant. There is physically no way to build the space equivalent of cheap maritime shipping.

Even if we successfully build a space elevator and putting stuff on orbit becomes relatively free, we would still need to build a 100% sustainable spaceship. Or a completely game-changing technology like teleportation, and there's no proof such thing is practically possible.

It seems to me that's an achievable goal... if everyone throws risk aversion/mitigation out of the window.

No rules about nuclear power on ships, no worrying about contamination on other planets, laissez-faire attitude about risks that come with space launches/travel and fully automated control of rockets/spaceships, massive investment in life support systems and AI, etc.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#95

Post by logicchains » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 1:15 PM UTC

goatlover wrote: post #52

chii wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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.

That's only true if we assume the chance of life arising is relatively high. It could actually be incredibly massively low, and we wouldn't notice, because we're observing from a position of extreme selection bias. I.e. probability(intelligentLifeInUniverse given weAreObservingIt) = 1.0.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#96

Post by aww_dang » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 1:17 PM UTC

paganel wrote: post #90

mytailorisrich wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, he puts forward a purely economic approach about how to produce enough to ensure a growing population remains materially prosperous. This blissfully ignores the key issue under discussion: Our impact on the planet in doing so.

> This blissfully ignores the key issue under discussion: Our impact on the planet in doing so. It still baffles me that we choose to ignore externalities in part because we cannot attach any “rational” prices to them, it’s like they don’t even exist to us as long as we cannot put them in an exact Excel sheet with a well-defined value.

In terms of political economy we could easily tabulate the money paid to lobbyists. For example, it is much cheaper for a coal fired power plant to pay politicians to implement their desired environmental regulations.

Instead of being liable for damages caused by their pollution, these energy producers can simply claim that they are within the regulations set forth by the EPA. The price discovery mechanism has been hampered by the victim's inability to collect damages.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#97

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 1:18 PM UTC

shaftoe wrote: post #85

coldtea wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So yes, unless you arbitrarily limit the entire globe to some level of prosperity like a novel about a disutopian world ruled by an evil anti-science theocracy, I don't see much evil to that (limiting the "the entire globe to some level of prosperity"). Nor it has anything to do with being anti-science. You could be pro-science (pro understanding the world, physics, math, etc), and against continuous growth. Better…

You don't see much evil to handicapping the entire human race?

You don't see much evil in the absence of strategic intelligence required to avoid terraforming your own planet to make it less habitable?

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#98

Post by ericmay » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 1:18 PM UTC

aww_dang wrote: post #92

ericmay wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thus with a growing population you have ever increasing productivity, helping you offset potential negative effects of population. I’m not sure I follow. How will we prevent over-fishing for example? Traffic? Deforestation? I think you can blunt the effects of overpopulation for humans (we probably won’t starve) but at what cost? How will specialization affect human health and happiness? Are people who specialize i…

Fish farms, new more efficient methods of transport and agroforestry. Consider all of the time saved with today's technological advancements and specialization. Years ago peasants would lay idle on near starvation diets for most of the winter. During the growing season they would work from dawn until dusk, just to enjoy a sustenance lifestyle. So while work may not be as meaningful as we would like, our leisure time…

Respectfully, I disagree with the spirit of all of this excluding how peasants lived. I think saying "tech will solve it and we'll have great lives where everything is cheap" is equivalent to saying Jesus will come save us all.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#99

Post by andersonvieira » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 1:18 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #70

merpnderp wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1% growth difference over 100 years is the difference between the per capita income of the US vs Mexico. So yes, unless you arbitrarily limit the entire globe to some level of prosperity like a novel about a disutopian world ruled by an evil anti-science theocracy, people are going to look at countries growing faster than them and wonder why they have to slum it like peasants without their flying cars and vacations o…

> So yes, unless you arbitrarily limit the entire globe to some level of prosperity like a novel about a disutopian world ruled by an evil anti-science theocracy, I don't see much evil to that (limiting the "the entire globe to some level of prosperity"). Nor it has anything to do with being anti-science. You could be pro-science (pro understanding the world, physics, math, etc), and against continuous growth. Better…

You probably live a comfortable life and is mostly satisfied with what you have so you see no need for more growth. Now imagine someone had the means to implement this same idea 200 years ago. We probably wouldn't have water and sewage treatment, fast transportation, modern medicine, electric light and all the appliances that come with it, internet, etc. I find it disingenuous to dismiss all these as trinkets.

This would be basically limiting the possibilities of all future humans in the name of some "greater good". That is textbook evil for me.

I think the main problem with this kind of thinking is that it is always based on what you know now, and not on what is possible. The world we live today, our technology, and the way we use resources would be unimaginable 200 years ago. The same is true about our knowledge of what will be possible 200 years from now.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#100

Post by harimau777 » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 1:20 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #67

adolph wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Perhaps a shorter way to put it is that without growth the allocation of resources is zero sum. That's not a problem when there are plentiful resources. It's also the only option when many resources are not renewable, and this zero-sum themselves.

I think that the problem is that many resources that people care about are limited:

- desirable land

- desirable mates

- equipment for certain hobbies (e.g. sailboats, machine shops, etc.)