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Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

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Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#101

Post by paulintrognon »

mjburgess wrote: post #46

As far as I can tell this is just a misunderstanding of "growth" in an economic sense. Growth is the result of improvements in productivity, which tend to reduce energy use (per item produced). We consume more energy net because we produce more. If, eg., products became more expensive because of limited energy (or relevant taxing of externalities) then we would grow more slowly -- we can still produce more through in…

Empirically, economic growth has always been related to consumption of energy and raw materials. One explanation is the Rebound effect[1]

Maybe theorically they can be decoupled, but we have yet to see that in the real world.

More about it: https://eeb.org/library/decoupling-debunked/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebound_effect_(conservation)

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#102

Post by dharma1 »

okr wrote: post #83
magicalhippo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That productivity will have to come from automation, and a robot doesn't get a salary so doesn't have to pay income tax. So that'll have to change if you plan on using the productivity growth to fund pensions, no?

You might not need a pension if you have a robot that is highly productive towards you. Everything might be so cheap. All the externalities that one needs to pay for a lot today, might be vastly available tomorrow. I think it is hard to predict the future.

This is an interesting thought experiment. I think it's conceivable the cost of many things one needs would fall as a result of automation - but there are many things which have limited supply and that there would still be competition for, many of them consumable - so you would still need a source of income for these.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#103

Post by LMYahooTFY »

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.

If resources are plentiful than why is growth a problem?

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#104

Post by mhh__ »

bitxbit wrote: post #81

Growth is good but we are entering an economic environment where countries and companies are growing simply to show growth. It’s inorganic. In the past this type of behavior would result in boom and bust cycles, now the easy money has made it possible for us to go on indefinitely. This all started with Wall Street. I want to make that ABSOLUTELY clear.

"Simply to show growth"? People like generally money, what's changed?

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#105

Post by HPsquared »

lcam84 wrote: post #89
novalis78 wrote: post #33

It’s fascinating how the reality of Earth being embedded in a vast ocean of resource is completely lost on so many. Human ingenuity is key. With every step we unlock another level of resource utilization driving prosperity. If anything social organization and financial frameworks need to support the unfolding of our technology tree. As humanity we just woke up. Enlightenment now.

Most of human ingenuity is based on the consumption of cheap finite resources. Every time we had new tecnologies it results in more consuption of resources. We need to listen what the science is telling us for 40 years now with the report from the club of rome "limits of growth", and slow down our consuption levels. Apply new techonologies as an excuse to keep growth (green growth) will accelerate the degradation of…

Isn't work done for environmental protection counted under 'growth'? (provided someone is paying for it) - it's adding value, after all.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#106

Post by HPsquared »

mjburgess wrote: post #46

As far as I can tell this is just a misunderstanding of "growth" in an economic sense. Growth is the result of improvements in productivity, which tend to reduce energy use (per item produced). We consume more energy net because we produce more. If, eg., products became more expensive because of limited energy (or relevant taxing of externalities) then we would grow more slowly -- we can still produce more through in…

Increasingly in the Information Age, my intuition is that people are paying more and more as a fraction of their income for non-physical goods/services, which don't have much of an energy footprint.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#107

Post by homonculus1 »

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?

I do, and that's what cancerous infinite growth on every dimension will eventually do to us (or is already doing?)

We need to constrain growth to science and efficiency, and pull back on population and land use.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#108

Post by slumdev »

novalis78 wrote: post #33

It’s fascinating how the reality of Earth being embedded in a vast ocean of resource is completely lost on so many. Human ingenuity is key. With every step we unlock another level of resource utilization driving prosperity. If anything social organization and financial frameworks need to support the unfolding of our technology tree. As humanity we just woke up. Enlightenment now.

> Earth being embedded in a vast ocean of resource

This reads like prosperity gospel and law of attraction nonsense rolled together and repackaged for a technical audience.

A kilogram of anything from space is orders of magnitude more expensive to acquire than a kilogram on Earth. No technology will change that within my lifetime. If there are no physics-redefining advances in nuclear fusion and/or nuclear fission, my grandchildren will probably be able to make the same claim.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#109

Post by esjeon »

"Growth" is surely a good way to ease domestic pressure, but I believe it's not the only option. What we need is more "optimization", not corporate-wide, but society-wide.

The idea is still vague even to myself, so let me give a concrete example: self-driving car. While CV/AI-based self-driving cars certainly can drive, it should still acquire most critical information, like signals, crossroads, lanes, obstacles, etc, through ambiguous-at-best algorithms. At the same time, the inherent difficulty in making good-enough AI empowers companies over people, which is a straight highway to cyberpunk dystopia.

However, what if we implant digital data sources all over the road? (1) self-driving cars will always acquire correct data (2) developing safe self-driving cars become much easier (2-1) market diversity is ensured (2-2) people regain power (3) it is much easier to achieve the economy of scale with sensor nodes than cars.

Or, perhaps, what about delivery/reservation services? If the standard protocols are enforced on all restaurants, we can cut all the middlemen, lowering the prices. The same can work for taxi, hotel, scooter, bicycle, etc.

We really should start rethinking about things we have and use. The industrial structure we have today is just a mess caused by the rapid IT revolution. We weren't really ready for it. But now we've expanded enough, and should shrink down, so that we can have breathing room for another move.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#110

Post by HPsquared »

ericmay wrote: post #98
aww_dang wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The essence of technology is to reduce prices.
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