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Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

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Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#151

Post by jdkee »

weeksie wrote: post #136

The one fundamental reason why growth is so important is that without growth, the economy becomes a zero sum game. In order for you to get more money you must take it from someone else since there is only a fixed amount. A low growth world is one where we plunder each others' wealth, not one were the incentives are aligned with building new industry. That's why productivity increases are so important. Without them, i…

1. If you look at the productivity gains in the U.S. over the past 50 years, the vast majority of the gains have been captured by a very small subset of the population.

2. A zero sum game in terms of the distribution of money is not the same as a similar distribution of wealth.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#152

Post by vonmoltke »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #133

I talk about the effects of limiting GDP-style growth on our lifestyle with my wife. We burn a lot of carbon and use a lot of resources traveling, but on the other hand in our day to day life we tend to buy food in bulk at health food stores, try very hard to avoid using plastic, share one fuel efficient car, etc. Our take is that, for the sake of our grandchildren's generation and generations beyond that, that we wo…

> An example would be to remove the $50b per year water subsidies for the beef industry

Do you have a source for that? Every one I have been able to find indicates that total meat and dairy subsidies are less than that, let alone just water subsidies for the beef industry.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#153

Post by chii »

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.

> And we would also be able to see the energy output from other galactic civilizations nearby

or they are utilizing an energy source so efficient that no leaks happen (that we can observe).

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#154

Post by rtkwe »

luckylion wrote: post #148
mark_l_watson wrote: post #133

I talk about the effects of limiting GDP-style growth on our lifestyle with my wife. We burn a lot of carbon and use a lot of resources traveling, but on the other hand in our day to day life we tend to buy food in bulk at health food stores, try very hard to avoid using plastic, share one fuel efficient car, etc. Our take is that, for the sake of our grandchildren's generation and generations beyond that, that we wo…

> An example would be to remove the $50b per year water subsidies for the beef industry, and make consumers pay for the approximately 4000 gallons of water required to produce a pound of meat in the grocery store. Isn't that a fancy way of saying "eating meat should be a privilege for the wealthy"? The point of mass production isn't just that it's produced in masses, it's also about being affordable by the masses. Al…

> Isn't that a fancy way of saying "eating meat should be a privilege for the wealthy"?

Kind of, it's a problem of externalized costs beef is only really cheap because the environmental toll of feeding and housing them isn't felt by the purchaser. If the same food and water required to make your steak would be used to feed people directly there would be much less food insecurity in the world for example.

Meat is decidedly a food that is a kind of luxury that not everyone can afford already and I'd be sad to eat less of but if it reduced hunger and starvation in the rest of the world I'd consider it a fair take away.

Also consider that by being on the internet presumably with some higher education the majority of hackernews readers are already in the to 25-50% of global wealth.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#155

Post by weeksie »

jdkee wrote: post #151
weeksie wrote: post #136

The one fundamental reason why growth is so important is that without growth, the economy becomes a zero sum game. In order for you to get more money you must take it from someone else since there is only a fixed amount. A low growth world is one where we plunder each others' wealth, not one were the incentives are aligned with building new industry. That's why productivity increases are so important. Without them, i…

1. If you look at the productivity gains in the U.S. over the past 50 years, the vast majority of the gains have been captured by a very small subset of the population. 2. A zero sum game in terms of the distribution of money is not the same as a similar distribution of wealth.

Neither of those points are relevant to the larger one.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#156

Post by airstrike »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #133

I talk about the effects of limiting GDP-style growth on our lifestyle with my wife. We burn a lot of carbon and use a lot of resources traveling, but on the other hand in our day to day life we tend to buy food in bulk at health food stores, try very hard to avoid using plastic, share one fuel efficient car, etc. Our take is that, for the sake of our grandchildren's generation and generations beyond that, that we wo…

This view ignores the insurmountable truth that humans want more, and if that means their neighbors get less, so be it.

I'm not saying it should our shouldn't be like this, just that it is.

You're thinking collectively while your neighbor defects and thinks about themselves first.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#158

Post by gumby »

harimau777 wrote: post #142
gumby wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t heard of much shortage of any of those things in the OECD. If anything there’s a surplus of your third category. What’s desirable about land changes due to fashion even visibly within a human lifespan.

The US certainly has a shortage of desirable land (e.g. land in Manhattan and San Francisco). Even if the details of which land has more demand than supply changes over time, I don't think that changes the fact that at any given time there is a shortage.

There is lumpiness in the market, sure, but by and large house prices in the us aren’t that high.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#159

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

weeksie wrote: post #155
jdkee wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. If you look at the productivity gains in the U.S. over the past 50 years, the vast majority of the gains have been captured by a very small subset of the population. 2. A zero sum game in terms of the distribution of money is not the same as a similar distribution of wealth.

Neither of those points are relevant to the larger one.

The first point directly contradicts your main argument; that without growth, economics is zero-sum. We have growth, yet none of that growth is captured by middle income people. The growth (and wealth) is being plundered.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#160

Post by mark_l_watson »

vonmoltke wrote: post #152
mark_l_watson wrote: post #133

I talk about the effects of limiting GDP-style growth on our lifestyle with my wife. We burn a lot of carbon and use a lot of resources traveling, but on the other hand in our day to day life we tend to buy food in bulk at health food stores, try very hard to avoid using plastic, share one fuel efficient car, etc. Our take is that, for the sake of our grandchildren's generation and generations beyond that, that we wo…

> An example would be to remove the $50b per year water subsidies for the beef industry Do you have a source for that? Every one I have been able to find indicates that total meat and dairy subsidies are less than that, let alone just water subsidies for the beef industry.

Sorry, that was from memory, reading Diet for a Small Planet.

I found one source for $38b for meat and fairly subsidies, but that likely includes things besides water subsidies.

I agree that $50b is too high of an estimate.

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