Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth? • Hacker News Board

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#181

Post by anotherone18 » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 3:49 PM UTC

merpnderp wrote: post #38

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…

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…

Source for the 1%?

World bank data seems to differ:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locat...

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#182

Post by Kaiyou » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 3:51 PM UTC

rbrtl wrote: post #145

Kaiyou wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evil needs agency, so no, I don't see evil in the absence of something.

"Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing."

Emphasize on "good men". They're not evil for doing nothing.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#183

Post by JMTQp8lwXL » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 3:51 PM UTC

mech1234 wrote: post #173

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's false that none of the growth is being captured by middle income people. It is being captured to a greater extent by the very top of the income distribution and by the global poor, but income is growing across the board. Real median wages and household income in the U.S. are higher than they've ever been. This is all despite the increased international competition typified by globalization trends and detailed by…

Your second link proves that middle income people are getting virtually none of the growth; at best, scraps. The difference between "none" and "effectively none" isn't a mischaracterization on my part. I will clarify by "middle income" I meant the American middle class, and not the global median.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#184

Post by poutrathor » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 3:51 PM UTC

mathattack wrote: post #171

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…

It’s not just an arms race. Growth funds everything, including social programs and saving the environment. Granted some growth (productivity driven) is better than others (resource driven.) For better or worse we can’t fund solutions to the world’s problems with austerity.

> Growth funds saving the environment

What we have to read these days -_-

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#185

Post by ClumsyPilot » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 3:51 PM UTC

thu2111 wrote: post #169

rbrtl wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you know OP didn't mean those: > Except medical advances and science, I'd be all willing to trade ALL the economic "growth" I don't understand if you're making a larger point or not, but the "first world" is the focus of the discussion of whether or not growth economics is harmful. It worked fantastically well for the first world for many years, possibly even the 200 year scale that the commenter above challe…

Problem is that view is contradictory. In the absence of discovering a natural resource bounty, GDP (economic) growth comes from two sources: 1. More people working harder. 2. Better technology. If you exclude "medical advances and science" you're basically excluding (2) which means the only source of growth is (1). More people working harder. Saying the world can only get better by increasing the number of hours we…

Not at all, there are huge efficiencies to be gained from societal change. You could double Russian GDP just by dealing with corruption.

Besides crime, there is- Education, computer literacy, drug problems, etc. Huge swathes of Africa lacks even basic sanitation, many people in US don't have healthcare, the list is endless.

Lastly, there is a difference between science and industry. Case in point: we have the technology for genetic engineering of humans, but we aren't doing that. It could probably increase GDP too.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#186

Post by dwiel » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 3:53 PM UTC

logicchains wrote: post #146

dwiel wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean because with cheaper widgets, demand would increase and so monetary value of finished goods and would rise and so GDP as well? Wouldn't GDP actually decrease if the same number of widgets are made, but now for cheaper and so through competition have less "value"?

>Wouldn't GDP actually decrease if the same number of widgets are made, but now for cheaper and so through competition have less "value"? Cheaper doesn't mean less "value". If we have inflation, prices go up but value doesn't increase, and if deflation decreases prices, that doesn't mean a decrease in value. GDP calculations try to account for this, to capture the fact that e.g. a $500 phone today contains a lot more…

Thanks for answering my honest questions. I didn't realize GDP accounts for perceived value. I had assumed it was restricted to the economic value strictly defined by the dollar. Thanks.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#187

Post by ClumsyPilot » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 3:55 PM UTC

Kaiyou wrote: post #123

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Evil needs agency, so no, I don't see evil in the absence of something.

A convenient abdication of responsibility, isnt it? We we not responsible for plane crash/ financial crysis / climate change, it just happened!

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#188

Post by adambyrtek » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 3:55 PM UTC

harimau777 wrote: post #139

adambyrtek wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the first two points, but I don't really get what this has to do with hobbies and sailboats in particular? As a sailor myself I guarantee that you could easily deliver many more boats if only there was demand for them. Sailing is considered by many as an elite hobby, but in reality you can buy a second-hand yacht cheaper than a decent car.

Ya, I should have explained that more clearly. Basically my thinking is: - There are going to be certain luxury goods whose supply is limited. - I framed it in terms of hobbies in order to point out that in many cases "luxury goods" aren't just frivolous comforts but are instead things that people need to achieve meaningful personal goals. (Also, on a completely off topic note: that's really interesting to hear about…

Boats drop in value quickly because of maintenance. Sea can be a tough environment, sea water is really corrosive, you need to regularly anti-foul the hull, specialist gear is not cheap etc. You can keep the costs down if you have the time to learn and do some of the work yourself. Wooden boats are even more difficult to keep in good shape. Moreover, you need to rent a mooring for it, which can get really expensive depending on location.

That's the main reason why people half-jokingly say that the two happiest days for a boat owner are the day when they buy it and the day when they manage to sell it. Still it's worth all the effort if you have the time to sail it regularly. Otherwise, chartering (renting) a yacht for a period of time can be a much better option.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#189

Post by nickik » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 3:55 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…

Specialization is not an end to end solution. It is one specific effect where increase population gets you higher per-item efficiency. There are many other such effects we could be talking about.

> I’m not sure I follow. How will we prevent over-fishing for example?

Fishing is increasingly done in fishing farms. The scale of such farms in the open sea is only worth it for very large markets.

However for most fishing, the solution is actually property rights for a sustainable amount of fish and that is already done in many places.

> Deforestation?

Forest were actually smaller in the middle ages. Modern markets/technology leads to the ability to regrow forest. All the Western world is now reforesting, because proper forestry is actually a sustainable business, no need to deforest.

> I think you can blunt the effects of overpopulation for humans (we probably won’t starve) but at what cost?

The cost are really not that high. High traffic in the densest places is really not that high a cost. Our rivers are cleaner, our food higher quality, our food is cheaper, wild life is actually making a comeback in the Western world, the amount of commercial land use is decreasing, air quality is increasing and the list goes on.

> I would argue even right now we have plenty of people without meaningful work - how will increases in population improve that?

If people have work has far more to do with the political conditions of specific countries then with overpopulation as a whole. Historically places with high population growth and high overall economic growth correlate very well, more people creates lots of demands and new problems that need to be solved. There is really no evidence at all that population increase leads to increase in people out of work.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#190

Post by ClumsyPilot » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 3:58 PM UTC

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.

I dont think that's correct to look at as shortage of land - Having more physical land does not solve the problem. You could put SanFrancisco on an infinite flat earth, and house prices would hardly budge.