Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 343 posts

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#271

Post by amylene »

raducu wrote: post #147
andersonvieira wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

I think you are being disingenuousby saying 200 years. Except medical advances and science, I'd be all willing to trade ALL the economic "growth" in the first world of the last 20 years if we could also revert wars, climate change and destruction of habbitat for the last 20 years. Oh, and by "growth" I mean the insane asset price inflation and concentration wealth, strengthening of the military-industrial complex, mo…

The wars of the past 20 years have been much less damaging than the previous wars. I actually think the last 20 years has been an improvement.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#272

Post by duxut_staglatz »

cjfd wrote: post #270
duxut_staglatz wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Durable goods obfuscate the issue, but let's take your example. Let's say I want to have both an all-terrain car for the weekend and my regular car on the weekdays. I now consume two new cars very ten years instead of one. The same number of car has been produced in those ten years (no growth). Where does my extra car come from?

Let us tell a bit of a story. You bought your two cars because your all-terrain car hobby is very important to you. This was a bit of a financial squeeze and you could not go on holidays as often as you liked. But since the car hobby is more important to you, you think you made the right decision and are happy about it. There is another person who thinks going on holiday is the greatest thing ever. He went on holiday…

Ok, so you are agreeing with the comment you said you were disagreeing with (zero sum economy means if someone increases their amount of stuff, someone else must have less stuff, otherwise the amount of stuff would not stay constant).

You are making a different point, which is that more stuff does not equal happiness, so we should not care about it.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#273

Post by allendoerfer »

coldtea wrote: post #264
allendoerfer wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To do that, we need more research, more production, better technologies, better energy usage, which turns out to be growth.

No, we could do that with limited growth (of general commerce economy) and just having more resources given to science. Even as a matter of political will (tons of resources in the US e.g. are given to the military which could be use for NASA programs). We went to space with an 1/10th the economy of today. We had not been to the moon for 40+ years, despite the economy growing ever stronger.

What got America to the moon was taking the leftovers of an beyond-imagination evil dictatorship, designed to take over the world, and applying it to win a race against another dictatorship. During that whole process millions of people experienced horror or lost their lifes in the cruelest ways imaginable.

While I acknowledge, that economic growth has problems, it does not seem all that bad to me.

I imagine going to the moon just is not a priority right now. The superrich already want to spend their money on space projects. Let's wait what regular people want to buy, after health, etc. is solved.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#274

Post by mech1234 »

viklove wrote: post #256
mech1234 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another well-regarded source is the congressional budget office. The data linked below from 2014 is even more optimistic than my previous data because it uses household income instead of individual income. (because the distribution of individual incomes is skewed and growing even more skewed, median household incomes grow faster than individual incomes). The CBO data shows 26.1% growth in the incomes of middle quinti…

Is that just because more people are opting to live with their parents because they can't afford their own rent?

No. Household sizes have been getting smaller, not larger, over time. It would be pretty far-fetched for the combinatorial effects of mixed-income households to boost the median in spite of this.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#275

Post by duxut_staglatz »

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…

This is especially at the world stage. In a zero-sum economy, either some countries are left in an awful state of poverty for ever (no growth, same distribution of income) or people from rich countries must significantly decrease their consumption (no growth, equalization of income).

For reference, the average world GDP is about US$17,300.

At the OECD tax-to-GDP average rate, about $6000 would be spent through public institutions (i.e. taxes and public services). So that leaves about $11500 for both consumption and maintaining the capital stock.

The consumption of fixed capital is about 15% of GDP per year, so that leaves about $9775 a year, or $815 per month to consume stuff.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#276

Post by duxut_staglatz »

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…

Growth can come both from using more inputs (capital, energy, labor) or using the same input more efficiently (i.e. technological progress). There is no reason to claim that only technological progress induced growth counts as growth but when the GDP increases because we use more inputs it is not somehow growth.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#277

Post by b0rsuk »

paulintrognon wrote: post #68
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…

> The only country I know that comes close is Switzerland Another example is Bhutan, which implemeneted Gross National Happiness [1] as their primary goal. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_National_Happiness

Thank you for reminding me, I've seen a documentary including that country.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#278

Post by b0rsuk »

adamsea wrote: post #172
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…

In an ideal world, growth which took true account of things we currently consider externalities (i.e. pollution), would be ecologically sustainable, and, drastically reduce the human suffering and loss of life of countries which practiced it. In my fantasy world, out of all the people who didn't die of cancer from air pollution, that lost human potential, translates into scientific, cultural, and technological advanc…

Pollution is something so abstract, hard to measure and put a finger on that a lot of people get away with it. When you punch a person in the face or rob someone, soon there's one very angry person wanting to get even with you. Because of its nature, pollution diffuses in air or water. It's hard to see, put a finger on, point to the wrongdoer. There's a little bit of it everywhere, everyone is a bit harmed by it, but it's hard to reason about and notice until it's really bad. And by that time the guilty is either dead or far away. Or everyone is a little bit responsible.

Which reminds me of... democracy. The easiest way to make people not care about something wrong happening is to diffuse it. Like, diffuse responsibility.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#279

Post by cjfd »

duxut_staglatz wrote: post #272
cjfd wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let us tell a bit of a story. You bought your two cars because your all-terrain car hobby is very important to you. This was a bit of a financial squeeze and you could not go on holidays as often as you liked. But since the car hobby is more important to you, you think you made the right decision and are happy about it. There is another person who thinks going on holiday is the greatest thing ever. He went on holiday…

Ok, so you are agreeing with the comment you said you were disagreeing with (zero sum economy means if someone increases their amount of stuff, someone else must have less stuff, otherwise the amount of stuff would not stay constant). You are making a different point, which is that more stuff does not equal happiness, so we should not care about it.

Your original comment talked about this zero-sum game being a very grim circumstance. It talks about 'plunder' and the like. This is in part what I was commenting about, noting that it is not necessarily a grim thing. The other thing is that your talking about 'stuff' and zero-sum games still sounds a bit off. I am wondering if you are not using the term 'zero sum economy' in one meaning while at the same time evoking associations with another meaning of that same term. The 'zero sum economy' (the one with constant GDP) is still an economy where everybody is enjoying the benefits of trade and specialization. In that sense it is still a positive sum economy and if you start doing the 'plunder' that your first post talks about and lose the benefits of trade because you now have bad relationships between people and everybody will get poorer. Hence the 'zero sum economy' cannot be one of 'taking things' and 'plunder'. Also, the comments about 'stuff' still sound off. In fact in the 'zero sum economy' the amount of stuff gets increased every year by an amount that is exactly equal to GDP. That is the definition of GDP. There is also stuff that breaks down but it is not the case that other people take that stuff from you, just the forces of entropy. Maybe you mean to say things that are all correct but it just sounds a bit off to me. I can't shake the impression that you are confusing yourself by talking about one thing while thinking about another and/or evoking associations with it. For one thing, It is still quite unclear to me why you paint a very grim picture of the zero sum economy in your first post.
Post reply on HN