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Are we running out of resources?

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Re: Are we running out of resources?

#91

Post by rmah »

beaconstudios wrote: post #82
rmah wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4 bil households (8 bil people) with each household living on a detached 500 sq m lot (20m x 25m or apx 1/8th acre) => 4,000,000,000 hh * 500 sq m => 2mil sq km. The earth has 149mil sq km of land area so those suburbs would take up about 1.7% of the land. If you subtract out antarctica (14 mil sq km), siberia (13 mil sq km) and 3/4 of canada (7 mil sq km), the sahara desert (9mil sq km)... you're still left with abo…

I didn't mean to imply that land area was the constraint - the constraint is energy/fuel use, traffic, and other symptoms of inefficient resource use. We should be aiming to design houses so that minimal HVAC is necessary to maintain comfortable conditions, not building ramshackle houses in the desert and patching the inefficiencies with massively energy-consuming devices. The broader point I'm trying to make is that…

Sorry, that post was my attempt at a bit of data humor :-) I actually agree with everything you're saying.

Re: Are we running out of resources?

#92

Post by beaconstudios »

yetihehe wrote: post #87
beaconstudios wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the economy is not a binary choice between "pay people subsistence wages" and "don't pay them at all". We could pay people better, invest in the development of underdeveloped countries that we exploit (no, IMF loans do not count). We could focus on helping people instead of exploiting them for profit. Many options are available.

Why don't you do this? If you don't have resources for this, why do you think other people have them? Ask yourself honestly, if you won a lottery yesterday, would you give it away to those workers in underdeveloped countries? I would not, because I'm too greedy, but I don't think you would really give money away either, and I supported Ukraine with about $100, which is probably the biggest donation I have done in my…

Putting aside the fact that I do try to help people out financially where I can - this is just a deflection from reform. We ended slavery because it was immoral, and I'm sure there were people saying "if you love slaves so much, why don't you buy slaves and free them yourself" at the time. While it's possible to do that on an individual basis, that doesn't lead to the end of slavery, which itself should not exist at all. Neither should exploitation of poor countries by rich ones. I'm sure you realise that this is bad.

Re: Are we running out of resources?

#93

Post by beaconstudios »

rmah wrote: post #91
beaconstudios wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't mean to imply that land area was the constraint - the constraint is energy/fuel use, traffic, and other symptoms of inefficient resource use. We should be aiming to design houses so that minimal HVAC is necessary to maintain comfortable conditions, not building ramshackle houses in the desert and patching the inefficiencies with massively energy-consuming devices. The broader point I'm trying to make is that…

Sorry, that post was my attempt at a bit of data humor :-) I actually agree with everything you're saying.

ah sorry, the medium doesn't always lend itself to tone-based jokes! I see it now, haha

Re: Are we running out of resources?

#94

Post by cableshaft »

jotm wrote: post #60
volatilecarbon wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only example I can think of is water. While it's not gone, the quality and cleanliness has decreased over time. There are many areas where you can no longer consume seafood due to high pollution levels. Same with swimming or drinking (boiling used to be sufficient to clean water, but it certainly isn't anymore). Even "safe" seafood is only recommended to be consumed 2 times a week now due to the build up of heavy…

Not safe to consume seafood? As long as it's alive, you can eat it. Maybe it lowers your lifespan. That's not that big of a problem, humans have lived like that for the vast majority of their existence. As for water, it's everywhere. Obviously, some people can run out of it, but then again a minority is always fucked in this world.

> As for water, it's everywhere.

The vast majority of it is seawater, which humans can't drink because of its salt content. There's still enough freshwater in most places, but the regions where drinkable water scarcity is a problem are growing larger every year.

Desalination plants do exist, but it's up to 10x more expensive in most places (in California it's only about 2x more expensive because water is already pretty scarce there) and it's also not great for the environment either:

"The problem is that the desalination of water requires a lot of energy. Salt dissolves very easily in water, forming strong chemical bonds, and those bonds are difficult to break. Energy and the technology to desalinate water are both expensive, and this means that desalinating water can be pretty costly...It can cost from just under $1 to well over $2 to produce one cubic meter (264 gallons) of desalted water from the ocean...But switch the source to a river or an aquifer, and the cost of a cubic meter of water can plummet to 10 to 20 cents, and farmers often pay far less."

"There are environmental costs of desalination, as well. Sea life can get sucked into desalination plants, killing small ocean creatures like baby fish and plankton, upsetting the food chain. Also, there's the problem of what to do with the separated salt, which is left over as a very concentrated brine. Pumping this supersalty water back into the ocean can harm local aquatic life. Reducing these impacts is possible, but it adds to the costs.'"

https://scientificamerican.com/article/why-dont-we-get-our-d...

Re: Are we running out of resources?

#95

Post by mercutio2 »

verisimi wrote: post #84
simonh wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yes. But its possible to allocate a value to these assets. And do what with it? A value is just a number. What would you do with the assets and the value? I'm not being facetious, I'm really curious how you imagine this working and right now I honestly don't have any idea. Who would control these companies now that they're not owned by their founders and current owners? How would ownership and control work? Who woul…

I'm trying to formulate the problem in broad strokes. I say we have on the one hand huge amounts of wealth in the hands of very few individuals on the one hand, and lots of people that do not have enough on the other. There is a competition for resources and something needs to be changed. I hope you accept that is a fair if broad formulation of the problem. If you are neutral in approaching this, and trying to find a…

How much wealth do you think would be redistributed if governments confiscated all the assets you think are held be billionaires?

There just isn’t that much wealth to be expropriated. It wouldn’t go very far.

So no, I don’t think you’ll get broad agreement that confiscating wealth from the very rich is even numerically a viable strategy.

Not to mention the fact that historically expropriation isn’t exactly associated with the generation of social welfare.

Now, as it happens, I’m in favor of higher progressive taxes!

But we can’t pretend we can create a social welfare state just by picking on billionaires. The middle class would need to be taxed generously for that to pencil out.

Re: Are we running out of resources?

#96

Post by yetihehe »

beaconstudios wrote: post #92
yetihehe wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you do this? If you don't have resources for this, why do you think other people have them? Ask yourself honestly, if you won a lottery yesterday, would you give it away to those workers in underdeveloped countries? I would not, because I'm too greedy, but I don't think you would really give money away either, and I supported Ukraine with about $100, which is probably the biggest donation I have done in my…

Putting aside the fact that I do try to help people out financially where I can - this is just a deflection from reform. We ended slavery because it was immoral, and I'm sure there were people saying "if you love slaves so much, why don't you buy slaves and free them yourself" at the time. While it's possible to do that on an individual basis, that doesn't lead to the end of slavery, which itself should not exist at…

Of course, I'm whole heartedly with you in that matter, I don't think many people here would be against such cause. I wish people in underdeveloped countries earned at least as much as I do. I just would like to see that "many options" you talk about. Typically people who claim that "someone should do something about this" are just publicly grouching and I just don't like that. Either give some substantial way to achieve your goal, or don't comment. You are adding noise to noise/signal ratio.

Re: Are we running out of resources?

#97

Post by pmontra »

rob74 wrote: post #8

> Everyone should be living much more like the most wealthy people in the most wealthy nations are living now. It should be considered a moral abomination that billions of people are not living in multiple story homes with robotic assistants to control their lights, security, doors, air-conditioning and the temperature of their pools. As with the rest of the article, I'm really not sure if this is irony or hubris? If…

It's not that the planet is not enough, because maybe it is, but does the author really think that even people that can afford those comforts now really want them? My own data point: home, yes, multiple story no. No stairs, no elevators is best. Robotic assistants for lights, I don't care. Security: if that's a burglar alarm yes. Control doors? I'm happy and feel more secure with traditional locks. Air-conditioning, yes. Pool, I don't care.

Re: Are we running out of resources?

#98

Post by beaconstudios »

yetihehe wrote: post #96
beaconstudios wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting aside the fact that I do try to help people out financially where I can - this is just a deflection from reform. We ended slavery because it was immoral, and I'm sure there were people saying "if you love slaves so much, why don't you buy slaves and free them yourself" at the time. While it's possible to do that on an individual basis, that doesn't lead to the end of slavery, which itself should not exist at…

Of course, I'm whole heartedly with you in that matter, I don't think many people here would be against such cause. I wish people in underdeveloped countries earned at least as much as I do. I just would like to see that "many options" you talk about. Typically people who claim that "someone should do something about this" are just publicly grouching and I just don't like that. Either give some substantial way to ach…

The "many options" I'm talking about are otherwise known as "left-wing politics". Unionisation, building a cooperative-based economy, UBI (though for some reason this has right-wing support too), minimum wages, nationalising important industries and resources, building systems of mutual aid, honestly I could go on for a while. Equality versus hierarchy is what the left-right political struggle is about, after all.

Re: Are we running out of resources?

#99

Post by taylodl »

The 19th & 20th centuries have taught us how transformative knowledge is. Prior to these centuries humanity more or less haphazardly acquired new knowledge. Now we're much more principled in our acquisition and management of knowledge - in fact we've come to see that knowledge itself is a resource. What do we know about knowledge resources? For starters we know they're finite. There's only so much knowledge available to any computing node (or person). Then there's the issue of it takes energy to store, transfer, and synthesize that knowledge and those energy costs are skyrocketing. Finally, there's the very real fact that knowledge synthesis is asymptotic - there's a finite amount of knowledge to be had in total, and while quick strides can be made in getting close to that totality to close the remaining knowledge gap will require increasing amounts of energy.

We closed a remarkable bit of that gap in the 19th and 20th centuries - the gaps remaining are getting really difficult to fill. This is the counterargument to innovation will solve all our problems.

Re: Are we running out of resources?

#100

Post by silicon2401 »

volatilecarbon wrote: post #13

There were a lot of words here to simply fall back on the argument that innovation will solve every problem and do so before there is significant suffering. I agree that life will always go on, but this idea that consumption and quality of life can do nothing but rise when it is so dependent on the limited cheap energy and resources that we only learned to exploit a century ago is insanity to me. Our ever increasing…

> I struggle to see how you could blindly expect this to occur, not even entertaining the thought that even if such an innovation exists, we might not be able to discover it before the consequences of our current behavior sets in.

People believe what's convenient. It's inconvenient to be realistic and accept that we're heading in a bad direction (because then we all have to sacrifice comforts). Rome and its way of life fell, the British Empire and its way of life fell, and one day our global consumerist society and its way of life will fall too

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