31–40 of 299 posts
There's a whole universe out there. We're not even close to exhausting how much we could grow.
Were I a betting man I'd bet against us, given our current trajectory.
A finite system cannot sustain infinite growth. Not that this summarizes the article, but that'd be a pretty logical statement.
Mr. Daly hasn't been to the Bay Area recently then, I see.
The pandemic made it clear that elites are ok with mass death and debilitation. It may not be a conspiracy, but people in power simply don’t care. So the logical conclusion is that a lot of the most vulnerable people are going to perish, the hardier ones will hobble by in filthy conditions like what you see in old age homes today (but there will be a gun around if they wanna quickly end their misery). Structural chan…
If you feel they should have shut down more and harder to save lives you are categorically wrong. It would never have worked in any degree of severity and has caused such damage as to have pushed us to disaster.
The vaccines are nothing more than a redistribution of wealth to big pharma, wealth that many of us can not afford. I work and earn what should be a good salary yet I own nothing.
I will not be locked in my house again by the government or anyone else, you will have to kill me.
Honestly I think this is obvious to anyone who is not financially motivated to think otherwise. The biggest problem is the rich have created a system in which people's future (retirement) is basically linked to "the market" growing over their lifetime. And the hopes that if they get lucky enough with the market they can retire early (or at all). This system of course is built 100% on governments/employers not wanting…
In countries where population growth levelled off it seems to have recently resulted in raising of the retirement age ever higher. It's basically a state run ponzi scheme. I frankly wish we had a tax free investing account option available instead.
Honestly I think this is obvious to anyone who is not financially motivated to think otherwise. The biggest problem is the rich have created a system in which people's future (retirement) is basically linked to "the market" growing over their lifetime. And the hopes that if they get lucky enough with the market they can retire early (or at all). This system of course is built 100% on governments/employers not wanting…
For thousands of years of our existence, progress was very slow and sometimes we went in reverse in some regions.
Economic growth plus innovation resulted in progress and pulled the 99% who were not wealthy out of utter subsistence poverty over the last few hundred years.
Also, we cannot grow forever (unless we figure out how to colonize other planets). We have to figure out how to live in a worldwide demographic "Japan" zero to negative pop growth, decline and be comfortable and work with it. New generations don't have to be richer than the last. We can achieve some maintainable level of comfort and be okay with that.
Of course the assumption of growth underpins most modern societies, as far as I know, but we will have to find a new model for a new reality.
I don't think economists use terms like 'growth' in a very consistent manner. For example: trees are constantly growing in a forest, and trees are also constantly dying, but the overall population size (number of trees in a forest) remains generally stable, in the absence of major changes in climate and animal predation of trees (such as clear-cutting forests). A lot of uses of growth in economics appear to be relate…
- Wish they lived in a world we do not live in, such as one without violence or one where people were happy with what they have and do not strive for more.
- Actually want growth, but the kind of growth where the things that grow are the things they like and the things they don't like go away.
- Have a feeling or rationale that existing wealth and output can be easily redistributed, leading to a state of global contentment we would not need to improve on.
All dreams, sadly.
There's a whole universe out there. We're not even close to exhausting how much we could grow.
Space migration is possible but would it matter? You could build a big Mars settlement and that would have its own economy but how much would that add growth to Earth? Transit times are long and the cost to move goods is high for fundamental physical reasons, leaving intangibles as the only thing that could trade in really high volume. I doubt an increase in software or media from Mars could compensate for limits to…
Is not growth inevitable? I hear criticisms of it but is it not what happens automatically when there is competition for resources? I can't really see what the alternative would be. I mean, ideally if you could just agree with everyone in the entire world that no one should strive for something better, we could stay where we are, but reaching such agreement seems impossible. And let's say instead we change direction…