Growth is clearly unsustainable until we can decouple happiness from exhaustion of finite material resources.
Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end
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Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end
#42I 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…
> Even if resource use (in terms of conservation of mass and energy) is fixed, you can still have economic improvements within that steady-state system, can't you?
Sure, technical innovations and efficiency improvements to get more for less is also economic growth. And therefore by definition not steady-state.
Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end
#43Honestly 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…
I live in Argentina where the government took over pensioner funds and gave away millions of pensions to people who have never worked in a formal job, and therefore never put a penny into a pension fund. The result is that almost every pensioner earns peanuts regardless of how much they worked or how much they gave to the pension fund, and almost every pensioner earns half the poverty line basket.
Guaranteeing financial security to anyone is impossible.
Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end
#44Honestly 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…
Frankly the only other currently implemented alternative is state funded pensions, which instead of the market rely on an ever expanding population of workers paying their taxes to fund it and is not exactly better. 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…
isn’t that a 401k?
I wish they raised the limits.. it’s woefully inadequate after years of inflation.
Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end
#45A finite system cannot sustain infinite growth. Not that this summarizes the article, but that'd be a pretty logical statement.
We are nowhere near exhausting the resources we have available. We are also nowhere near optimal efficiency when using resources.
the externalities of resource use are arguably reaching catastrophic tipping points that will hit before depletion is an immediate concern
Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end
#46Without peaceful growth, eventually there will be military growth [expansion by the means of military violence]. Op is right that our Earth is limited and cannot grow indefinitely. Sometimes it will be followed by redistribution of growth, so that someone will continue to grow, while others will experience radical negative growth
Why can’t we have stability?
because you only need a few people not wanting that (ie people with a mindset somewhat similar to: I'd rather see people suffer than cooperate and compromise resulting in having less share of resources) for the rest to not matter.
that 'stable' state is unstable (in the control theory sense of the word).
Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end
#47The 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…
No more massive scale anything. We can not manage societies like that. 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…
It’s ok, this kind of thinking will have you locked in your house by climate catastrophe not government.
Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end
#48The 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…
What about the lockdowns, mandates, eviction moratoriums, handouts, and mass vaccination campaigns?
Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end
#49Honestly 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…
I'm not an economist and don't pretend to be... 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 figur…
recent graeber/wengrow research shows your understanding of human progress is way out of date
Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end
#50I have a heretical thought: the integrated circuit revolution has made capitalism and the economy in general look much better than it actually is.