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Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

nytimes.com

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Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#51

Post by oneoff786 »

supernovae wrote: post #44
moffkalast wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A 401k is like a state funded pension? No, not at all?

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#52

Post by whimsicalism »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #49
mc32 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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recent graeber/wengrow research shows your understanding of human progress is way out of date

Care to elaborate?

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#53

Post by krm01 »

I’ve had this sickness of growth in my early twenties. Rushed into a startup, burnt through 7 figures of VC money. Then took an other shot at it, but slower growth and no VC money. Bootstrapped that company and got acquired. Then started an agency [1] where we get to design B2B software products for a variety of startups. We are keeping it small on purpose and growth is never discussed. The focus is to do work we love with amazing teams of engineers and entrepreneurs. Accidentally we’re generating more money than in my previous ventures, even with a clear cap on growth. It just adds to our runway and makes working every day more fun and fulfilling.

[1] https://fairpixels.pro

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#54

Post by sfvisser »

xnx wrote: post #41

Growth is clearly unsustainable until we can decouple happiness from exhaustion of finite material resources.

Economic growth is more than just using finite material resources. It’s technical innovation, labor productivity increase, efficiency improvements due to economies of scale, specialization, efficiently recycling scarce commodities, etc etc

Yes, we obviously need more economic growth, there simply is no alternative.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#55

Post by closeparen »

eatsyourtacos wrote: post #8

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 the government to redistribute real productive capacity and resources to the elderly, they first have to exist. The demographic crisis already means the elderly are going to need quite a bit relative to what we can produce; without growth things would be even tighter.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#56

Post by jjoonathan »

mongol wrote: post #9

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…

> That is also a kind of growth!

Yes, but not one that benefits from investment, which is how rich people get paid for being rich. Rich people want very, very, very much to be paid for being rich. Since a dollar is a vote, this concern completely dominates our political and cultural thought processes.

The tricky part is that retirement funds use exactly the same mechanism, so those of us with retirement accounts have incentives to keep quiet. The wheels won't come off the cart to Ponzi town until a minority of people are net asset holders, but that's well on its way to happening. Exciting times!

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#57

Post by [deleted] »

mc32 wrote: post #36
eatsyourtacos wrote: post #8

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…

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…

[deleted]

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#58

Post by philosopher1234 »

smeeth wrote: post #38

In practice I find that people who bemoan our "obsession with growth" or some such generally fall into one or more of the following buckets: - 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'…

You have provided no reason to believe any of your claims apply to the economist in question. I can say “I find people who defend our obsession with growth tend to be benefit heavily from our racist status quo, and would prefer for it to continue”.

It’s lazy, and anti intellectual

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#59

Post by whimsicalism »

api wrote: post #23
it wrote: post #11

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…

It seems like services, information, tech are all huge contributors to modern growth beyond just "raw physical" goods. Seems like it could have a substantial impact on Earth, especially when you consider innovations.

Imagine having high billions-trillions of people and millions working on a given innovation or line of research or whatever.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#60

Post by jnwatson »

supernovae wrote: post #44
moffkalast wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The IRS raises the limits every year. I imagine they will raise it quite a bit next year.
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