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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

#61

Post by Forgeties79 »

Magnusmaster wrote: post #43
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 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 financ…

> Guaranteeing financial security to anyone is impossible.

Plenty of countries have done just fine. What you described is horrible mismanagement and not the only way to do things.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#62

Post by caramelcustard »

Encouraging stagnation among the easily impressionable English-speaking audiences of the economically successful nations i see. Good luck convincing certain Asian countries that they should stop their growth in the name of the "steady-state economy" just because. It's amusing how he goes from "...You can do fantastic computations now with a small material base in the computer..." to criticizing the concept of GDP ("We really don’t know that the standard is going up.") contradicting himself so quickly. The standard doesn't go up, but i sure like me my computer!

"...Does growth, as currently practiced and measured, really increase wealth? Is it making us richer in any aggregate sense, or might it be increasing costs faster than benefits and making us poorer?..." increasing costs of what exactly? Manufacturing? Materials? Servicing? Marketing? Privately held assets? State corporation stocks? The cost of a pint at your local bar?

The interviewer isn't any better. "... to accept the idea of having “enough” and that constraining the ability to pursue “more” is a good thing. Those ideas are basically anathema to modern Western society ..." completely CLUELESS take that implies that the ideas of striving for wealth, growth, luxurious consumption and people wanting things are exclusive to Western countries, but then you read about "Making ecological room" and it becomes clear what is the exact point of all that fancy talk.

But back to the economist: "My duty is to do the best I can and put out some ideas. Whether the seed that I plant is going to grow is not up to me." wink-wink

With all due respect to academia, i don't think that ignoring the harsh reality of how people behave, attempting to lightly enforce a feeling of guilt upon the society thanks to which the academia has the privelege to just "...put out some ideas" is responsible at all. I sure hope that this is just a one off case of a bad interview.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#63

Post by strongpigeon »

What Daly is saying really is more that growth as currently measured (i.e. GDP growth) isn't a good metric and is one that can't go on forever. He's not (in his own word) agains't growth of wealth, but he's rather asking whether GDP growth is the metric to optimize for.

Saying we're bound by the laws of thermodynamics is a bit silly in my opinion. It's almost like saying we shouldn't invest in solar panels as the sun will eventually explode and won't shine anymore. A lot of GDP growth in developed nations comes from increase in efficiency, not increase in resource usage. Higher agricultural yields from better crops, self-driving cars, more efficient computers; they're all things that have the potential to drive much higher growth than their resource usage. Which I guess in ecological economics would be differentiated as "developments" rather than "growth".

Now I do agree that higher growth doesn't automatically means higher standards of living. Things like automation, while highly efficient, result in most of the gains going to capital owners. How society should deal with this is another interesting question.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#64

Post by FiberBundle »

pm90 wrote: post #24

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…

Severe pandemics are actually really bad for elites, since large scale death increases the value of employees. See e.g. "The Great Leveler" by Scheidel.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#65

Post by [deleted] »

pm90 wrote: post #24

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…

[deleted]

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#66

Post by gruez »

oneoff786 wrote: post #51
supernovae wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You got the quotes mixed up, the relevant parts are:

>>I frankly wish we had a tax free investing account option available instead.

> isn’t that a 401k?

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#67

Post by moffkalast »

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.

Yeah we don't get that one nor Roth IRA in most of Europe. Afaik it's only a USA thing (though on second thought I do think pensions are optional in the UK so they may have a similar system).

The main difference between this and a 401k is that the money you pay into it isn't yours and doesn't affect what you get in the end, only your work years fed into some chart determine that. The taxes go directly to current payouts as it would be in a literal ponzi scheme.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#68

Post by TheCowboy »

pm90 wrote: post #24

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…

I really wish posters on HN would be forced to specify who they are talking about when they say "the elites" because it's often so vague as to be meaningless grandstanding and allows people to engage in goalpost shifting.

No one can even have a meaningful interaction with this comment. It's also trivial to come up with 'elites' who were not okay with mass death and debilitation.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#69

Post by philosopher1234 »

nicodjimenez wrote: post #20

The only real alternative to growth is decline and eventually death. This is true for companies, individuals, and even countries. I say our obsession with _not_ growing must end!

Where do you see an obsession with not growing in the world? Some rhetoric? Because there are a fuck ton of actions and power on the side of increasing gdp at all costs.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#70

Post by [deleted] »

newsclues wrote: post #6
slt2021 wrote: post #5

Without 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?

[deleted]
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