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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

#81

Post by Barrin92 »

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…

>The pandemic made it clear that elites are ok with mass death and debilitation

I don't know what elites you have in mind but the average Spring Break attendee seemed to be significantly more okay with an uncontrolled pandemic than Bill Gates

the few members of the political elite who were okay with it usually happened to be put in their positions of power by the not-so-very-elite section of our democratic electorate.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#82

Post by uhuruity »

As someone with a graduate degree in economics: often when people think about 'growth' in a negative light, they're imagining an ever increasing use of resources to produce more output. But the desirable type of growth (in the economic discipline) is generally Total Factor Productivity growth: (very) roughly speaking, being able to produce more output with the same input. This is basically akin to technological progress. As a forum of tech aficionados, I cannot see how this would repel anyone here?

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#84

Post by aaomidi »

TheCowboy wrote: post #68
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.

There isn’t a single person though. How about the ones that are actively wanting wage labor to keep going so they can keep getting richer?

I do legitimately wonder, after you’ve earned your first few hundred million, why tf do you keep going.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#85

Post by TheCowboy »

mongol wrote: post #37
photochemsyn wrote: post #21

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…

I also don't understand how they take into account innovation. A carrot was a carrot 1000 years ago, and is a carrot today. While the production of carrots certainly have increased manyfold between then and now, we also have innovations whose value we can't quantify in numbers but certainly are indicators of growth. What is the value of toothpaste compared with no toothpaste, and how much growth did the invention of…

It's not really as bad as you think within the field of economics. If you were to major in economics, you would be taught that there is no single or multiple perfect measures of growth or innovation. It's important to have multiple metrics, understand their pros and cons. It's also important to have active research advancing the current state of understanding and not believe everything is settled theory.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#86

Post by mrharrison »

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 don't think it's obvious. Growth and innovation go hand and hand. A tug of war between capitalism and socialism is essential for a healthy society that can solve exciting problems via markets. It's not perfect, but the growth model keeps society agile, with many options via startups and market competition. It gives us the toolbelt to solve complex problems quickly. It's challenging to start up industries and maintain the plumbing to combat world problems when we have non-innovative, non-incentivized markets. It's apparent that I'm rattling off some generalizations.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#87

Post by gryn »

ekkeke wrote: post #71

Can someone explain to me why we can't keep growing until the death of the sun? Growth doesn't mean more materials or natural resources necessarily, a microprocessor uses some of the cheapest and most abundant materials and uses less of them now than before. Why might we not continue to find new designs and discoveries that allow us to make ever more efficient and complex objexts, that in turn are worth continually m…

sure the end result (microprocessor) don't use too much resources, but the process that produces it does. you can keep improving but a point you reach physical and economist limit that you just can't outrun.

the second thing economist usually talk about a growth in profit, and that can't always go up.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#88

Post by moffkalast »

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!

Well there is another option: finding a balance and keeping it.

There's nothing wrong with keeping a replacement level population and producing enough goods for everyone, instead of trying to achieve some kind of maximum output while destroying the landscape around as quickly as possible. Doesn't mean improvements can't be made to quality of life despite that.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#89

Post by dan-robertson »

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…

The typical counter-argument to complaints about the impossibility of endless growth is that growth/gdp are usually sufficiently vaguely defined that it is possible to go on forever – there isn’t any fundamental relationship between growth and resource use.

I don’t really understand your last paragraph; it feels to me like it is written from a very American perspective. There seem to exist countries that achieve economic growth while having sane healthcare, childcare, etc, and it feels clear to me that U.S. issues are more related to the current local optimum the political system has come to rest in than to some obsession with growth. So what is the argument here about growth? Is it that the other countries don’t actually have growth or that they don’t actually provide stability on social issues or what?

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