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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

#131

Post by smeeth »

philosopher1234 wrote: post #58
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

Well I didn't think I needed to spell it out since he spends most of the interview explicitly stating my second and third points.

But if I must:

- Daly points out that GDP growth != welfare growth. In fact, growing GDP has negative externalities that might decrease aggregate welfare. By reducing GDP growth in wealthy countries he argues we might open up resources for developing economies to grow. This reduces to something like: Daly thinks GDP growth is worth it in poor places but thinks the costs associated with GDP growth in rich economies outweigh the benefits. This is my second point explicitly: he wants growth, but only the type he likes and not the type he doesn't.

- Daly talks about richer countries needing to make "ecological room" for poor countries to grow. What he means is that the growth of richer countries requires the use of natural resources that could otherwise be used to fill the more basic needs of poorer countries. Weird zero sum-ism aside, this is essentially my third point, that we can redistribute wealth/outputs (technically inputs, but let's not split hairs) to reach a state of stable global contentment.

I have no way of knowing if your statement was entirely rhetorical or not, but indeed, I have both benefitted significantly from our imperfect status quo and I wish for something like it to continue.

Over a billion humans have been lifted from extreme poverty since 1990 [0]. I like that. I want more of that. Thats not to say I would like for our system to remain totally unchanged, however. You and I probably agree on a lot.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#132

Post by mrob »

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…

>What is the value of toothpaste compared with no toothpaste

As best I can tell, very little. It might have some value as a fluoride delivery system, but:

"The cumulative evidence for this systematic review demonstrates that there is moderate certainty that toothbrushing with a dentifrice does not provide an added effect for the mechanical removal of dental plaque."

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27513809/

I haven't used toothpaste for about a decade. I find brushing with plain water to be highly effective, and I drink a lot of tea so I don't think I need any additional fluoride. I think the most underrated factor is toothbrush wear; a fresh toothbrush leaves my teeth feeling noticeably cleaner with the same effort compared to a worn toothbrush.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#133

Post by dionidium »

chobeat wrote: post #123
uhuruity wrote: post #82

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 progr…

under capitalism, this simply doesn't happen. More efficiency due to automation or other factors always result in constant hours worked, resources exploited more efficiently, humans squeezed harder and less worker's autonomy. Any reduction in the work time was won by unions and as soon as they were destroyed, we got stuck with the 40 hours workweek. Your narrative worked maybe one century ago: now the world is on fuc…

This pretty clearly isn't true. You could simply work fewer hours and live a 1920s lifestyle, if that's what you want. You won't have good healthcare (neither did people in 1920), you probably won't go to college (just like most people in 1920), you won't be able to buy lots of fancy and complicated consumer goods (exactly like people in 1920), you won't own a laptop (just like every single human being in 1920), or live in an apartment with AC (like almost everyone in 1920), and you won't drive a car (like the average person in 1920), or own a lot of nice clothes (like most people in 1920) and so on and so on.

This option is available to you and to everyone else, but hardly anybody chooses it. People pursue full-time employment because of all the enormous benefits, but absolutely nobody is making you do it.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#134

Post by nostromo »

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…

Retiring off of investment into the economy in return for a piece of the growth is a very happy situation for everyone involved. Companies get access to capital. Retirees get money to live off of. Capital is allocated to those who can make the most value in return.

Retiring off of pensions is a zero sum game. Companies charge more to pay pensioners. Customers don't get any additional value, they just pay higher costs for the same goods and services. Owners get lower returns from the company. Retirees are stuck on fixed income, which is devastating during an inflationary period.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#135

Post by pyuser583 »

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…

Why can’t we have economic growth forever? Economic growth is fueled largely by innovation. What it is the barrier to perpetual innovation?

Will Apple say “Sorry, no more new iPhone versions. All out of ideas?” And all their competitors agree?

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#136

Post by spicymaki »

TheCowboy wrote: post #98
aaomidi wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We are likely considered 'the elites' by wage labor. Even though neither one of us have made a hundred million. There exist many working class people who wanted to get back to normal (polling demonstrates this), or at the very least wanted policies that tried to keep schools open. They also believe the things you're saying make you one of the elites. It's also easier for 'established elites' to want perpetual work-fr…

When looking at class we would be called the archaic term bourgeoisie. We can live comfortably and buy things we want, but are not part of the elites (noblesse) who have privileges and influence beyond money. We should define new terms to clarify the class strata.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#137

Post by caramelcustard »

orwin wrote: post #125
caramelcustard wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The latest government data show that in 2018, the top 1% of income earners—those who earned more than $540,000—earned 21% of all U.S. income while paying 40% of all federal income taxes. The top 10% earned 48% of the income and paid 71% of federal income taxes." https://www.heritage.org/taxes/commentary/1-chart-how-much-t... Nice of you to imply that only "the rich" can buy/sell assets, especially in a post-Gamestop…

Now, add VAT to income taxes, and change the referential. Top 1% gives back X% of their income as taxes, top10% gives back Y%. If Y>X, you have inequality issues.

"Inequality" in percentage but not the actual revenue. Not sure what is the point of adding VAT though. "The rich" does not pay it i presume, just like "average people" are free of capital gains taxes (lmao).

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#138

Post by turns0ut »

prichino wrote: post #121
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 problem is when a civilization stops providing ways for its inhabitants to keep winning inside of it, the civilization collapses. In Western civilization, if there is no growth, how will you motivate people to keep working? The only thing left is to steal from the people who already have things.

We have two options; intentionally iterate away from this society or it will collapse for SOME reason; bigotry, environment catastrophe…

Physical laws do not give a fuck about our philosophy. Accept figurative death, cowards.

Steal from people who intentionally changed the rules to deflate our wealth. The laws and their interpretation are no accident.

What this debate is is deference to the elderly or the youth.

Tacit ageism against the future or well reasoned action against the past.

Gramps; you had a good run. Bye.

Edit: I have an MSc in elastic structures, used to work in high powered switching equipment. I understand rates of change in high energy systems like a planets climate. This is not an emotional argument from a place of ignorance.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#139

Post by throw8383833jj »

bko wrote: post #120
TheCowboy wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Elite is a loosely formed group of individuals that has a lot of influence on culture and government. There's concentration everywhere you look. For instance there's 6 companies that control almost all of media [0]. There are 10 companies that own nearly all global food products [1]. Look at ETFs and you'll see they own the majority of all stocks (on behalf of others), but they exert a lot of influence on corporate g…

but elite's aren't really the ones calling the shots. Everytime I investigate some political issue, no matter how disgusting or crazy the idea (housing issues, transportation, prop 13, zoning/building regulations, etc, etc), you'll find huge swaths of the voting population that agree with what's going on. Politicians are mainly just responding to voter demand, as it turns out. If anything, the issue is the voting masses. And, it seems to be like that at all levels of government, from federal, to state to city, all way down to my insane HOA (not technically govt I know).

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#140

Post by DoreenMichele »

When your caterpillar morphs into a butterfly, harping on how your butterfly is "failing to thrive according to standard, well-established caterpillar metrics used globally for the past thousand years and certified as super duper accurate for caterpillars by many respected institutions." is basically gibberish that says damn near nothing about the state of the butterfly's actual health for which we have zero established metrics, having never seen one before.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22028732

I will add a quote that was popular in urban planning circles I used to hang in:

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.

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