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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

#151

Post by meheleventyone »

dionidium wrote: post #129
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…

> Honestly I think this is obvious to anyone who is not financially motivated to think otherwise. The problem here is that there's no grand conspiracy to pursue growth. People make the individual decision to pursue growth because of the individual benefits.

But the point is that this privileges a small percentage of the population with outsized political sway so the net effect is the same. People acting in their own interests doesn’t make the end result objectively correct or stop us rethinking incentives.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#152

Post by [deleted] »

[deleted] wrote: post #146
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…

[deleted]

[deleted]

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#153

Post by throwaway787544 »

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…

> And there's almost nothing to do about it- that's the way things currently "work" and it seems insurmountable to do anything about it.

A small handful of the super-rich have already pointed out the only thing "we" can do about it: revolution. Inequality that continues for too long leads to overthrow. The rich get eaten, the poor become a rabble, monarchy/autocracy/totalitarianism eventually returns, and the cycle starts over. That's where we're headed. The funny thing is, our social ills might be the cause before our economic ones are.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#154

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#155

Post by [deleted] »

oneoff786 wrote: post #48
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…

What about the lockdowns, mandates, eviction moratoriums, handouts, and mass vaccination campaigns?

[deleted]

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#156

Post by mc32 »

pyuser583 wrote: post #135
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…

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?

I think we can separate innovation from growth.

I think we can agree that we have resource limitations (whether it be livable space or ploughable land).

Modern economies work on the premise of growing markets. Whether creating new markets or taking over old markets. With a steady state or shrinking population, you can value add and you can innovate, but there are no new "China market(s)" to expand into. If growth were not fundamental, then companies would not look to expand beyond their borders (whether local, regional, national or international).

How would companies in modern economies survive if they should predict shrinking markets? Consumerism buys you some time (you need the iPhone umpteenth), at some point a hammer is good enough --with corner-case exceptions.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#157

Post by dang »

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…

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32143991.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#158

Post by pyuser583 »

Aperocky wrote: post #147
pyuser583 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> What it is the barrier to perpetual innovation? Physics and humans shortsightedness. There are limited resources on Earth and by the looks of it we're stuck here for the long haul.

What about physics prevents perpetual economic growth?

Economic growth isn’t dependent on a certain amount of mass, energy, or entropy.

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