Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 299 posts

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#181

Post by abeppu »

I feel like this could have been a lot better if it were more concrete.

What's wrong with wanting GDP growth?

- Consider two families A and B, each with two earners and a small child. The parents of family A both work full time, earning $125k each, and they spend $20k/yr on childcare. The parents of family B each work part time, earn $110k per year each, and together with help from one grandparent are able to care for their small child, and spend more hours together. Family A contributes more to GDP than family B, but are they better off? Or are the benefits of seeing more of their child's early years greater than the difference in income?

- At the onset of a recession, a company forecasts that its business will shrink; they will both need less labor, and need to reduce payroll. They offer to allow their employees to choose to work part time with a prorated decrease in compensation. Employee A and B are initially paid the same. A supports a family and wants to continue working at 100%. B is single, chooses to work at 60% for the next year, and spends the extra time on hobbies and spending more time with friends/family. Is B really "poorer"? Or for the right life circumstances, is working less and enjoying leisure more richer?

- A country grows its GDP over a 40 year period, but increases in the costs of housing, education, and healthcare are much sharper than wage growth. The older generation could feed and house (buy!) a family on a single income. A college student could pay for their housing and education by working part time. The younger generation can work full time at minimum wage and not afford rent on a 1BD apt, and it can take decades to pay for university. Is the country richer?

Never mind the very long term resource and physical limits on growth -- are we already at a point where striving for growth has failed to make most of us better off?

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#182

Post by caramelcustard »

gremlinsinc wrote: post #169
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…

degrowth is a movement currently and a worthy one. Answer this question : How many common things around your house do you use weekly, monthly or maybe a few times per year? How many other houses on the block have the same things? How much waste went into allowing you the comfort of using that when you want. Would it be much less comfortable to have to "check it out" from a neighborhood tool-shed? What about instead o…

So basically: instead of just having what you need, just, like, hope that your neighbour has what you need. Great plan, i also hope that the neighbours are going to always follow me (just in case i'm going to move elsewhere).

"Sure you'd have to logically create 'centers' around town close enough to walk, or have a neighbor maybe deliver if you're elderly or something, but there's convenience in having more options if you don't have a specific tool and only need it once." or just have a garage or a shed for tools.

"Now that you don't need your own tools, lawn mower, 3d printer, printer, atv, weed whacker, you find you could've done without even having a garage, maybe we can start building smaller homes that are cheaper to heat or cool and with less environmental impact." ah yes, the number one reason people get large homes: forget having family or simply enjoying spacious living conditions, i'm storing all of my tools around my house.

"Some sort of share/rental thing maybe for the atv's, and boat/rv storage." Good luck proving that the ding on the ATVs fender was done by your neighbour and not you.

"Commercial kitchens and space for community get together's, I grew up in the 80s and we knew our neighbors back then." Why can't you just invite your neighbours to your house?

"... been conditioned to think we all need to own so much shit, when really we don't..." or perhaps some of us are conditioned to think that we don't need anything, that everything should be rented/lended by a neighbour and basically make your house into a shed because all you do is store tools anyways.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#183

Post by chmod600 »

Maybe it depends on what is growing?

Any helpful new technology, including medicine, is growth. Any advancement of human knowledge is growth. Any durable improvements (pyramids, bridges) are growth. Cultural advancements (art, politics, religion) are growth.

Many of these things are imperfectly represented in GDP growth. GDP also has many other known problems, like calling growth in consumption "growth" without really having a way to determine if it's really a good thing or not.

But we don't want to go to a zero-growth economy where we are just comfortably existing without passing anything to the next generation.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#184

Post by throw_nbvc1234 »

bnralt wrote: post #175
strongpigeon wrote: post #63

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…

I don't know, I read the interview and it honestly wasn't clear what he was saying. He never mentions any particular policy that should be enacted (other than tariffs against other countries that don't follow our lead), and the interviewer doesn't seem interested, opting instead to ask questions about cosmology. It's a bizarre interview. His issue seems to be mostly with overconsumption of resources. But instead of c…

This kind of topic is where podcasts shine, especially if the host is literate on the topic being discussed. Or even the raw transcript of this interview versus the content that ended up being published.

I would be curious how population and demographic changes play into his model of a steady state economy.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#185

Post by colinmhayes »

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…

You’re not even disputing the parents point. More output with the same input doesn’t mean people are working less. It means they’re working the same amount…

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#186

Post by trinovantes »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #124
gsatic wrote: post #7

Decent Ultimate End would be: defense spending world wide=0

Then we'll be sitting ducks for the extra-terrestrial invasion... Really though, good luck getting to that state.

I doubt our human technology will have much effect on any civilization capable of large scale space travel. We would be the equivalent of indigenous people using bows against European muskets and cannons.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#187

Post by int_19h »

moffkalast wrote: post #90
nyolfen wrote: post #18

cool, what happens when a rival doesn't want to stop growing?

You watch them become unable to support themselves when the last square meter is paved, see them slide into poverty and ruin?

They'll invade you in the hopes of using your resources to last for a while longer long before that happens.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#188

Post by Aperocky »

pyuser583 wrote: post #158
Aperocky wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

It is though, you might be making the same mass and energy more efficient on a dollar terms, but there is an upper limit and that upper limit is dictated by entropy. There are only so many things that matters on Earth can do under the current physics. We're not that close but not too far away either.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#189

Post by birksherty »

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…

> Growth doesn't mean more materials or natural resources necessarily

The growth talked about in the board rooms is exactly that. More output of commercial goods, more sell, need more people buying these even if it's unnecessary for better life, popup more kids increase population so that sells will always increase, create more wealth for the already billionaires while keeping the minimum wage lowest possible, consume, consume more and more. Anything less than that is a disaster.

None of the growth ever talkes about the ecological collapse it's creating, never will. It's about quarterly report even if it complete destroys the future of all in next decade.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#190

Post by s1artibartfast »

colinmhayes wrote: post #185
chobeat wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You’re not even disputing the parents point. More output with the same input doesn’t mean people are working less. It means they’re working the same amount…

For more stuff..
Post reply on HN