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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

#191

Post by tbskm »

marcell wrote: post #127

Author's premise is wrong. Once growth ends, the pie isn't growing. Pie not growing means the focus becomes dividing the pie. Dividing the pie means endless infighting, politics, and anger in a society. This may work in certain societies, but it will never work in America. Second, a growth-oriented society will naturally outgrow and overtake a non-growth oriented society, by definition. Societies choosing low growth…

Is America not already there? Living in the southeast I literally see people in Home Depot buying garden tools wearing Proud Boys shirts. Every week brings a new mass shooting, several states equate the abortion of a 10-year-old rape victim with homicide, and the Texas GOP is now officially trying to abolish the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Yet America is one of the most rabidly pro-growth nations in the world.

Elon Musk is a billionaire, who cares about his opinion on anything but making money? There are academic fields full of people who investigate the myriad problems of American (and, more generally, capitalist) societies. To ignore them all simply because you think entrepreneurs are “punk rock” is entirely unscientific. Of course Elon wants growth, his entire life is dedicated to it and he serves to gain the most if it occurs, regardless of its consequences for everyone else.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#192

Post by int_19h »

throw8383833jj wrote: post #139
bko wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mas…

> you'll find huge swaths of the voting population that agree with what's going on

Did those huge swaths of the voting population that agree existed before the issue became political, or did they spring up after?

To see what I mean, look at abortion. Anti-abortion stance was not common for evangelicals until 1980s; if anything, most of them saw it as some kind of crypto-Catholicism. The rapid swing in public opinion was manufactured. It doesn't make those voters any less real, of course - but the point is that those votes don't guide policy in this model, they're merely a stick to beat your opponents with.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#193

Post by abeppu »

moffkalast wrote: post #88
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.

Or to be a little picky, I think in describing long-run behavior are 3 options:

- diverge to infinity (limitless growth)

- converge to a finite value (perhaps zero)

- oscillate

The accepted dogma today seems to be that we can aim at limitless growth, but that actors like central banks tug at stuff to keep the rate of growth mildly positive most of the time. If one believes we're smart enough to self-regulate to generally growing but dampening our boom/bust cycle, shouldn't we also be able to regulate total consumption to be within some healthy-ish bounds?

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#194

Post by wahnfrieden »

mc32 wrote: post #76
whimsicalism wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to elaborate?

I think they aim to say that ancients weren't dumb dullards. Which I don't think people are saying they were so. We're saying that to get where we are took as long as it took humanity to get where we are (Outside of some fabulous thinking that there existed "modern" historical societies that disappeared). When Hobbes said life would be 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short' he was referring to life outside of th…

speaking more to the progress part

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#195

Post by bequanna »

gsatic wrote: post #91
bequanna wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If growth becomes a zero sum game as “Economists” like this one would like, you better hope you live in country with a defense budget>0

What he is encouraging you to do is ask yourself what you want the Ultimate End to be? You can't design anything new if the mentality is we can't change.

I don’t follow you. Change what exactly? The fact that we will fight each other for scare resources?

That is built into us, I am afraid.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#196

Post by throw8383833jj »

bko wrote: post #180
throw8383833jj wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mas…

I don't know. There are some huge disconnects between what you see in media and popular opinion. Consider newspaper endorsements of the former guy. There was 10. One was the National Enquirer, another was owned by his son in law, and another is the official newspaper of the KKK. This was a candidate that ended up winning the election (although lost popular vote, but not by that much). There's a big disconnect if 99%…

50% is still a LOT of people. the point is, It's not like policy decisions are made in favor of like less than 5% of the population.

Just as a crazy example, here in CA shelter is one of the biggest issues. I was shocked to discover that local politicians were bragging about how much housing development they were blocking. that tells you nearly half or more of the population is in support of that.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#197

Post by pyuser583 »

Aperocky wrote: post #188
pyuser583 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ok … I’ll bite … how far away are we?

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#199

Post by Animats »

Wikipedia's article on Herman Daly is far more useful.

This NYT writer is from the fluff department, the part that cranks out "lifestyle" sections and clickbait, not the news side.

Wikipedia: "Daly argues that nature has provided basically two sources of wealth at man's disposal, namely a stock of terrestrial mineral resources and a flow of solar energy. An 'asymmetry' between these two sources of wealth exist in that we may — within some practical limits — extract the mineral stock at a rate of our own choosing (that is, rapidly), whereas the flow of solar energy is reaching earth at a rate beyond human control. Since the Sun will continue to shine on earth at a fixed rate for billions of years to come, it is the terrestrial mineral stock — and not the Sun — that constitutes the crucial scarcity factor regarding man's economic future."

"In Daly's view, ... it is believed that the price mechanism and technological development (however defined) is capable of overcoming any scarcity ever to be faced on earth. ... There is such a thing as absolute scarcity, and there is such a thing as purely relative and trivial wants"."

That sums up his position.

He's right, of course. The question is, on what timescale do we hit the limits of mineral resources? Tens of years? Hundreds of years? Thousands of years? The US Geological Survey tracks this for each commercially useful mineral.[3] It's worth reading.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Daly

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady-state_economy

[3] https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-c...

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#200

Post by bequanna »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #45
bequanna wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are nowhere near exhausting the resources we have available. We are also nowhere near optimal efficiency when using resources.

the externalities of resource use are arguably reaching catastrophic tipping points that will hit before depletion is an immediate concern

> catastrophic tipping point

This is pretty funny as people have been calling for some kind of human-caused apocalypse since forever.

It must be human nature for some to believe such things. To see ourselves as inherently sinful, wicked, separate from nature and deserving of punishment.

Climate alarmism has become a religion of sorts for many. Giving them maybe something to believe, maybe some purpose. At least something to talk about.

There are countless other religious sects that also believe judgement day is “right around the corner”.

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