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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

#211

Post by mjevans »

ttgurney wrote: post #17

Reminds me of the well-known quote I always enjoyed, though I never looked much into the context: "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Stein#Quotes

Growth cannot continue forever without either changing the resource landscape (itrasolar / multi-planet / interstellar) OR exhausting resources.

Resource contention... usually wars get fought over that. Sometimes regional, increasingly global, and increasingly against the destruction of the commons. As we see with the rise in energy accumulating in the global weather systems due to changes to the composition of our atmosphere by unchecked industrial side effects and land use in previously ecologically carbon sink regions.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#212

Post by fleddr »

dionidium wrote: post #133
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…

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 l…

That's not how it works at all.

Say a machine gets installed at work that increases productivity by 20%. In a sane system, you could now work 20% less for the same output, a vast improvement in quality of life.

In reality, you might lose your job. Or if you keep it, you'll work the same hours as before. You'll definitely not get a pay increase due to the higher productivity. Meanwhile, cost of living keeps rising.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#213

Post by WalterBright »

Animats wrote: post #199

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 tha…

We're just pond scum on the surface of the planet. The pond hasn't been touched.

Also, minerals are not "used up". They are transformed into different compounds. With energy, they can be transformed into more useful forms.

Besides, he misses the third source of wealth - ideas and information. Anyone who writes software is creating wealth.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#214

Post by asimpletune »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #203
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'm not sure increases in efficiency result in increased GDP. To make that as clear as possible - imagine someone created low priced robots tomorrow that could make all your food, entertain you, build you a house etc etc for the one time fee of $100. They were incredibly efficient, consuming $10 worth of energy every year. GDP would fall off a cliff.

Idk, it seems like one of those things that is hard to predict. Would gdp actually fall off a cliff? There would be a lot of steps that would have to happen along the way. Plus the premise isn’t really rooted in any kind of reality, so it may be a flawed argument to begin with. Just my $0.02

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#215

Post by WalterBright »

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…

> Things like automation, while highly efficient, result in most of the gains going to capital owners.

More goes to society. You don't see it because it is spread thinly. Think of how nice it is to have a microwave, for example. The value of my time saved is far more valuable to me than what I paid for the microwave.

Everything you and I buy we buy because the value of what we are buying is worth more to us than the money we give up to pay for it.

> How society should deal with this is another interesting question.

As I showed, society is getting the long end of the stick already.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#216

Post by uhuruity »

djenendik wrote: post #174
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…

Are you aware of any physical process that operates in that way?

Do you mean, any instance of a technological advancement that has allowed the production of some good or service with less input than would have been required before the advancement? How about computers + the internet? We have access to communications and knowledge access services with input costs far lower than the equivalent services would have cost before these inventions. Or, the invention of the refrigerator? Keeping food cold costs much less than it would have before the fridge was invented.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#217

Post by uhuruity »

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…

I am not making a point on whether workers work harder now than they did before. But at the same time, there are clearly ways in which we have had technological advancements that produce goods and services with less input (where 'input' includes natural resources, human labor, etc) than would have been required before these advancements. I used this example in another reply, but (just off the top of my head) computers + internet have allowed abundant knowledge lookup and communication for far less input cost than the services would have required previously.

Generalizing here, there is 'growth due to making people work harder' and 'growth due to inventing stuff that lets us do new things' and whatever your views are on each of these, I think most anti-growth articles ignore the latter.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#218

Post by tomc1985 »

WalterBright wrote: post #215
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…

> Things like automation, while highly efficient, result in most of the gains going to capital owners. More goes to society. You don't see it because it is spread thinly. Think of how nice it is to have a microwave, for example. The value of my time saved is far more valuable to me than what I paid for the microwave. Everything you and I buy we buy because the value of what we are buying is worth more to us than the…

> More goes to society. You don't see it because it is spread thinly. Think of how nice it is to have a microwave, for example. The value of my time saved is far more valuable to me than what I paid for the microwave.

This was the promise. But all we really have today is cost disease. For every microwave the US also has infrastructural costs that are 10x+ that of other countries and a culture that is being increasingly incentivized to hand over their wealth for short-term, materialistic gains, and goods/services that aren't worth the price being charged.

To say nothing of the fact that in most cases, said microwaves leaves you with lower-quality results concomitant with the time you saved. Which really feels like all of life; we are being sold a bill of plenty that is only paper-thin

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#219

Post by abetusk »

Animats wrote: post #199

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 tha…

Thanks for the links.

I'm still confused though. Is the underlying assumption that the sun's energy being dumped on earth is essentially saturated? That is, "nature" has long since used all the available sun's energy and any energy we use from the sun is effectively taking away from nature?

Doing some back of the envelope calculations, we can estimate that the sun dumps around 700 peta watt hours per day whereas we use roughly on the order of 230 tera watt hours per day. Historically we've been increasing our energy consumption at about 2.5% per year which gives us a rough estimate of 250-350 years before we reach the limits of the available sunlight on earth. [0]

Daly's argument is that the 700 peta Wh/day minus the 230 tera Wh/day is maximally being used by "nature" and we would only be taking away that energy for our own use? If so, doesn't that seem a bit far fetched?

Also, natural resources might be limited on earth but are exist in abundance in space.

[0] https://mechaelephant.com/dev/Energy-Discussion.html

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