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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

#271

Post by arisAlexis »

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…

It's a red flag when there are adjectives such as pioneering in the title

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#272

Post by pawsforthought »

kareemsabri wrote: post #225
chii wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone who writes software is creating wealth. this wealth is built on top of a foundation of mineral wealth. Merely ideas isn't useful if not implemented, and to implement an idea requires said mineral wealth.

The point is that society has decoupled wealth creation from mineral extraction to a large degree. This has documented by other economists / historians as "bullshit jobs" / "useless jobs". People sending emails all day or influencers obviously depend on mineral extraction to exist, but the direct inputs to their wealth creation are not minerals. You can "implement ideas" with a relatively small footprint.

> The point is that society has decoupled wealth creation from mineral extraction to a large degree.

Have we really though, or is the coupling just obscured to the point of near invisibility?

Take software development. In a bounded context, a solo developer’s continued output of software looks quite clearly decoupled from material inputs. They may work essentially indefinitely, producing new wealth, powered only by renewable energy.

Step out of the bubble of the thought experiment, though, to look at the software development industry more broadly, and what do we see? A vast churn of new computing equipment in pockets, offices, unseen data centers, and embedded at every possible scale in between, with layer upon layer of software abstraction that chews up most of the increases in computing power anyhow.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#273

Post by ETH_start »

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.

That is not true. When you exclude housing, capital's share of national income has slightly decreased over the last century (see Figure 3):

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2015a_r...

Non-housing capital grows primarily through greater automation.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#274

Post by bamboozled »

nostromo wrote: post #130

Ok, but... You better get used to higher taxes when you're of working age. And you better get used to reduced Social Security payments. Because these things rely on growth. You better get used to a flat stock market. If you want to live off your investments when you're old -- you're going to have to save a whole lot more. Growth helps governments inflate away their (very large) debts. In a static economy, this won't…

You're acting like all human history was crap until we created endless growth, but it wasn't. So I don't think you're right.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#275

Post by layoric »

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.

Agreed, except in the current economy they would always go with the highest pricing they can get away with. Capitalism promised “efficiency” with regard to use of resources by always throwing a market mechanism at a problem and assuming the best. In reality, companies realized they could profit a lot more if rules were written in their favour and buying lobbyists/politicians was a bargain. So what “the markets” found was a way to maximise externalities to keep as much profit for themselves as they could (like always). And sadly this obsession for growth and wealth will lead to so much suffering due to all those externalities, especially related to the acceleration the stable climate breakdown.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#276

Post by mola »

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…

How are self driving cars growth drivers? What do they enable?

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#277

Post by ElevenLathe »

chii wrote: post #264
jjoonathan wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the theory. It's different in practice. Ok, suppose a new frontier has opened up. Maybe it's geographic, maybe a gold rush, maybe a technological revolution -- but in any case, there are lots of opportunities to forego consumption today in order to create greater value tomorrow. Stuff has to be built! Investment has value. We should want to encourage it and reward it, because everybody wins. Great! So what's t…

> You invent other ways of getting payed for being rich. so what's this other way that's been implied, but never actually explicitly explained? Lots of investors accept low returns now - that's _why_ prices are expensive. Unless you're talking about the corruption in countries like russia, where resources and power are usurped, rather than created.

Presumably grandparent means QE, ZIRP and the whole range of other easy money policies that inflate the money supply but give investment banks, and the financial industry generally, first crack at the new money. This is definitely a way in which "just being rich" gets you access to policy-defined ways of making money basically risklessly.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#278

Post by v-erne »

ekianjo wrote: post #247
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…

> The question is, on what timescale do we hit the limits of mineral resources? we are just scratching the surface of the Earth currently. Then there's the oceans. Then there's asteroids. Then there's other planets. Only a failure of imagination can lead to scarcity mindset.

Imagination is not reality. Reality have constraints that can be so complex that can be really hard to imagine. This is why we run simulations on computers when it comes to lets say weather and not do thought experiments only.

I can even give a real life example here. I am from Poland. And at this moment we are facing a coal shortage (which will cause energetic crisis in the winter) while sitting at the same time atop one of the largest coal deposits in the world. No one could imagine this as a possibility a mere year ago.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#280

Post by moffkalast »

int_19h wrote: post #187
moffkalast wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not if you have nukes.
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