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The Case for Degrowth

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Re: The Case for Degrowth

#321

Post by WalterBright »

have_faith wrote: post #220
WalterBright wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The free market produces goods and services at less cost for everything else, why would health care be any different?

It's not an either-or situation. In the UK we have a socialised health care system with a private health care system available to those that want it. I guess it's a question of how much you care about the plight of people at the bottom of society and how much you see it as a sort of civic duty to increase their access to high quality health care regardless of their life outcomes (low income). I'm lucky that I don't r…

Free health care is very, very expensive.

Re: The Case for Degrowth

#322

Post by WalterBright »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #318
WalterBright wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is economics different from the 1960s?

I was alluding to the progress in medical tech, and the corresponding rise in the cost of specialised medical equipment. While we developed fancy tools like accurate MRI machines that let us treat patients better, they also cost more to buy. My intuition tells me that in the 1960s, treating people was cheaper because we just didn't have any machinery to spend more money on.

Read the article, where Lasik surgery got cheaper and cheaper while MRIs got more and more expensive.

Re: The Case for Degrowth

#323

Post by Kbelicius »

WalterBright wrote: post #284
Kbelicius wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe because often when you need it you can't take the time to shop around like you can with TV and cars.

Very little of health care is delivered through a trip to the emergency room.

Research suggest that nearly half is delivered by emergency departments. So even if it was half of that, your statement would still be an outright lie. What is your source that it is very little?

Re: The Case for Degrowth

#324

Post by dredmorbius »

asabjorn wrote: post #316
dredmorbius wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32421641

> 2. Amongst other measures taken, fertiliser and pesticide imports were reduced. Because of financial necessity, not as some "degrowth is good" initiative. In your reuters link seem to contradict your claim: "The dramatic fall in yields follows a decision last April by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to ban all chemical fertilisers in Sri Lanka". It was officially rolled back after protests, but "only a trickle of chem…

As the Vox article you link notes:

According to one estimate, the president’s agrochemical ban was poised to save Sri Lanka the $400 million it was spending yearly on synthetic fertilizer, money it could use toward increasing imports of other goods. But Rajapaksa also argued that chemical fertilizers and pesticides were leading to “adverse health and environmental impacts” and that such industrial farming methods went against the country’s heritage of “sustainable food systems.”

And:

“Sri Lanka started subsidizing fertilizers in the 1960s and we saw that rice yields tripled,” says Saloni Shah, a food and agriculture analyst at the Breakthrough Institute, a US-based environmental nonprofit that advocates for technological solutions.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/7/15/23218969/sri-la...

The goal was cost savings. It proved misled.

But again, the snowballing economic and fiscal crisis prompted the ban, rather than the other way around.

Re: The Case for Degrowth

#325

Post by have_faith »

WalterBright wrote: post #321
have_faith wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not an either-or situation. In the UK we have a socialised health care system with a private health care system available to those that want it. I guess it's a question of how much you care about the plight of people at the bottom of society and how much you see it as a sort of civic duty to increase their access to high quality health care regardless of their life outcomes (low income). I'm lucky that I don't r…

Free health care is very, very expensive.

So? Governments spend obscene amounts of money on all sorts of things, it's just a case of placing it in your list of priorities.

Re: The Case for Degrowth

#326

Post by goodpoint »

satyrnein wrote: post #231
goodpoint wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are confusing two things. Accepting immigrants is the humane thing to do. Perpetuating economic inequality across the world is not. Millions have to choose between working for meager salaries in one place or move to be exploited elsewhere. They are getting the short stick both ways.

Since you are not confused, what policy would you propose?

> Since you are not confused

Nice strawman there.

Re: The Case for Degrowth

#328

Post by actually_a_dog »

pauldenton wrote: post #294
actually_a_dog wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's your answer: because if we continue on our current trajectory, in a mere 30-50 years, we will be experiencing significant effects of societal collapse due to climate change that make the current societal effects of ecological collapse we're experiencing (breakdown of supply chains, erosion of institutions, loss of biodiversity, record high global temperatures, etc. ) seem like "the good old days." I'm talking…

Citation needed

Go do your own research -- and I mean, real, honest research, not "I'm going go confirm my own ideological biases." Don't pretend you're here to be convinced by me. I've seen your post history.

Re: The Case for Degrowth

#329

Post by scythe »

actually_a_dog wrote: post #328
pauldenton wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation needed

Go do your own research -- and I mean, real, honest research, not "I'm going go confirm my own ideological biases." Don't pretend you're here to be convinced by me. I've seen your post history.

>Go do your own research

I'm a physicist. I have friends who actually study climate science, as in, it's their job. I have spend my entire adult life paying attention to the problem. Nobody believes the kind of things you're claiming. There's a simple graph here:

https://climateactiontracker.org/global/temperatures/

It shows that if GHG emissions drop by 2/3 in ten years and disappear in 50, we get a +1.3 C difference in 80 years (2100), whereas "current policies" is a +2.9 C change. When you reduce that to 50 years, it gets narrower; climate change is doubly cumulative (CO2 accumulates, which drives the accumulation of heat). But in practice, we expect to reduce emissions while continuing to grow the economy, thanks to renewables. The actual 50-year difference between shutting off the economy and just building some goddamn solar panels is probably less than half a degree.

I'm not here to "be convinced" by you. I'm here to, hopefully, convince you to stop derailing the debate and making my side look silly. Climate change is a problem. It is a problem that needs to be taken seriously. It is not the end of human development.

Re: The Case for Degrowth

#330

Post by simonebrunozzi »

AstralStorm wrote: post #196
thematrixturtle wrote: post #51

Japan is a living case study of degrowth: GDP has been essentially flat for the past 20 years. The scale below exaggerates small shifts, but it was $4968B in 2000 and $4937B in 2020. https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/gdp On the ground, this has translated into flat or deflating prices (until very recently) and an increasing bifurcation of society into salarymen, with low but stable incomes anchored on jobs-almost-fo…

Thing is, GDP is a lousy measure of growth. Japan is undergoing a contraction and fossilization of its social structure. Interestingly enough, the same is happening slowly in USA and UK, and then after a big space everywhere else. Note the anti-immigration and austerity rhetoric, where what is needed is a major social change, considering of some attempts to level the playing field and prevent the current corporate an…

US and UK hugely benefit from massive immigration. They are going to grow their population, contrary to what is going to happen in most of the western world.

From 2016 to 2060, the US is expected to grow by ~80M people [0], even though a big chunk of that growth (45%) will be for people who are 65 or older.

[0]: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...

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