I'm not sure I understand the "Degrowth" premise. It appears to equate economic expansion with resource consumption or population growth. Economic expansion can lead to resource consumption when consuming that resource is what's valued. If everybody valued less-consumptive products and services where they are currently value more-consumptive products and services, then the resulting increase in variety of good and services would be an expansion to the economy, would it not?
Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?
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Re: Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?
#22What does building end to end even mean? If i go to china and ask a factory work if they know how to produce the semiconductor in the iPhone they’re assembling will they know? If I go to any major city and ask someone to grow me wheat or corn can they do it successfully? Different people specialize in different things. Maybe a fullstack developer is what you're looking for lmao. This isn’t the medieval times the world and the tools we use are complex we’re not making swords anymore even back then then moat blacksmiths didn’t mine for minerals.
Re: Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?
#23I wonder how virtual economies fit into paradigm of infinite economical expansion.
Re: Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?
#24> there's no way of our GDP keeps growing indefinitely while reducing our ecological footprint.
Not necessarily. For exmaple, if I recite a poem to you for a dollar and you sing to me a song for a dollar, GDP increases without changing the ecological footprint.
And even if the ecological footprint per capita is growing, we might be able to reduce the overall ecological footprint in a few decades, when earth's population is declining. It depends on the ratio between the two tendencies.
I am not sure if that will really be the case, but it is a possibility.
Re: Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?
#25> an infinite expansion of the economy is fundamentally contradictory to finite planetary boundaries This is a stupid premise. People illiterate in both physics and economics seem to think that economic growth is bound by the laws of thermodynamics. This is easily proven false by contradiction: Let's say you have a few 2x4s and nails, by rearranging them into a chair you've created economic value. No extra raw materi…
You are excluding human labor, which requires energy, which brings us back to thermodynamics.
Your claim is that growth is bound by the law of thermodynamics because of human labor?
Is your claim that growth in human population is required for economic growth?
Ok, I'll do another proof by contradiction using the chair analogy:
The carpenter uses the materials that would have been used to build 100 chairs to build a boat. That boat is then used to transport goods up and down a river. The economic value of that boat is greater than the 100 chairs but the carpenter has not done more work and they have not used more materials.
If all the human carpenters switch from creating chairs to creating boats you can get economic growth without using more materials or labor.
Re: Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?
#26> an infinite expansion of the economy is fundamentally contradictory to finite planetary boundaries This is a stupid premise. People illiterate in both physics and economics seem to think that economic growth is bound by the laws of thermodynamics. This is easily proven false by contradiction: Let's say you have a few 2x4s and nails, by rearranging them into a chair you've created economic value. No extra raw materi…
It seems rather disingenous to list all the raw materials for making a chair and then claim that because no extra materials were needed (because you listed them all) that infinite growth is possible. Okay, setting aside the question of where you got the planks and nails - you've made the chair. Now what? That's not "growth", that's a chair. You can make it once. Maybe you can recycle it into something more valuable - modern art, say. Great! How many times can you pull that trick? Eventually you'll reach the economically optimum configuration for those planks of wood. Then what? Eventually, if you want to sustain infinite growth, you're gonna need to make a second chair.
Re: Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?
#27I'm not sure I understand the "Degrowth" premise. It appears to equate economic expansion with resource consumption or population growth. Economic expansion can lead to resource consumption when consuming that resource is what's valued. If everybody valued less-consumptive products and services where they are currently value more-consumptive products and services, then the resulting increase in variety of good and se…
Every person requires a set number of resources per day in order to survive. This number hasn't changed for centuries and in industrial societies it can be equated with the consumption of energy (food and electricity). Degrowth philosophies require either fewer people or more efficient utilization of existing resources. Degrowth does not say anything about economic activity, it is fundamentally a higher level perspective about limits of bounded dynamical systems like Earth's biosphere.
Re: Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't call the changes "smaller". Climate change is an existential threat. Possibly the greatest one we've ever faced, certainly the greatest since WWII and so far we're definitely NOT rising to the occasion.
To quote the Instapundit: "I'll believe it's a crisis when the people telling me it's a crisis start acting like it's a crisis." There seems a pile of circumstantial evidence that the rotating series of crises may merely be a device for controlling the masses through fear.
"There seems a pile of circumstantial evidence that the rotating series of crises may merely be a device for controlling the masses through fear."
And who is doing the controlling? Wouldn't it be easier to control people if they are happy and content, given that in human history revolutions were almost always a product of suffering and unhappiness?
Isn't it much more likely that the many crises we perceive are a product of imperfect human perception and the enormous development of mass media instead of an enormous conspiracy theory?
Re: Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?
#29We're in a period of really bad leadership of the major world powers. It's like the runup to WWI, which was probably peak stupid.
Technically, things are looking pretty good. Energy is a problem only in the near term. Solar, wind, and batteries are so cheap that massive deployment is happening for purely economic reasons. Population is leveling off. Computing is in good shape.
Re: Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?
#30[deleted]