Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth? • Hacker News Board

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#221

Post by BlueTemplar » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

rtkwe wrote: post #154

luckylion wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An example would be to remove the $50b per year water subsidies for the beef industry, and make consumers pay for the approximately 4000 gallons of water required to produce a pound of meat in the grocery store. Isn't that a fancy way of saying "eating meat should be a privilege for the wealthy"? The point of mass production isn't just that it's produced in masses, it's also about being affordable by the masses. Al…

> Isn't that a fancy way of saying "eating meat should be a privilege for the wealthy"? Kind of, it's a problem of externalized costs beef is only really cheap because the environmental toll of feeding and housing them isn't felt by the purchaser. If the same food and water required to make your steak would be used to feed people directly there would be much less food insecurity in the world for example. Meat is deci…

Lol, more like the majority of hackernews readers is likely to be in the top 1% :

> $32,400 annual income

OR

> $770,000 in net worth

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/05061...

(Also, I've heard that having at least 1 year of college (or other form of superior education?) meant that one was in the top 1% of world most "educated", but haven't found any sources that would confirm/infirm that...)

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#222

Post by mark_l_watson » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 5:08 PM UTC

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #210

airstrike wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This view ignores the insurmountable truth that humans want more, and if that means their neighbors get less, so be it. I'm not saying it should our shouldn't be like this, just that it is. You're thinking collectively while your neighbor defects and thinks about themselves first.

You can have more than other people without tangibly owning more. Books like The Millionaire Next Door cover this. These millionaires don't own more physical resources, but have brokerage accounts that aren't subject to conspicuous consumption. They may also own a home or car, but it's not a mansion or anything more than a standard commuter vehicle.

I read the book The Millionaire Next Door over a decade ago. It changed my views on properly handling wealth/assets. Collecting wealth to impress other people is a loser move, but all too common.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#223

Post by 0xffff2 » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

dTal wrote: post #113

slumdev wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Earth being embedded in a vast ocean of resource This reads like prosperity gospel and law of attraction nonsense rolled together and repackaged for a technical audience. A kilogram of anything from space is orders of magnitude more expensive to acquire than a kilogram on Earth. No technology will change that within my lifetime. If there are no physics-redefining advances in nuclear fusion and/or nuclear fission, m…

>A kilogram of anything from space is orders of magnitude more expensive to acquire than a kilogram on Earth. This is true, if you are on Earth and wish to remain there. If you are in space already, and don't have deal with pesky things like gravity and friction, it could conceivably be way easier to chip a lump of metal off an asteroid and hurl it in the general direction of where it needs to be, than to dig it up a…

> It's a bit chicken and egg, but it's easy to imagine a scenario where off-world becomes the new Shenzen.

So easy to imagine that we've been doing so for 40 years [0]. In fact, the basic technology seems to have been in place for 40 years as well, but no economic incentive to execute on these grand plans for permanent human habitation in space has yet been found. Furthermore, I have yet to see any evidence that such incentive will ever be found.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Frontier:_Human_Colon...

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#224

Post by BlueTemplar » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 5:12 PM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #212

ryanmercer wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Isn't that a fancy way of saying "eating meat should be a privilege for the wealthy"? It absolutely should. https://newrepublic.com/article/120915/american-west-drought... - 90% of of Nevada's cropland is used for hay, 90% of Montana's, 60% of Utah's - 50% of California's water usage goes to livestock feed Etc etc. This is unsustainable, period. This is causing groundwater depletion (and has for decades) that will t…

> Meat is a luxury man. A luxury. Next up "plants are a luxury, the poor can eat processed insect protein, it's fine and contains all the nutrition they need". I don't have a problem with "let's eat less meat", I just don't like the thinly veiled "fuck the average people, they shouldn't eat meat while I and my buddies will continue to do so thanks to our lavish income".

Processed insect protein might actually be a nice way to replace most of the meat ? (Tried some dried insects recently, taste like meat dust.)

Anyway, this "fuck the average people, they shouldn't [do X] while I and my buddies will continue to do so thanks to our lavish income" goes for anything really... Ideally, public shaming should be enough - though it often isn't. (At least Al Gore political career didn't work out !)

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#225

Post by mark_l_watson » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 5:12 PM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #163

rtkwe wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't that a fancy way of saying "eating meat should be a privilege for the wealthy"? Kind of, it's a problem of externalized costs beef is only really cheap because the environmental toll of feeding and housing them isn't felt by the purchaser. If the same food and water required to make your steak would be used to feed people directly there would be much less food insecurity in the world for example. Meat is deci…

> Also consider that by being on the internet presumably with some higher education the majority of hackernews readers are already in the to 25-50% of global wealth. I don't mind the idea of not eating meat, I eat meat maybe three times a year and I wouldn't mind not doing that, it's more of a habit of family members to have it on Christmas, not something I care for. I'm kind of allergic to this "we must save the pla…

I am mostly with you. It is not as much about at a large scale supporting the poor (locally, I donate my time to our local food bank) but being a nation of laws that are fairly applied to corporations, rich, middle class, and poor. Our political and legal frameworks really leave a lot of room for improvement!

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#226

Post by BlueTemplar » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 5:17 PM UTC

paulintrognon wrote: post #80

novalis78 wrote: post #33

It’s fascinating how the reality of Earth being embedded in a vast ocean of resource is completely lost on so many. Human ingenuity is key. With every step we unlock another level of resource utilization driving prosperity. If anything social organization and financial frameworks need to support the unfolding of our technology tree. As humanity we just woke up. Enlightenment now.

> Human ingenuity is key That's a bet that many of us are not willing to take. Sure, you can imagine that a future technology we haven't thought of yet will save growth, but I think it's very important to think about scenarios when that won't happen. Are we really wanting to bet humanity's future on just "technology"? If you read Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed[1], you'll realize that socities that…

Yeah, and one key issue seems to be how "technological progress" is associated with "anything that uses ever more resources" or these days "anything that has a computer inside, even though there's no good reason that the user would need it".

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#227

Post by novalis78 » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

lcam84 wrote: post #89

novalis78 wrote: post #33

It’s fascinating how the reality of Earth being embedded in a vast ocean of resource is completely lost on so many. Human ingenuity is key. With every step we unlock another level of resource utilization driving prosperity. If anything social organization and financial frameworks need to support the unfolding of our technology tree. As humanity we just woke up. Enlightenment now.

Most of human ingenuity is based on the consumption of cheap finite resources. Every time we had new tecnologies it results in more consuption of resources. We need to listen what the science is telling us for 40 years now with the report from the club of rome "limits of growth", and slow down our consuption levels. Apply new techonologies as an excuse to keep growth (green growth) will accelerate the degradation of…

I can’t emphasize enough to check out Dr Robert Zubrin’s work, founder of the Mars Society. In this particular context his book ‘Merchants of despair’ a great resource on Antihumanism of the Malthusian flavor.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#228

Post by pas » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 5:24 PM UTC

paulintrognon wrote: post #101

mjburgess wrote: post #46

As far as I can tell this is just a misunderstanding of "growth" in an economic sense. Growth is the result of improvements in productivity, which tend to reduce energy use (per item produced). We consume more energy net because we produce more. If, eg., products became more expensive because of limited energy (or relevant taxing of externalities) then we would grow more slowly -- we can still produce more through in…

Empirically, economic growth has always been related to consumption of energy and raw materials. One explanation is the Rebound effect[1] Maybe theorically they can be decoupled, but we have yet to see that in the real world. More about it: https://eeb.org/library/decoupling-debunked/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebound_effect_(conservation)

There is a lot of raw materials and energy. The problem is how clean we can do extraction and energy generation. So it's not surprising that we are still very much tracking both correlates.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#229

Post by BlueTemplar » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 5:27 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #73

novalis78 wrote: post #33

It’s fascinating how the reality of Earth being embedded in a vast ocean of resource is completely lost on so many. Human ingenuity is key. With every step we unlock another level of resource utilization driving prosperity. If anything social organization and financial frameworks need to support the unfolding of our technology tree. As humanity we just woke up. Enlightenment now.

Embedded in a vast ocean of mostly unattainable resources, pipe dreams of "conquering the universe" aside.

Embedded in a vast ocean of resources that are harder and harder to extract : http://euanmearns.com/eroei-for-beginners/

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#230

Post by baq » Tue, Feb 04, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

andersonvieira wrote: post #99

coldtea wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So yes, unless you arbitrarily limit the entire globe to some level of prosperity like a novel about a disutopian world ruled by an evil anti-science theocracy, I don't see much evil to that (limiting the "the entire globe to some level of prosperity"). Nor it has anything to do with being anti-science. You could be pro-science (pro understanding the world, physics, math, etc), and against continuous growth. Better…

You probably live a comfortable life and is mostly satisfied with what you have so you see no need for more growth. Now imagine someone had the means to implement this same idea 200 years ago. We probably wouldn't have water and sewage treatment, fast transportation, modern medicine, electric light and all the appliances that come with it, internet, etc. I find it disingenuous to dismiss all these as trinkets. This w…

limits of physics are well known and not about to change in 2, 200 or 20000 years. the current growth trajectory puts us at boiling oceans in about half of a millennium, assuming economic growth is correlated with energy consumption. remember all energy eventually ends up as heat and Earth can't radiate heat away fast enough if we grow too much.

technology also won't save us - we are within 2x of theoretical limits in plenty of technologies, e.g. internal combustion engines for cars, and large turbines for electricity generation are way closer.