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Maybe a bit offtopic, but could you elaborate on why you think infinite growth in a finite world is possible? You addressed labor cost, but it is only (the eas

Maybe a bit offtopic, but could you elaborate on why you think infinite growth in a finite world is possible? You addressed labor cost, but it is only (the easiest) one amongst several variables. You have effectively changed Porter's claim into: "... exponential growth can go on forever in an ever expanding world..." where your only concern is how to make economy grow faster than population. Look at your China example. If the root cause of the one-child-policy were a hard biological fact of the human species - i.e. like if women would become sterile after their first successful pregnancy - instead of, well... policy, how would the Chinese government would respondo to the "expensive retirement-age cohort where people are living longer"? Follow the West model and invest in automation whenever feasible? Extend retirement age to 80+? Try to produce a genetically engineered a race of labourers with enhanced chances of having twin (or higher) pregnancies? Gun down the elderly, weak or disabled, and turn them into soylent green? The posibilities are many, but none come without hard tradeoffs and costs, and the ethical dilemas are head spinning.

jobu 11y ago
> Maybe a bit offtopic, but could you elaborate on why you think infinite growth in a finite world is possible? This argument assumes we are restricted to a finite world. There has been significant discussion about mining asteroids recently, and some very talented people are currently working on plans to settle Mars.
jevgeni 11y ago
My problem with the "finite growth" narrative I see often, is the fact that they always assume that growth is strictly a function of natural, material resources. To paint a caricature: they almost seem to say "We had 100 people and 50 ingots of iron and we produced 200 forks and 30 novels. If we'd have 50 people and 25 ingots of iron, we'd only produce 100 forks and 15 novels." Which is retarded. One of the main (if not THE main) factors of growth is scientific progress - something that is mostly immaterial. The whole Internet revolution was made possible using machines that don't exactly run on steam and copious amount of coal. We are constantly learning to make more with less. Until the finite growth theories start incorporating this notion, I will not treat them seriously. The other problem I have with these theories, is that they tend to draw very weird and bolshevist crowd who want to start redistributing wealth, rationing out food, and breeding a "stable population" as soon as possible.
- crpatino 11y ago
  > To paint a caricature: they almost seem to say "We had 100 people and 50 ingots of iron and we produced 200 forks and 30 novels. If we'd have 50 people and 25 ingots of iron, we'd only produce 100 forks and 15 novels." Which is retarded. If you want to beat a strawman, be my guest. You can even get to call it retarded, it wont care. But to follow with your example. If you start with 100 people + 50 ingots of iron -> 200 forks + 30 novels. Then you cut your inputs by half: 1. If you want the magic fairy of science to come and sprinkle its progress dust on the ingots so you can keep the same production as before... I am going be calling you something much more offensive than 'retarded'. Most people around here have firts hand experience of how that kind of paralogic results at the end (ahem, Deathmarch). 2. If you value forks badly enough, you might get to produce maybe 120, not the 100 expected, but neither the 200 demanded. You will be able to do this by cutting on the novel writers and put them to figure out better fork designs and more efficient manufacturing projects. You will end up with like 3 novels instead of the expected 15, but probably 10 out of those were going to be crap anyways, so you did not miss much. The best creatives just have to go and express their creativity regardless of financial gain. 3. If you want to push your luck and build 150+ forks, you will succeed in the short term, but then you will face a fork crisis a few years down the road. You cannot apply infinite brain power to make infinitely better physical stuff. If you have only so much iron ore, and you try to make too many forks out of it, the material will be spread too thin and it will break under tenssion. Now your overworked 99 fork makers (1 recognized novellist, 2 moonlighting authors) will have to design a second process to refurbish the broken, low-quality forks, diverting valuable time and resources from making brand new forks. So, do not dismiss those theories out of hand. You don't have to agree 100% with what they say, but give'em the benefit of doubt and analyse them before making any judgements. The issue with the crowd that hangs around this "finite growth" thing is another matter. I think they do a diservice to the theories they claim to support by crying "Wolf! Wolf!" like in the old fable.
  - jevgeni 11y ago
    Is the strawman the only argument fallacy people on the Internet know? I will not try to out-strawman your strawman, but I will just say, that you've misunderstood my example. You are still focusing on the material output and treating immaterial work as secondary. I was saying, that the total output of the economy is both from physical production and knowledge work. In fact, most of the "first world's" recent growth was knowledge work. Thinking that it grows and shrinks proportionally with only tentatively related inputs is wrong. And secondly, sustainable exponential growth in a finite world is impossible in the long term. This is undebatable. However, we just might push the long term far enough for it to be irrelevant.

jobu 11y ago

> Maybe a bit offtopic, but could you elaborate on why you think infinite growth in a finite world is possible? This argument assumes we are restricted to a finite world. There has been significant discussion about mining asteroids recently, and some very talented people are currently working on plans to settle Mars.

jevgeni 11y ago

My problem with the "finite growth" narrative I see often, is the fact that they always assume that growth is strictly a function of natural, material resources. To paint a caricature: they almost seem to say "We had 100 people and 50 ingots of iron and we produced 200 forks and 30 novels. If we'd have 50 people and 25 ingots of iron, we'd only produce 100 forks and 15 novels." Which is retarded. One of the main (if not THE main) factors of growth is scientific progress - something that is mostly immaterial. The whole Internet revolution was made possible using machines that don't exactly run on steam and copious amount of coal. We are constantly learning to make more with less. Until the finite growth theories start incorporating this notion, I will not treat them seriously. The other problem I have with these theories, is that they tend to draw very weird and bolshevist crowd who want to start redistributing wealth, rationing out food, and breeding a "stable population" as soon as possible.

crpatino 11y ago
> To paint a caricature: they almost seem to say "We had 100 people and 50 ingots of iron and we produced 200 forks and 30 novels. If we'd have 50 people and 25 ingots of iron, we'd only produce 100 forks and 15 novels." Which is retarded. If you want to beat a strawman, be my guest. You can even get to call it retarded, it wont care. But to follow with your example. If you start with 100 people + 50 ingots of iron -> 200 forks + 30 novels. Then you cut your inputs by half: 1. If you want the magic fairy of science to come and sprinkle its progress dust on the ingots so you can keep the same production as before... I am going be calling you something much more offensive than 'retarded'. Most people around here have firts hand experience of how that kind of paralogic results at the end (ahem, Deathmarch). 2. If you value forks badly enough, you might get to produce maybe 120, not the 100 expected, but neither the 200 demanded. You will be able to do this by cutting on the novel writers and put them to figure out better fork designs and more efficient manufacturing projects. You will end up with like 3 novels instead of the expected 15, but probably 10 out of those were going to be crap anyways, so you did not miss much. The best creatives just have to go and express their creativity regardless of financial gain. 3. If you want to push your luck and build 150+ forks, you will succeed in the short term, but then you will face a fork crisis a few years down the road. You cannot apply infinite brain power to make infinitely better physical stuff. If you have only so much iron ore, and you try to make too many forks out of it, the material will be spread too thin and it will break under tenssion. Now your overworked 99 fork makers (1 recognized novellist, 2 moonlighting authors) will have to design a second process to refurbish the broken, low-quality forks, diverting valuable time and resources from making brand new forks. So, do not dismiss those theories out of hand. You don't have to agree 100% with what they say, but give'em the benefit of doubt and analyse them before making any judgements. The issue with the crowd that hangs around this "finite growth" thing is another matter. I think they do a diservice to the theories they claim to support by crying "Wolf! Wolf!" like in the old fable.
- jevgeni 11y ago
  Is the strawman the only argument fallacy people on the Internet know? I will not try to out-strawman your strawman, but I will just say, that you've misunderstood my example. You are still focusing on the material output and treating immaterial work as secondary. I was saying, that the total output of the economy is both from physical production and knowledge work. In fact, most of the "first world's" recent growth was knowledge work. Thinking that it grows and shrinks proportionally with only tentatively related inputs is wrong. And secondly, sustainable exponential growth in a finite world is impossible in the long term. This is undebatable. However, we just might push the long term far enough for it to be irrelevant.