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In the absence of growth the only way for an individual to get more resources is to take it from someone else. Life becomes a zero-sum game. This is a qualitati

by dmm 11y ago

In the absence of growth the only way for an individual to get more resources is to take it from someone else. Life becomes a zero-sum game. This is a qualitative change. The game stops being who can make the most pie to who can take the most.

collyw 11y ago
Certain people seem to have more than enough to share around. Instead they seem to concentrate on accumulating more of it by (often by taking it from other people).
- haimez 11y ago
  Sounds like you're proposing the zero sum outcome.
  - collyw 11y ago
    No. I see two ways of getting rich in this world. 1:Creating something that lots of people want and increasing the wealth for everyone. 2: Cornering the market and hoarding something that people have a need for. The first benefits everyone. The second makes someone rich at the expense of other.
  - FD3SA 11y ago
    We're already at zero sum when GDP is growing at near zero, a.k.a not growing.
SonicSoul 11y ago
are you sure those are the only 2 options? that's like saying you can't improve your apartment w/out influx of new furniture.
TelmoMenezes 11y ago
Life is already a negative-sum game for the majority of people. The common citizen has to work more and more hours and still gets diminishing returns, while a very small percentage of the population accumulates an increasing chunk of the resources. Zero-sum game would feel like a huge improvement for most.
- FD3SA 11y ago
  > while a very small percentage of the population accumulates an increasing chunk of the resources...without any work. FTFY
cookingrobot 11y ago
It's better when things get cheaper, which is the opposite of growth.
coldtea 11y ago
>In the absence of growth the only way for an individual to get more resources is to take it from someone else. Part of my point is that there are more than enough resources, what's needed is better distribution. Plus some scaling down the over-consumption of crap. Besides this "taking it from someone else" is already the case with the growth model, were not only a tiny fraction of the population has a huge percentage of the world's wealth (debt aside, I know those arguments too), but people can be making $1000 Armani suits for 12 hours a day in the third world just to have the same, or even worse, quality of life as they did before their country was forced into globalization. For centuries the growth depended on plundering the third world, as colonialists, neo-colonialists, slave owners, democrary-bringers etc, plus heavy internal forcing of people (e.g. the rural population) to become factory workers. Now we've come to the point technologically that we don't need all those people anyway -- not even the service industry which we invented as a stop gap to have people employed.
- twoodfin 11y ago
  I don't understand what you're saying. By any reasonable measure, the quality of life of the median human inhabitant of Planet Earth is better than it was 20 years ago, when it was better than it was 20 years before. You probably hit some dips for the World Wars, but if we can avoid any more of those, I don't see why we would want to stop the positive trendline that has accompanied and depends on economic growth.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    >I don't understand what you're saying That's because you use "quality of life" as if it meant purchase power or access to gadgets. And even that's wrong -- people in the 50s could support a family of four/five and get their kids to college with a single office job. Present day middle class, not so much. In fact it has been shown time and again that wages have been stagnating (when corrected for inflation) since the seventies or so.
    - twoodfin 11y ago
      First, there's almost no relevant metric sorting Earthers that would have an American as the median. Second, it is absolutely nuts to suggest the average American citizen was better off in the 1950's. 1950's America still had a substantial amount of truly crippling poverty, it had millions of citizens who had almost no chance at that great office job due to their race or gender, and life expectancy at birth was lower by almost a decade. And yes, that's before you figure the months of salary to buy, say, a refrigerator, that the median wage earner can now afford on a week's pay. A refrigerator, by the way, that will be larger, last longer, and use substantially less energy than the one from 1955. Or the huge growth in sales of air travel, entertainment, dining... luxuries in the 1950's that are commonplace today. Yes, access to cheap credit makes it easy to bid up the prices of scarce resources like slots at good colleges or houses in desirable areas, but the average American isn't paying out of pocket much more for those things as a % of their income than they were 70 years ago. And of course the colleges are much nicer places to live and study than they were, and the houses are bigger and better constructed.
baldfat 11y ago
> The game stops being who can make the most pie to who can take the most Explains the top 1% and the actual drop in slices of pie. The issue we have is we don't even realize in the States that our pie slice is smaller but the amount is slightly larger. So our pie is a few percentage points down but we have $3,000 more so no one notices.
mindslight 11y ago
Growth usually refers to a second derivative, whereas "getting more resources" is a first derivative. If someone produces the same 5 widgets/month for 10 years, their business has not grown yet they've been creating resources the whole time. The two are only equivalent when we assume that income matches expenses (no savings), which is a fundamental problem with the modern economy.
glomph 11y ago
Eat the rich.

by dmm 11y ago

collyw 11y ago

Certain people seem to have more than enough to share around. Instead they seem to concentrate on accumulating more of it by (often by taking it from other people).

haimez 11y ago
Sounds like you're proposing the zero sum outcome.
- collyw 11y ago
  No. I see two ways of getting rich in this world. 1:Creating something that lots of people want and increasing the wealth for everyone. 2: Cornering the market and hoarding something that people have a need for. The first benefits everyone. The second makes someone rich at the expense of other.
- FD3SA 11y ago
  We're already at zero sum when GDP is growing at near zero, a.k.a not growing.

SonicSoul 11y ago

are you sure those are the only 2 options? that's like saying you can't improve your apartment w/out influx of new furniture.

TelmoMenezes 11y ago

Life is already a negative-sum game for the majority of people. The common citizen has to work more and more hours and still gets diminishing returns, while a very small percentage of the population accumulates an increasing chunk of the resources. Zero-sum game would feel like a huge improvement for most.

FD3SA 11y ago
> while a very small percentage of the population accumulates an increasing chunk of the resources...without any work. FTFY

cookingrobot 11y ago

It's better when things get cheaper, which is the opposite of growth.

coldtea 11y ago

>In the absence of growth the only way for an individual to get more resources is to take it from someone else. Part of my point is that there are more than enough resources, what's needed is better distribution. Plus some scaling down the over-consumption of crap. Besides this "taking it from someone else" is already the case with the growth model, were not only a tiny fraction of the population has a huge percentage of the world's wealth (debt aside, I know those arguments too), but people can be making $1000 Armani suits for 12 hours a day in the third world just to have the same, or even worse, quality of life as they did before their country was forced into globalization. For centuries the growth depended on plundering the third world, as colonialists, neo-colonialists, slave owners, democrary-bringers etc, plus heavy internal forcing of people (e.g. the rural population) to become factory workers. Now we've come to the point technologically that we don't need all those people anyway -- not even the service industry which we invented as a stop gap to have people employed.

twoodfin 11y ago
I don't understand what you're saying. By any reasonable measure, the quality of life of the median human inhabitant of Planet Earth is better than it was 20 years ago, when it was better than it was 20 years before. You probably hit some dips for the World Wars, but if we can avoid any more of those, I don't see why we would want to stop the positive trendline that has accompanied and depends on economic growth.
- coldtea 11y ago
  >I don't understand what you're saying That's because you use "quality of life" as if it meant purchase power or access to gadgets. And even that's wrong -- people in the 50s could support a family of four/five and get their kids to college with a single office job. Present day middle class, not so much. In fact it has been shown time and again that wages have been stagnating (when corrected for inflation) since the seventies or so.
  - twoodfin 11y ago
    First, there's almost no relevant metric sorting Earthers that would have an American as the median. Second, it is absolutely nuts to suggest the average American citizen was better off in the 1950's. 1950's America still had a substantial amount of truly crippling poverty, it had millions of citizens who had almost no chance at that great office job due to their race or gender, and life expectancy at birth was lower by almost a decade. And yes, that's before you figure the months of salary to buy, say, a refrigerator, that the median wage earner can now afford on a week's pay. A refrigerator, by the way, that will be larger, last longer, and use substantially less energy than the one from 1955. Or the huge growth in sales of air travel, entertainment, dining... luxuries in the 1950's that are commonplace today. Yes, access to cheap credit makes it easy to bid up the prices of scarce resources like slots at good colleges or houses in desirable areas, but the average American isn't paying out of pocket much more for those things as a % of their income than they were 70 years ago. And of course the colleges are much nicer places to live and study than they were, and the houses are bigger and better constructed.

baldfat 11y ago

> The game stops being who can make the most pie to who can take the most Explains the top 1% and the actual drop in slices of pie. The issue we have is we don't even realize in the States that our pie slice is smaller but the amount is slightly larger. So our pie is a few percentage points down but we have $3,000 more so no one notices.

mindslight 11y ago

Growth usually refers to a second derivative, whereas "getting more resources" is a first derivative. If someone produces the same 5 widgets/month for 10 years, their business has not grown yet they've been creating resources the whole time. The two are only equivalent when we assume that income matches expenses (no savings), which is a fundamental problem with the modern economy.

glomph 11y ago

Eat the rich.