3 ms·

I think that his argument works in the limit case. Above a certain square footage the work of keeping a larger dwelling outweighs the benefit of having more spa

I think that his argument works in the limit case. Above a certain square footage the work of keeping a larger dwelling outweighs the benefit of having more space. (I've avoided buying a larger house that I could easily afford because I didn't want another 1000 square feet to clean and maintain.) Above a certain consumption level you get uncomfortable and ill from eating more food instead of additional nutrition/pleasure. Nobody can watch television more than 24 hours per day. Or to put it in more concrete terms, look at five different 40 year old males all living in Los Angeles. One has $100,000 in net worth, the next has $1 million, the next $10 million, the next $100 million, and the last has $1 billion. That's spanning 5 orders of magnitude, but personal consumption goes up very sub-linearly with increasing wealth. When people near the top of the wealth pyramid spend a lot they're typically bidding up positional goods to insane levels (how much for the penthouse with the very best location in Manhattan?) or spending for control (e.g. as a shareholder in a corporation) instead of for personal consumption. You can't take a typical middle class family and scale up all the financial numbers by 100x to get a realistic picture of how today's wealthy (or the future middle class after a long period of compounded economic growth) will consume.

tetraodonpuffer 10y ago
personal consumption in terms of durable goods probably, but what about in terms of services / experiences? those seem to be more and more the things that high net worth individuals go after, and as many religions will tell you there is really no limit to human desire (and consequently to the money you are willing to spend to fulfill those desires) This is how you go from "I'd like to see Europe some day" to "I am going to have a week to go to Europe once every few years" to "I am flying business class to Europe for tourism every year" to much later "I own a private jet and I feel like having those baguettes from that shop for breakfast tomorrow so I am going to get my personal assistant to fly there and get them for me" There are always goods available no matter how much money you have, as much as the quantity of the food you eat is limited by your physiology, the amount of money it costs is only limited by your imagination.
- philipkglass 10y ago
  many religions will tell you there is really no limit to human desire Yes, and I've heard both environmentalists and economists say that human wants are infinite. The economists say it in a reassuring tone (don't worry, robots can't cause unemployment because wants are infinite) while the environmentalists say it in a despairing way. But I think that religions, economists, and environmentalists are all exhibiting scope insensitivity and/or neglecting observable behaviors of people who are far above median wealth. Let's compare the person who flies to Paris from New York once per year for pleasure and someone who sends the assistant on a private jet to fetch baguettes from Paris every weekend. If the once-per-year person flies on a fully occupied Airbus A380 that's about 367 liters of jet fuel consumed (~5800 kilometers each way, 3.16L/seat/100 km). If a Gulfstream G550 does the round trip every weekend that's about 21200 liters of jet fuel consumed per trip or 1,102,400 liters per year (~5800 kilometers each way, G550 max range 12501 km, G550 max fuel load 18733 kilograms, kerosene specific gravity 0.82, 52 weekends per year). The richie-rich New Yorker regularly sending a personal jet across the ocean for fresh baguettes consumes up to 3000 times as much jet fuel as the comfortably middle class New Yorker who flies commercial to Paris once per year. That's a big consumption gap. But even this out-there conspicuous consumption spans only 3 orders of magnitude in fuel use, whereas (see previous post) it's easy to find 5 orders of magnitude difference in wealth in one large city. My conclusion, which I repeat: consumption grows with wealth but very sub-linearly.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - RGamma 10y ago
    Or in other words: Richie-rich New Yorker would have to make (100,000 * 367) / 21200 = 1731 round-trips per year to use 100,000 times as much fuel as the middle-class one. Quite possible if he possesses multiple aircraft to race against each other.
  - wolfgke 10y ago
    > Yes, and I've heard both environmentalists and economists say that human wants are infinite. The economists say it in a reassuring tone (don't worry, robots can't cause unemployment because wants are infinite) while the environmentalists say it in a despairing way. This also shows that appeals to people to reduce the standard of living (for environmental reasons) will be mostly futile. Thus it would be much better to decrease the birth rate.
thaumasiotes 10y ago
> Nobody can watch television more than 24 hours per day. You're forgetting about picture-in-picture. ;p
- simonh 10y ago
  There's an app for that ;)

tetraodonpuffer 10y ago

personal consumption in terms of durable goods probably, but what about in terms of services / experiences? those seem to be more and more the things that high net worth individuals go after, and as many religions will tell you there is really no limit to human desire (and consequently to the money you are willing to spend to fulfill those desires) This is how you go from "I'd like to see Europe some day" to "I am going to have a week to go to Europe once every few years" to "I am flying business class to Europe for tourism every year" to much later "I own a private jet and I feel like having those baguettes from that shop for breakfast tomorrow so I am going to get my personal assistant to fly there and get them for me" There are always goods available no matter how much money you have, as much as the quantity of the food you eat is limited by your physiology, the amount of money it costs is only limited by your imagination.

philipkglass 10y ago
many religions will tell you there is really no limit to human desire Yes, and I've heard both environmentalists and economists say that human wants are infinite. The economists say it in a reassuring tone (don't worry, robots can't cause unemployment because wants are infinite) while the environmentalists say it in a despairing way. But I think that religions, economists, and environmentalists are all exhibiting scope insensitivity and/or neglecting observable behaviors of people who are far above median wealth. Let's compare the person who flies to Paris from New York once per year for pleasure and someone who sends the assistant on a private jet to fetch baguettes from Paris every weekend. If the once-per-year person flies on a fully occupied Airbus A380 that's about 367 liters of jet fuel consumed (~5800 kilometers each way, 3.16L/seat/100 km). If a Gulfstream G550 does the round trip every weekend that's about 21200 liters of jet fuel consumed per trip or 1,102,400 liters per year (~5800 kilometers each way, G550 max range 12501 km, G550 max fuel load 18733 kilograms, kerosene specific gravity 0.82, 52 weekends per year). The richie-rich New Yorker regularly sending a personal jet across the ocean for fresh baguettes consumes up to 3000 times as much jet fuel as the comfortably middle class New Yorker who flies commercial to Paris once per year. That's a big consumption gap. But even this out-there conspicuous consumption spans only 3 orders of magnitude in fuel use, whereas (see previous post) it's easy to find 5 orders of magnitude difference in wealth in one large city. My conclusion, which I repeat: consumption grows with wealth but very sub-linearly.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- RGamma 10y ago
  Or in other words: Richie-rich New Yorker would have to make (100,000 * 367) / 21200 = 1731 round-trips per year to use 100,000 times as much fuel as the middle-class one. Quite possible if he possesses multiple aircraft to race against each other.
- wolfgke 10y ago
  > Yes, and I've heard both environmentalists and economists say that human wants are infinite. The economists say it in a reassuring tone (don't worry, robots can't cause unemployment because wants are infinite) while the environmentalists say it in a despairing way. This also shows that appeals to people to reduce the standard of living (for environmental reasons) will be mostly futile. Thus it would be much better to decrease the birth rate.

thaumasiotes 10y ago

> Nobody can watch television more than 24 hours per day. You're forgetting about picture-in-picture. ;p

simonh 10y ago
There's an app for that ;)