3 ms·

You haven't rebutted the parent poster. He said "Some people say growth can't happen forever, and all growth comes at environmental cost". Pointing out that "

You haven't rebutted the parent poster. He said "Some people say growth can't happen forever, and all growth comes at environmental cost". Pointing out that "Every economic output requires material inputs" doesn't mean that there are limits to growth or that you can't have growth without environmental cost. As an example, if you have a resource that you consistently get more efficient at operating, you can consistently use it to provide more and more value to the world (economic growth). To use his example: if you take a human who would be using material inputs like food, and instead of them engaging in activity that did not provide value to society, they spent their time giving people massages, you have not increased the amount of physical resources being consumed (since the person was otherwise using the same amount of resources, just not doing anything of value).

TeMPOraL 7y ago
This is an accounting trick, though. It works because people are willing to pay for a massage and not for whatever the person was doing. But to actually grow the economy, you have to continuously retask that person to ever more profitable activities. You can also create growth by moving money in circles increasingly fast. Question is, how far we can push bullshit jobs before people get fed up with it? I'm not convinced that "forever" is the answer.
- andrewmutz 7y ago
  It's not an accounting trick. Different ways a person spends their time genuinely provide different levels of value to society. If a doctor spends his time saving lives or spends his time watching television, the impact on the world's material resources isn't that different, but the amount of value to society is much greater if he is saving lives.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Again, to have economic growth you actually have to have growth. Once you get everyone doing the things that yield maximum economic value, you no longer have growth. You'd have to make more people (exponentially, under current economic regime), which costs physical resources. As an aside, when talking about economic growth we're looking at economic, not social value, and it so happens that saving lives is one of the less valuable things. You can determine it by looking at the paychecks of doctors or ER personnel.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

This is an accounting trick, though. It works because people are willing to pay for a massage and not for whatever the person was doing. But to actually grow the economy, you have to continuously retask that person to ever more profitable activities. You can also create growth by moving money in circles increasingly fast. Question is, how far we can push bullshit jobs before people get fed up with it? I'm not convinced that "forever" is the answer.

andrewmutz 7y ago
It's not an accounting trick. Different ways a person spends their time genuinely provide different levels of value to society. If a doctor spends his time saving lives or spends his time watching television, the impact on the world's material resources isn't that different, but the amount of value to society is much greater if he is saving lives.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Again, to have economic growth you actually have to have growth. Once you get everyone doing the things that yield maximum economic value, you no longer have growth. You'd have to make more people (exponentially, under current economic regime), which costs physical resources. As an aside, when talking about economic growth we're looking at economic, not social value, and it so happens that saving lives is one of the less valuable things. You can determine it by looking at the paychecks of doctors or ER personnel.