5 ms·

>> Population growth is vital for the world economy. > which is the very definition of a pyramid scheme AFAIU, population growth being beneficial is predicate

by wahern 7y ago

>> Population growth is vital for the world economy. > which is the very definition of a pyramid scheme AFAIU, population growth being beneficial is predicated on the notion that not only does every additional human contribute a pro rata factor of N=(contribution/cost) wealth to society, where N is greater than 1, but more importantly that for every additional human N increases. Maybe some professional economists can cite to the particular theories and research (I'm too distant from my academic days), or alternatively disabuse me of this notion. But that's my understanding, and in that light population growth is definitely not a pyramid scheme. It doesn't mean that population growth is the only way to increase N. There may be ways to increase N fast enough to compensate for the loss of the population growth dynamic, but those ways seem to be fairly elusive.[1] It also doesn't mean that there aren't pyramid scheme-like dynamics elsewhere (e.g. land use, housing prices, etc); they're just not intrinsic to the overarching dynamic. [1] And that's because rate of innovation is partly a function of population size. The more people there are, the more risk takers exist, the more opportunities available, the more possible social arrangements, etc. An analogy: To a first approximation, the more neurons you have (population), and the more interconnected they are ("free market"), the more capable and potentially intelligent the network.

gumby 7y ago
That is a good statement of Simon's thesis, but as I discussed in my brief note there is nuance he did not address in writing (he was super smart and told me once that he understood the issue but didn't know how to characterize it). > An analogy: To a first approximation, the more neurons you have (population), and the more interconnected they are ("free market"), the more capable and potentially intelligent the network. A good analogy but every system has a "sweet spot" regime; outside that zone various advantages stop being (evolutionary, in this case) advantageous, else our brains would be eve larger.
- wahern 7y ago
  When I was working on onion routing and mesh networking 10+ years ago, I remember reading a paper that showed that in a mesh network every additional node added total throughput capacity, but the rate of increase asymptotically approached 0. I don't have the citation handy, and I'm sure the proof was tied to a particular topology, but the take home for me was that it was possible for mesh network advocates and skeptics to both be correct; that mesh networks can be a way to continually increase network capacity cooperatively without centralized authority, but that doesn't mean such capacity increases would be meaningful. The same might apply here: yes, the rate of increase in N may approach 0 such that at some point it becomes an irrelevant factor to economic growth. OTOH, in the absence of alternative drivers even a tiny rate of increase is something, and removing it could lead to accelerating reductions in global wealth. But we just don't know. The relevant questions and answers are more empirical than theoretical. My point was just that the growth narrative isn't predicated on a pyramid scheme, it's just the safest and possibly only known reliable strategy we understand. But an end to population growth seems inevitable in the next couple of generations (barring space colonization), so I suppose we'll find some answers rather soon.
- jelliclesfarm 7y ago
  I think AI would change this. We will eventually have ‘artificial persons’. I can guarantee that once global population starts to taper off, the decline in population would make us a less interesting and dynamic species. Complex systems need a large number of people. We will have to create some version of the missing billions. Perhaps robots or AI personalities or mash ups. As a casual example..a personal story: I recently had this revelation when I met someone from a small western country with a population of about 5 million. This person was incredibly smart, highly accomplished, well travelled and older than me. But I still found that he was somewhat oblivious to what I call ‘nuances of human nature’. I have never considered myself a particularly perceptive person or highly tuned into human personality, but because of the accident of birth in a country that has over 1.3 billion people now, I was exposed to a wide circle of different people..and even though this other person was far ahead of me in every way, his exposure was limited to a smaller cocktail of human natures. Did it make me smarter? I don’t know. But I sure was exposed to so much variety that I could at least detect differences and variabilities..even minute ones. I think my view of life is richer, more colorful and interesting. To bring up another example: a larger population is like being a native speaker of Cantonese with its eight tones vs being someone who can speak a language with exactly 100 words. Entirely different worlds and one is vastly richer than the other. So to combat this, we just have to create artificial people and virtual world when we finally achieve the carrying capacity of about one billion people(the population of the planet in 1600)
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
You don't seem to be considering that each one of those additional people is a mouth to feed, agricultural land to farm, a house, car and iPhones for them, some number of tonnes of carbon and other lifetime emissions. The planet and its resources has a finite carrying capacity. Given we have most of the world in need of developing to reach the levels we enjoy, I suspect we are far past that capacity already -- though I am unlikely to live to see the consequences of that. We've used the world's most fertile land already. We've had the fossil fuel fertiliser dividend. Do we continue to grow and pretend growth is normal and necessary until we absolutely need another agriculture miracle? Or do we try and construct a future where everyone has a chance of abundance? Even claiming innovation is partly a function of population size is far too simplistic - we've had periods where small countries were punching orders of magnitude above their population weight. There'll be little innovation if the food supply breaks.
- nickles 7y ago
  > The planet and its resources has a finite carrying capacity. Given we have most of the world in need of developing to reach the levels we enjoy, I suspect we are far past that capacity already This argument has been made for hundreds of years, and for hundreds of years it's failed to pan out. Perhaps this time is different though. "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man." - Thomas Malthus (1798)
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Malthus was a while ago - what leads you to believe the planet now has an infinite capacity for humans?
    - nickles 7y ago
      I should clarify I was responding to your assertion that the earth is far past capacity. ~10% of Earth’s land is occupied by humans. Not all of that is arable, but humans have successfully terraformed throughout history and conceivably will become more capable with technological advances. Malthus is not unique in his prognostications. Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb (1968) was more recent and predicted mass famine by the 1970s. Instead, we produce a massive surplus of food each year, although it’s not distributed adequately at present. This happened well after the Haber process (presumably the fossil fuel dividend you refer to) and occurred as a result of improved farming techniques, equipment, and crops. Thanks to technological developments in the fossil fuels sector (fracking, horizontal drilling, etc.), fears about running out of oil have largely subsided. Simultaneously, advances in renewable energy sources are rapidly reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. Already, some electric grids are struggling with capacity — not because of a shortage of energy, rather due to an excess of electricity produced by renewable sources. Although none of this points to an Earth beyond its carrying capacity, it also does not factor in further efficiency gains resulting from future technological progress. At the same time, we are attempting to develop the technology necessary to access extraterrestrial resources. Given that, even the finite resources available on Earth are not necessarily a limiting factor to growth.

by wahern 7y ago

gumby 7y ago

That is a good statement of Simon's thesis, but as I discussed in my brief note there is nuance he did not address in writing (he was super smart and told me once that he understood the issue but didn't know how to characterize it). > An analogy: To a first approximation, the more neurons you have (population), and the more interconnected they are ("free market"), the more capable and potentially intelligent the network. A good analogy but every system has a "sweet spot" regime; outside that zone various advantages stop being (evolutionary, in this case) advantageous, else our brains would be eve larger.

wahern 7y ago
When I was working on onion routing and mesh networking 10+ years ago, I remember reading a paper that showed that in a mesh network every additional node added total throughput capacity, but the rate of increase asymptotically approached 0. I don't have the citation handy, and I'm sure the proof was tied to a particular topology, but the take home for me was that it was possible for mesh network advocates and skeptics to both be correct; that mesh networks can be a way to continually increase network capacity cooperatively without centralized authority, but that doesn't mean such capacity increases would be meaningful. The same might apply here: yes, the rate of increase in N may approach 0 such that at some point it becomes an irrelevant factor to economic growth. OTOH, in the absence of alternative drivers even a tiny rate of increase is something, and removing it could lead to accelerating reductions in global wealth. But we just don't know. The relevant questions and answers are more empirical than theoretical. My point was just that the growth narrative isn't predicated on a pyramid scheme, it's just the safest and possibly only known reliable strategy we understand. But an end to population growth seems inevitable in the next couple of generations (barring space colonization), so I suppose we'll find some answers rather soon.
jelliclesfarm 7y ago
I think AI would change this. We will eventually have ‘artificial persons’. I can guarantee that once global population starts to taper off, the decline in population would make us a less interesting and dynamic species. Complex systems need a large number of people. We will have to create some version of the missing billions. Perhaps robots or AI personalities or mash ups. As a casual example..a personal story: I recently had this revelation when I met someone from a small western country with a population of about 5 million. This person was incredibly smart, highly accomplished, well travelled and older than me. But I still found that he was somewhat oblivious to what I call ‘nuances of human nature’. I have never considered myself a particularly perceptive person or highly tuned into human personality, but because of the accident of birth in a country that has over 1.3 billion people now, I was exposed to a wide circle of different people..and even though this other person was far ahead of me in every way, his exposure was limited to a smaller cocktail of human natures. Did it make me smarter? I don’t know. But I sure was exposed to so much variety that I could at least detect differences and variabilities..even minute ones. I think my view of life is richer, more colorful and interesting. To bring up another example: a larger population is like being a native speaker of Cantonese with its eight tones vs being someone who can speak a language with exactly 100 words. Entirely different worlds and one is vastly richer than the other. So to combat this, we just have to create artificial people and virtual world when we finally achieve the carrying capacity of about one billion people(the population of the planet in 1600)

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

You don't seem to be considering that each one of those additional people is a mouth to feed, agricultural land to farm, a house, car and iPhones for them, some number of tonnes of carbon and other lifetime emissions. The planet and its resources has a finite carrying capacity. Given we have most of the world in need of developing to reach the levels we enjoy, I suspect we are far past that capacity already -- though I am unlikely to live to see the consequences of that. We've used the world's most fertile land already. We've had the fossil fuel fertiliser dividend. Do we continue to grow and pretend growth is normal and necessary until we absolutely need another agriculture miracle? Or do we try and construct a future where everyone has a chance of abundance? Even claiming innovation is partly a function of population size is far too simplistic - we've had periods where small countries were punching orders of magnitude above their population weight. There'll be little innovation if the food supply breaks.

nickles 7y ago
> The planet and its resources has a finite carrying capacity. Given we have most of the world in need of developing to reach the levels we enjoy, I suspect we are far past that capacity already This argument has been made for hundreds of years, and for hundreds of years it's failed to pan out. Perhaps this time is different though. "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man." - Thomas Malthus (1798)
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Malthus was a while ago - what leads you to believe the planet now has an infinite capacity for humans?
  - nickles 7y ago
    I should clarify I was responding to your assertion that the earth is far past capacity. ~10% of Earth’s land is occupied by humans. Not all of that is arable, but humans have successfully terraformed throughout history and conceivably will become more capable with technological advances. Malthus is not unique in his prognostications. Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb (1968) was more recent and predicted mass famine by the 1970s. Instead, we produce a massive surplus of food each year, although it’s not distributed adequately at present. This happened well after the Haber process (presumably the fossil fuel dividend you refer to) and occurred as a result of improved farming techniques, equipment, and crops. Thanks to technological developments in the fossil fuels sector (fracking, horizontal drilling, etc.), fears about running out of oil have largely subsided. Simultaneously, advances in renewable energy sources are rapidly reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. Already, some electric grids are struggling with capacity — not because of a shortage of energy, rather due to an excess of electricity produced by renewable sources. Although none of this points to an Earth beyond its carrying capacity, it also does not factor in further efficiency gains resulting from future technological progress. At the same time, we are attempting to develop the technology necessary to access extraterrestrial resources. Given that, even the finite resources available on Earth are not necessarily a limiting factor to growth.