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Why is continuous growth even a goal? There's a physical reality that at some point it must stop. We should plan for that. GDP growth is just a number. We shoul

by beaner 6y ago

Why is continuous growth even a goal? There's a physical reality that at some point it must stop. We should plan for that. GDP growth is just a number. We should focus on quality of life. (Notwithstanding transitionary points like "but this other country is still growing and will displace things," and "but who will take care of those decaying cities," etc)

logicchains 6y ago
Human wants are unlimited. GDP growth (in the ideal sense, when perfectly measured) means more wants are being satisifed. It doesn't imply growth in resource usage: if your CPU becomes twice as efficient, or your package delivery route is optimised, or your barber learns to cut hair faster, that all counts as GDP growth.
- peteradio 6y ago
  > It doesn't imply growth in resource usage: if your CPU becomes twice as efficient, or your package delivery route is optimised, or your barber learns to cut hair faster, that all counts as GDP growth. If demand is not saturating your efficiency improvement then you are maybe capturing a bigger piece of the pie but the pie may shrink or grow. Isn't the pie the proper measure? Why are we measuring scoops of pie passing back and forth?
  - AtlasLion 6y ago
    It only does if there are more packages that can be sent or hair that can be cut. With a shrinking population, both are untrue.
- cycomanic 6y ago
  I don't know where your "human wants are unlimited" comes from and is a pretty big statement to make to not back it up with evidence. However even if we except your premise that an increased GDP will help to fulfill this is highly doubtful. A increased GDP can (and does) very well decrease quality of life. Traffic accidents, environmental pollution, obesity, divorce all increase GDP, not sure if they fulfill human wants. In fact one of the reasons why the US has been so successful at increasing GDP is that the population has an increasingly unhealthy livestyle.
  - logicchains 6y ago
    >I don't know where your "human wants are unlimited" comes from and is a pretty big statement to make to not back it up with evidence. For evidence, look at the average savings rate in developed countries. It wants were limited, it would be higher. It's also the case that savings rate doesn't increase as income increase (in fact the inverse is often true; compare savings rates in poorer China and Indian to the US). Clearly humans want things; this is the default case. To show this stops at some stage should require evidence. >Traffic accidents, environmental pollution, obesity, divorce all increase GDP, not sure if they fulfill human wants. Driving, cheap energy, tasty food and divorce clearly satisfy human wants.
    - cycomanic 6y ago
      > >I don't know where your "human wants are unlimited" comes from and is a pretty big statement to make to not back it up with evidence. > For evidence, look at the average savings rate in developed countries. It wants were limited, it would be higher. It's also the case that savings rate doesn't increase as income increase (in fact the inverse is often true; compare savings rates in poorer China and Indian to the US). That's a giant leap, to get from savings rates decrease in some countries to human wants are unlimited. Moreover, savings rates are quite country dependent (e.g. Germany has very high rates). Might it be that people in the US have been led to believe that they can make up for their unhappyness by buying more things? > Clearly humans want things; this is the default case. To show this stops at some stage should require evidence. I can easily think of many people who are quite happy without having more things. So I just falsified your claim. Moreover there is significant research showing that having more things beyond some point does not increase happiness. > >Traffic accidents, environmental pollution, obesity, divorce all increase GDP, not sure if they fulfill human wants. > Driving, cheap energy, tasty food and divorce clearly satisfy human wants.
      - __MatrixMan__ 6y ago
        "Unlimited" is a difficult claim to justify, but as evidence that human wants are in vast supply you might look at the way that Buddhism and Hinduism portray the bulk of human society as trapped in an endless cycle of wanting the next thing. It's not impossible to escape, but expecting it to happen en masse might be a stretch. I think a more fruitful direction would be to distinguish between empty dopamine, and the kind of want that you can look back on and feel like it was aligned with your broader interests.
- __MatrixMan__ 6y ago
  Growth for growth's sake sounds like cancer to me. Sure, some examples of GDP growth are win-win, like the ones you've listed. But those improvements--when discovered--will happen whether or not people have growth as a goal. They're good ideas independently. But making growth a goal on its own is a good way to wind up with more toll roads, more complexity that requires an industry to help citizens navigate it (e.g. realters, tax preparers), more cases where the consumer's decision making is tampered with (e.g. advertising, the sale of addictive things), and the creation of problems just so there will be a market for solutions thereto (e.g. Hallmark). These are all cases of GDP growth that I think most of us can agree we'd be better off without.
  - logicchains 6y ago
    >But those improvements--when discovered--will happen whether or not people have growth as a goal. They're good ideas independently. The point is that measures that limit GDP will generally also limit the rate at which these things occur. An idea by itself is rarely enough: it needs capital to execute. Things that limit the growth of GDP limit the growth of a nation's capital.
- IanCal 6y ago
  > or your barber learns to cut hair faster, that all counts as GDP growth. Only if people get their hair cut more as a result. If haircuts take less time, become cheaper and people get their hair cut just as often surely GDP would go down. Same for package delivery.
qtplatypus 6y ago
GDP is a proxy for quality of life. Reason that continuous economic growth is a goal is that the economy has a number of feedback loops it in. If the economy is growing, people are more likely to consume, more people consuming results in more economic growth. If the reverse is happening, the economy is contracting, this results in people spending less, which results in the economy contracting more, which results in people loosing jobs, those people have less money to spend etc. Zero economic growth is unstable the slightest bit of noise will cause it to shift into a contraction. So having economic growth and using the limits to the rate of growth to control how much growth happens is much more stable.
- vladvasiliu 6y ago
  Shouldn't we be looking then at GDP per capita? If there's less people, we can still be producing enough so that producers have jobs and get money and want to consume and &c. I think that one of the issues with this GDP going down, which might not be the same in the US as in the EU, is the redistributive nature of the economy in Europe. Many (most?) social programs are paid for by people currently working and they're paid right away. In other words, you pay for your grandparents' pension, you pay for your neighbour's hospital bill, etc. A falling GDP due to low fertility often comes with an ageing of the population. Older people usually don't work, usually need more healthcare, etc. Hence there's a growing need of money to redistribute, but less money coming in since there are less young people working.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    > A falling GDP due to low fertility often comes with an ageing of the population. Older people usually don't work, usually need more healthcare, etc. Hence there's a growing need of money to redistribute, but less money coming in since there are less young people working. That's accurate. The main "issue" here is that people live longer, ergo their retirement period is longer. When retirement systems were set up, with the retirement age set to ~65, people lived to be 70. Now they live to be 80, and the retirement age is still at 65. On the other side: "back in the day", a lot of jobs where quite physical, which made it hard to do them in your 60ies. That's very different today. And of course: productivity gains more than make up for low fertility, we no longer need 30% of the population to work in food production, thanks to automation and modern technology, 1-3% can do the same just fine.
pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
"Why is continuous growth even a goal?" In a pyramid scheme, it is required. In a "greater fool" scheme, it is required. In a political campaign, it is required because it provides a justification for lowering taxes.
erispoe 6y ago
As long as productivity grows faster than population, there's effectively no end to how much population can grow. You might argue that productivity gains will stop at some point, but then you need to provide arguments for that, not take as a given that there is a limit. People's preferences for family size in a developed world seems to be providing a much more tangible limit to population growth than resources. People simply don't want to have as many children as it takes to substantially grow population when they're rich enough.
- orwin 6y ago
  > You might argue that productivity gains will stop at some point, but then you need to provide arguments for that, not take as a given that there is a limit. I have one. Productivity gains are mostly granted by energy (AKA bigger machines). W/capita is imo a better approximation to a nation wealth than GPD/capita in socialist countries, but even in the us you can see the strong correlation. 80% of this energy come from fossil fuel, coal and gaz make 60% of world electricity (probably more), and oil for movement. This is the limit to growth.
  - orwin 6y ago
    https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/eu-oil-depletion-2030-study/ https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/eu-oil-depletion-2030... based on Rystad Energy study if you want to check the numbers.
dodobirdlord 6y ago
> There's a physical reality that at some point it must stop. There's plenty of room at the bottom, the sky's the limit, etc, etc. Technological improvement is the main (arguably only) long-term driver of growth and there's every indication that we're nowhere near done tapping what's available. Energy consumption per capita in the United States has been trending down for decades now. The "infinite grown in a finite world" criticism of economic growth may have merit thousands of years from now, but it certainly has no merit today. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.PCAP.KG.OE?locations=US https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.PCAP.KG.OE?locat...
- oblio 6y ago
  I think his point is that the focus should be on intensive growth (use the existing people better, make their lives better) over extensive growth (have more people). Though, OP, there are geopolitical issues with this, as Australia was extremely close to discovering in 1941. That's why Australia opened its immigration policy.
- beaner 6y ago
  I mostly meant in terms of population. There is a physical limit to the number of people who can be on earth. If economic growth is dependent on population growth as many seem to be suggesting, then we need to reckon with that. And we should do it sooner rather than later.
  - dodobirdlord 6y ago
    More people means more technological development, which is then rapidly disseminated in the modern world. World population is estimated to peak sometime this century and trend downward from there. Combine that with the fact that eventually most other countries will have comparable standards of living and the free unlimited immigrants gravy train will end, but while it's available, immigration is great policy.
michaelt 6y ago
> Why is continuous growth even a goal? Because there are more people who'd like their children to live a better life than them; than who'd like the opposite. And while some of that will be intangible things like good friends and a feeling of community, some of it will be things like education, dental services, high speed internet, and working fewer hours - things that cost money. A politician who can promise growth can promise a better life for rich and poor alike. That's a much easier message to sell than a zero-sum policy.
- contravariant 6y ago
  Hence why they claim we should focus on quality of life. It's pointless to artificially increase population to increase the GDP if the population rises faster than the GDP.

by beaner 6y ago

logicchains 6y ago

Human wants are unlimited. GDP growth (in the ideal sense, when perfectly measured) means more wants are being satisifed. It doesn't imply growth in resource usage: if your CPU becomes twice as efficient, or your package delivery route is optimised, or your barber learns to cut hair faster, that all counts as GDP growth.

peteradio 6y ago
> It doesn't imply growth in resource usage: if your CPU becomes twice as efficient, or your package delivery route is optimised, or your barber learns to cut hair faster, that all counts as GDP growth. If demand is not saturating your efficiency improvement then you are maybe capturing a bigger piece of the pie but the pie may shrink or grow. Isn't the pie the proper measure? Why are we measuring scoops of pie passing back and forth?
- AtlasLion 6y ago
  It only does if there are more packages that can be sent or hair that can be cut. With a shrinking population, both are untrue.
cycomanic 6y ago
I don't know where your "human wants are unlimited" comes from and is a pretty big statement to make to not back it up with evidence. However even if we except your premise that an increased GDP will help to fulfill this is highly doubtful. A increased GDP can (and does) very well decrease quality of life. Traffic accidents, environmental pollution, obesity, divorce all increase GDP, not sure if they fulfill human wants. In fact one of the reasons why the US has been so successful at increasing GDP is that the population has an increasingly unhealthy livestyle.
- logicchains 6y ago
  >I don't know where your "human wants are unlimited" comes from and is a pretty big statement to make to not back it up with evidence. For evidence, look at the average savings rate in developed countries. It wants were limited, it would be higher. It's also the case that savings rate doesn't increase as income increase (in fact the inverse is often true; compare savings rates in poorer China and Indian to the US). Clearly humans want things; this is the default case. To show this stops at some stage should require evidence. >Traffic accidents, environmental pollution, obesity, divorce all increase GDP, not sure if they fulfill human wants. Driving, cheap energy, tasty food and divorce clearly satisfy human wants.
  - cycomanic 6y ago
    > >I don't know where your "human wants are unlimited" comes from and is a pretty big statement to make to not back it up with evidence. > For evidence, look at the average savings rate in developed countries. It wants were limited, it would be higher. It's also the case that savings rate doesn't increase as income increase (in fact the inverse is often true; compare savings rates in poorer China and Indian to the US). That's a giant leap, to get from savings rates decrease in some countries to human wants are unlimited. Moreover, savings rates are quite country dependent (e.g. Germany has very high rates). Might it be that people in the US have been led to believe that they can make up for their unhappyness by buying more things? > Clearly humans want things; this is the default case. To show this stops at some stage should require evidence. I can easily think of many people who are quite happy without having more things. So I just falsified your claim. Moreover there is significant research showing that having more things beyond some point does not increase happiness. > >Traffic accidents, environmental pollution, obesity, divorce all increase GDP, not sure if they fulfill human wants. > Driving, cheap energy, tasty food and divorce clearly satisfy human wants.
    - __MatrixMan__ 6y ago
      "Unlimited" is a difficult claim to justify, but as evidence that human wants are in vast supply you might look at the way that Buddhism and Hinduism portray the bulk of human society as trapped in an endless cycle of wanting the next thing. It's not impossible to escape, but expecting it to happen en masse might be a stretch. I think a more fruitful direction would be to distinguish between empty dopamine, and the kind of want that you can look back on and feel like it was aligned with your broader interests.
__MatrixMan__ 6y ago
Growth for growth's sake sounds like cancer to me. Sure, some examples of GDP growth are win-win, like the ones you've listed. But those improvements--when discovered--will happen whether or not people have growth as a goal. They're good ideas independently. But making growth a goal on its own is a good way to wind up with more toll roads, more complexity that requires an industry to help citizens navigate it (e.g. realters, tax preparers), more cases where the consumer's decision making is tampered with (e.g. advertising, the sale of addictive things), and the creation of problems just so there will be a market for solutions thereto (e.g. Hallmark). These are all cases of GDP growth that I think most of us can agree we'd be better off without.
- logicchains 6y ago
  >But those improvements--when discovered--will happen whether or not people have growth as a goal. They're good ideas independently. The point is that measures that limit GDP will generally also limit the rate at which these things occur. An idea by itself is rarely enough: it needs capital to execute. Things that limit the growth of GDP limit the growth of a nation's capital.
IanCal 6y ago
> or your barber learns to cut hair faster, that all counts as GDP growth. Only if people get their hair cut more as a result. If haircuts take less time, become cheaper and people get their hair cut just as often surely GDP would go down. Same for package delivery.

qtplatypus 6y ago

GDP is a proxy for quality of life. Reason that continuous economic growth is a goal is that the economy has a number of feedback loops it in. If the economy is growing, people are more likely to consume, more people consuming results in more economic growth. If the reverse is happening, the economy is contracting, this results in people spending less, which results in the economy contracting more, which results in people loosing jobs, those people have less money to spend etc. Zero economic growth is unstable the slightest bit of noise will cause it to shift into a contraction. So having economic growth and using the limits to the rate of growth to control how much growth happens is much more stable.

vladvasiliu 6y ago
Shouldn't we be looking then at GDP per capita? If there's less people, we can still be producing enough so that producers have jobs and get money and want to consume and &c. I think that one of the issues with this GDP going down, which might not be the same in the US as in the EU, is the redistributive nature of the economy in Europe. Many (most?) social programs are paid for by people currently working and they're paid right away. In other words, you pay for your grandparents' pension, you pay for your neighbour's hospital bill, etc. A falling GDP due to low fertility often comes with an ageing of the population. Older people usually don't work, usually need more healthcare, etc. Hence there's a growing need of money to redistribute, but less money coming in since there are less young people working.
- luckylion 6y ago
  > A falling GDP due to low fertility often comes with an ageing of the population. Older people usually don't work, usually need more healthcare, etc. Hence there's a growing need of money to redistribute, but less money coming in since there are less young people working. That's accurate. The main "issue" here is that people live longer, ergo their retirement period is longer. When retirement systems were set up, with the retirement age set to ~65, people lived to be 70. Now they live to be 80, and the retirement age is still at 65. On the other side: "back in the day", a lot of jobs where quite physical, which made it hard to do them in your 60ies. That's very different today. And of course: productivity gains more than make up for low fertility, we no longer need 30% of the population to work in food production, thanks to automation and modern technology, 1-3% can do the same just fine.

pwdisswordfish2 6y ago

"Why is continuous growth even a goal?" In a pyramid scheme, it is required. In a "greater fool" scheme, it is required. In a political campaign, it is required because it provides a justification for lowering taxes.

erispoe 6y ago

As long as productivity grows faster than population, there's effectively no end to how much population can grow. You might argue that productivity gains will stop at some point, but then you need to provide arguments for that, not take as a given that there is a limit. People's preferences for family size in a developed world seems to be providing a much more tangible limit to population growth than resources. People simply don't want to have as many children as it takes to substantially grow population when they're rich enough.

orwin 6y ago
> You might argue that productivity gains will stop at some point, but then you need to provide arguments for that, not take as a given that there is a limit. I have one. Productivity gains are mostly granted by energy (AKA bigger machines). W/capita is imo a better approximation to a nation wealth than GPD/capita in socialist countries, but even in the us you can see the strong correlation. 80% of this energy come from fossil fuel, coal and gaz make 60% of world electricity (probably more), and oil for movement. This is the limit to growth.
- orwin 6y ago
  https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/eu-oil-depletion-2030-study/ https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/eu-oil-depletion-2030... based on Rystad Energy study if you want to check the numbers.

dodobirdlord 6y ago

> There's a physical reality that at some point it must stop. There's plenty of room at the bottom, the sky's the limit, etc, etc. Technological improvement is the main (arguably only) long-term driver of growth and there's every indication that we're nowhere near done tapping what's available. Energy consumption per capita in the United States has been trending down for decades now. The "infinite grown in a finite world" criticism of economic growth may have merit thousands of years from now, but it certainly has no merit today. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.PCAP.KG.OE?locations=US https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.PCAP.KG.OE?locat...

oblio 6y ago
I think his point is that the focus should be on intensive growth (use the existing people better, make their lives better) over extensive growth (have more people). Though, OP, there are geopolitical issues with this, as Australia was extremely close to discovering in 1941. That's why Australia opened its immigration policy.
beaner 6y ago
I mostly meant in terms of population. There is a physical limit to the number of people who can be on earth. If economic growth is dependent on population growth as many seem to be suggesting, then we need to reckon with that. And we should do it sooner rather than later.
- dodobirdlord 6y ago
  More people means more technological development, which is then rapidly disseminated in the modern world. World population is estimated to peak sometime this century and trend downward from there. Combine that with the fact that eventually most other countries will have comparable standards of living and the free unlimited immigrants gravy train will end, but while it's available, immigration is great policy.

michaelt 6y ago

> Why is continuous growth even a goal? Because there are more people who'd like their children to live a better life than them; than who'd like the opposite. And while some of that will be intangible things like good friends and a feeling of community, some of it will be things like education, dental services, high speed internet, and working fewer hours - things that cost money. A politician who can promise growth can promise a better life for rich and poor alike. That's a much easier message to sell than a zero-sum policy.

contravariant 6y ago
Hence why they claim we should focus on quality of life. It's pointless to artificially increase population to increase the GDP if the population rises faster than the GDP.