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Most economists, "orthodox" or Neo-keynesian, have the same issues: they don't understand physics. I'll develop: GDP growth is `(population growth) * (producti

by orwin 6y ago

Most economists, "orthodox" or Neo-keynesian, have the same issues: they don't understand physics. I'll develop: GDP growth is `(population growth) * (productivity gains) * ß` basically, right? So GDP per capita is productivity gain. Any person/economist with a better view on this is welcome, i mostly took that from economics 101 (or equivalent) in my first year, when i still did not know what i wanted to do. Is the human body more productive than 20 years ago? is the human mind more productive than 20 years ago? No, not really, but we had two thing that helped us: more energy, and Moore's Law. Once our Carnot machines were optimized and our electric motors available, productivity gains caused by efficiency became marginal, and the best way to increase productivity was to install more machines. There is a hard 100% limit that physic impose us on electric motors, and a hard 64% Carnot's law impose us on thermic motors anyway, so no efficiency gains here. The same way, Moore's law will stop one day. I'll be optimist and believe we will have CPU enter the nano dimension. And as smaller size equal smaller energy use, let's say this will be *10 efficiency (smaller mean they will break more easily too). Really unlikely, but let's assume that. So GDP growth will be driven/limitied by energy output in the forseeable future, once we will recover from Covid.

notahacker 6y ago
I think it's premature to describe it as the foreseeable future where we max out the capabilities of microcomputers, machinery and optimise the distribution of all the world's resources to ensure there is absolutely nothing that couldn't be improved by using different types or numbers of machines or better computer programs or passing control to a different owner or simply mopping up the compounding gains from having more machinery and algorithms in production. Sure, in a world where we've perfected everything. GDP growth will cease to be a viable goal (and probably we'll all be too well fed and entertained to care). But until we reach the point of using all our resources optimally, it's reasonable to assume expansion and better allocation of production is a sensible goal, and to achieve it economists are arguing against more short-term, mutable obstacles like human rules. It's a bit like the probable existence of hard physical limits to human lifespan doesn't invalidate the field of medicine. Or indeed, the probability that we're not smarter than twenty years ago doesn't invalidate the field of computer science's attempts to find more efficient ways of handling data,

by orwin 6y ago

notahacker 6y ago

I think it's premature to describe it as the foreseeable future where we max out the capabilities of microcomputers, machinery and optimise the distribution of all the world's resources to ensure there is absolutely nothing that couldn't be improved by using different types or numbers of machines or better computer programs or passing control to a different owner or simply mopping up the compounding gains from having more machinery and algorithms in production. Sure, in a world where we've perfected everything. GDP growth will cease to be a viable goal (and probably we'll all be too well fed and entertained to care). But until we reach the point of using all our resources optimally, it's reasonable to assume expansion and better allocation of production is a sensible goal, and to achieve it economists are arguing against more short-term, mutable obstacles like human rules. It's a bit like the probable existence of hard physical limits to human lifespan doesn't invalidate the field of medicine. Or indeed, the probability that we're not smarter than twenty years ago doesn't invalidate the field of computer science's attempts to find more efficient ways of handling data,