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Green recovery must end the reign of GDP, argue Cambridge and UN economists

111 points by samizdis 6y ago

samizdis 6y ago
Natural Capital Accounting for Sustainable Macroeconomic Strategies - UN System of Environmental-Economic Accounting .pdf download: https://seea.un.org/file/17999/download?token=gi33gfel https://seea.un.org/file/17999/download?token=gi33gfel Also referenced in article: Building Forward: Investing in a resilient recovery - Bennett Institute for Public Policy, University of Cambridge https://www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/publications/building-forward-investing-resilient-recovery/ https://www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/publications/building...
Proven 6y ago
That is hilarious. How many people really believe that crap? BNI, we can dooo it! But, like all other attempts at socialism, this one shall fail too.
guscost 6y ago
Funny how the solutions to these “global” problems always involve ending capitalism. Perhaps that’s the real goal?
- hhmmmsms 6y ago
  It should be.
  - guscost 6y ago
    Well you’re more honest than most, and I respect that.
- Retric 6y ago
  I think it’s more that a single system runs the world so any global issue is assumed to be the fault of that system. Which kind of ignores how every other system also loves oil etc.
- golemotron 6y ago
  Capitalism can't be ended, it just a word for what people do when they are free to generate and exchange value.
  - Miner49er 6y ago
    Not really no, it can be ended by simply changing the idea of land ownership, for example. Land ownership in it's modern form didn't happen in a voluntary way, it was forced through violence.
    - tengbretson 6y ago
      Land ownership in it's modern form is the alternative to constant violence.
      - Miner49er 6y ago
        I was more thinking of the mutualist's idea of land ownership, I don't think it would be any more violent than the current system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutualism_(economic_theory)#Usufruct https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutualism_(economic_theory)#Us... Basically you can only "own" land if you personally actually use it, not just rent it (or do nothing with it).
      - hinkley 6y ago
        There were some alternatives presented but not accepted. In the history of warfare, terrain set boundaries because the defenders had substantial advantage over attackers. I own this side of the river, you own that one. But from an ecological policy standpoint, it’s a disaster. Neither of us own the river, but if I dump shit into it and you have a port at the mouth, then my problems become your problems. The alternative proposal was to divide government along watershed boundaries. Spain and France are still divided by the Pyrenees, because ridge lines are the same boundaries on both maps. But the Rhine and the Rhone say that France is divided from Germany, Italy, and Benelux all wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_watershed#/media/File:Europ%C3%A4ische_Wasserscheiden.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_watershed#/media/File... The river would instead become the middle of a territory, not the edges. My hamlet “owns” the valley it sits in. The county owns the tributary that flows past my hamlet and into another tributary. The state owns the tributary all the way to the Rhone, our nation or a union owns the entire Rhone, and a regional group oversees the Mediterranean, while the UN oversees the oceans in general, when regions don’t agree with themselves or among each other. Anyone who muddies our water is in a direct chain of accountability to everyone down stream. Logistically this is a nightmare. We’ve wiped out any cultures who might have worked this way, and those that remain won’t move political boundaries except under extreme duress, except to expand them (see point 1). But it does have a very Conway’s Law feel to it.
- oblio 6y ago
  How did you ever come to that conclusion by reading the article?!? If anything, the point of the article is that MORE things should be priced in. Nature's value should be analyzed from a monetary point of view and you shouldn't be allowed to destroy it at 0 cost.
  - guscost 6y ago
    Who determines the value of nature? Would you be satisfied letting a market do that, instead of a centralized authority? The fact that “money” is still involved has nothing to do with this argument. Even the Soviet Union issued currency.
    - TT3351 6y ago
      You can actually quantify the specific impact that loss of shoreline has on tourism, fishing etc.
    - oblio 6y ago
      What determines the value of anything? We do it the same way we do with everything else: > The economy of the United States is that of a highly developed country with a mixed economy > A mixed economy is variously defined as an economic system blending elements of a market economy with elements of a planned economy, free markets with state interventionism, or private enterprise with public enterprise. Getting back to your question: We establish a market for this, guided/corrected by state intervention if and when needed.
  - elproxy 6y ago
    Fundamentally capitalism isn't about pricing things, it's about growth and extracting a profit.
- InitialLastName 6y ago
  It's almost like we live in a world that's reeling from the externalities of unfettered global capital. No need to end it, just need to break the tragedy of the commons that makes it so cheap to cause global problems.
  - gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
    "fettered" capital has a long history of ecological disasters too... https://socialist-alliance.org/alliance-voices/ecological-disaster-was-ussr-0 https://socialist-alliance.org/alliance-voices/ecological-di... In fact the above link doesn't even mention the whaling atrocity: https://earthtrust.org/savethewhalesintl/homepage/busting-pirate-whalers/ https://earthtrust.org/savethewhalesintl/homepage/busting-pi... My point being - clearly capitalism isn't the cause of ecological ruin.
    - InitialLastName 6y ago
      Pretending that the only options are two extreme ends of a solution scale isn't operating in good faith. Clearly, capitalism isn't the only possible cause of ecological ruin. In this case, however, it appears to be allowing _everyone involved_ to shirk the responsibility to pay for the damage they cause.
      - gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
        I’m not pretending those are the only options - I’m saying that in a nominally anti-capitalist country, they wrought massive ecological destruction.
- mattmoose21 6y ago
  I see capitalism as a tool in our belt, one that is incredibly powerful but not always the best for a specific job. Like using a hammer on a screw, sure it might work eventually, but its not easy. Though it doesn't mean you should throw away your hammer. this metaphor may have over stayed its welcome.
  - Bakary 6y ago
    Given their effect on how we think and live our lives, economic systems are much more than tools. We adapt ourselves to fit to them rather than using them for our own purposes.
    - mattmoose21 6y ago
      I don't see how that is different from a good tool. I purchased a brad-nailer recently and it has changed the way I work with wood. I now look at woodworking problems completely differently. It's like moving from a text editor to an IDE. The developers of today often have different skills than before based on the tools they have at hand.
      - Bakary 6y ago
        In this analogy, you look at woodworking problems differently and might take on new projects but you still generally pick the same type of problem to work on with your newfound tool and retain the same system of values towards woodworking. With economic systems, almost every action and thought-pattern you take in your daily life are reoriented according to the pressures you are subjected to. Even things that seem completely natural like the concept of a "hobby" or "free time" are massively different to previous eras and patterns of thought.
- standardUser 6y ago
  Funny how few people seem to understand a "mixed" economic system, despite it being virtually the only extant economic system.
ajsk1214 6y ago
Changing the obsession over GDP is one of the ideas put forward in Doughnut Economics. https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/ https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/
golemotron 6y ago
It will be ignored by the market.
- reedf1 6y ago
  Of course it will, markets already ignore gdp. It's for guiding government policy, like gdp.
xoa 6y ago
Do we really need radical economic changes to deal with pollution versus just plain properly using the effective systems we've got by internalizing the cost? One of the fundamental foundations of Free Markets as tools is to have pricing at each step include costs, and I don't agree that failure to do that means the entire thing must be tossed. On the contrary, I suspect it's a lowest common barrier scenario, that if such a relatively simple thing can't be accomplished by societies why would vastly more difficult and ambitious efforts be successful? Really, global warming at least is a pretty much perfect scenario for market solutions, because it's simultaneously a vastly distributed problem and also can be attacked from anywhere in the world (since greenhouse gases naturally disperse evenly worldwide). Just set the price of emitting/extracting a ton of CO2/equivalent at the price of industrially removing it plus some minimum margin (5-7%). Make the latter a ratcheting auction system, completely revenue-neutral to the government, and countries that don't comply internally can have conservative worst case carbon internalization tariffs applied. Then just leave the markets to sort out the best ways to meet that goal. Everything almost instantly becomes carbon neutral, no need for any sort of moralizing about what luxuries are more important, everyone can just see the real prices and decide accordingly where they want to allocate their resources. And as carbon capture becomes large scale and mature, it'll be cheaper to then go negative carbon and reverse the problem. I'm worried a lot of the feelings-based efforts and attempts to mix in huge revolutions are extremely counter productive to dealing with AGW specifically. Yes, there are lots of other major inequalities and systemic problems that desperately need addressing. But AGW is such a huge controversial deal riders should really, really be minimized. Fundamentally asking that economics be honest and properly account for costs shouldn't be as big an ask as a lot of other things, and it genuinely is for all of our benefit too. If measures like "GDP" are distorted based on externalities, the first thing to do should be un-distort them shouldn't it?
- jolux 6y ago
  I think what you’re describing constitutes a “radical economic change” unfortunately. I think it’s still a good idea and overall productive approach to price in externalities as taxes, but there’s pretty significant opposition to this in the US, to take one example.
derriz 6y ago
People have been about GDP as a measure of economic progress for decades. Despite its well known flaws, GDP has some great features - it's relatively easy to measure, has more-or-less a standard agreed and universal method of measurement and it is quantitative. As a result, GDP is widely measured and provides a basis for comparison across history and geography. Many proposed alternatives for GDP (as a measure of economic progress) do not have these features. Nor does the proposal in the linked to article. And so I think (like previous proposals) it's doomed to failure.
- wyldfire 6y ago
  > it's relatively easy to measure, has more-or-less a standard agreed and universal method of measurement and it is quantitative. Our tools have improved so much since we started measuring GDP. Maybe we should raise the bar on metrics: we're bound to find ones that are not-terribly-difficult-to-measure in 2020.
- dfxm12 6y ago
  it's relatively easy to measure, has more-or-less a standard agreed and universal method of measurement and it is quantitative. These are great features, but interestingly absent from this list is whether GDP is accurate and precise as a measure of economic progress.
  - tremon 6y ago
    And whether economic progress is a good proxy for societal progress
  - rmah 6y ago
    Changes in GDP can be used a proxy for economic progress. GDP itself is a measure of economic activity. The underlying assumption is that the overall structure of the economy does not change much from one year to the next. Thus, while an increase in GDP is usually analogous to an increase in overall economic well being, one must keep in mind that GDP is NOT a measure economic progress, wealth, income, happiness, well-being, etc.
- 6y ago
indymike 6y ago
The article is basically saying that "nature" should be more important than GDP. Perhaps that should be. National treasuries are linked to GDP because most taxes are either a consumption or an income tax, both of which are tied to GDP (consumption is paid by a buyer, income tax by a seller, either way, they are parts of GDP). Most arguments that try to say, GDP is unimportant or shouldn't be important are advocating for something that would ultimately shrink GDP, and reduce government incomes. Usually while making no case for anything other than, "making due" or austerity. This usually creates an unsustainable political climate leading to eventual regime change to something that will create economic growth.
pyronik19 6y ago
Anti-capitalist version of "Never waste a good crisis". I choose freedom over this nonsense.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
> "The extreme human and economic cost of the pandemic arise from a failure to manage natural capital. It has proved far more costly than it would have been to protect wild habitats and biodiversity in the first place to avoid such zoonotic spillover." Actually, if you look compared to the past, this pandemic was much less lethal than those of the past. In addition, we have had much better treatment options. Finally, it was modern development that allowed a vaccine to be made in around 1 year. It seems pandemics are more devastating on people with higher natural capital. Take for example the Native Americans exposed to the European diseases. Also, diseases such as malaria and dengue fever, affect nations with more natural capital than more developed nations.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  Covid isn't particularly lethal as viruses go. It's still on its way to killing a couple of million people and doing significant and lasting economic damage. Something with the lethality of smallpox or Spanish Flu would have been far harder to deal with. It's not at all obvious that - say - supermarket food delivery would have survived without a complete breakdown. It actually did break down briefly in the UK for a couple of weeks in March. Luckily supermarket logistics are mostly managed by rational adults and services recovered over the next few weeks. But I have a Covid souvenir online shopping screen grab from March which says: Number of users in queue ahead of you: 229343 Estimated wait time: at least an hour
overlordalex 6y ago
This excerpt from a JFK speech[1] is rather relevant: > But even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction - purpose and dignity - that afflicts us all. Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. [1] https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/the-kennedy-family/robert-f-kennedy/robert-f-kennedy-speeches/remarks-at-the-university-of-kansas-march-18-1968 https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/the-kennedy-famil...
- jka 6y ago
  Nit: RFK rather than JFK, although apparently[1] both speeches shared a quote by George Bernard Shaw: "Some people see things as they are and say, 'why?' I dream things that never were and say, 'why not?'" [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy%27s_remarks_at_the_University_of_Kansas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy%27s_remarks_...
  - TT3351 6y ago
    Another by Shaw, one might say in the startup spirit: "“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
gotoeleven 6y ago
Step 1. Change meaning of GDP to include nature. Step 2. Everyone has to eat bug sandwiches Step 3. Camps for people who refuse to eat bug sandwiches.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  I think you'll find nature will always get the last word on this, no matter what anyone believes politically.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    I don't know. There was a certain Thomas Malthus who was quite convinced that the standard of living in the 1800s was the highest nature would permit, and any country which wanted to avoid famine would need to virtuously restrain itself from seeking to consume more. Maybe it's different this time, and we really are at the limits of what nature will support, but I think we need some explanation of how we know we're not repeating his lack of imagination.
    - elproxy 6y ago
      That's a misread of Malthus: https://twitter.com/g_kallis/status/1285950145553731584?s=20 https://twitter.com/g_kallis/status/1285950145553731584?s=20 And in the meantime the state of science has evolved a bit. We have a better idea today where we stand on planetary boundaries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries
      - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        This Twitter thread is an overcorrection. I've seen people characterize Malthus's position as "Famine is an inevitable part of the natural order of things" or "The current global population is the maximum we can possibly support", and neither of those are true. But he definitely didn't believe that "there are no limits to resources or food production". He claimed that it was absolutely impossible to improve agricultural productivity more than linearly (https://books.google.com/books?id=9-q_SSfE6skC&pg=PA5#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=9-q_SSfE6skC&pg=PA5#v=onep..., p.10), and questioned whether densely settled countries like Japan and China could ever achieve even twice their current productivity (p. 8).
SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
I'm intensely skeptical of this idea of "inclusive wealth" they're pushing for. It sounds a lot like it's intended to be a general and all-inclusive "what should we do" index, constructed to ensure all good changes increase it and all bad changes decrease it. I don't think such an index is possible to construct, and there's a lot of well-intentioned harm you could do if you think you have one.
hcurtiss 6y ago
If a country's GDP falls consistently over time it invariably leads to a very bad time. I don't have a a problem with using government levers to internalize externalities, but if that were to actually cause GDP decline, the whole system breaks apart and mass death follows.
- elproxy 6y ago
  In a productivist system that is... The issue is that the options we have on the table at this point are keeping such a system (possibly not keeping growth going anyway I may add) and we’re pretty much guaranteed mass death or coming up with some alternatives.
  - hcurtiss 6y ago
    I'm not so pessimistic. I think we can say pretty confidently that Ehrlich was wrong. As was Malthus. Human ingenuity counts for something. And I don't understand how an economy works on anything other than a "productivity system."
acd 6y ago
You cannot grow the economy without increasing energy use. For environment and to reduce global warming need to reuse and recycle and use sustainable materials, yet the boost for economy promotes buy and throw. Economist always promote growth, which grows energy use. Further economist is one science which assume a lot how the world works versus in other sciences that have to measure how the world works. I would say that Keynesian economics and the environment is not coherent. In the sense that Keynesian economics lowers the interest rate in an artificial way, which promotes economic growth. This economic growth increases consumption. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics
- hinkley 6y ago
  > You cannot grow the economy without increasing energy use. Yes, you can. It’s called Efficiency. In the narrow sense, we are nowhere near the limits of thermodynamics. But there is also efficiency versus effectiveness. If I make a different product that better satisfices the greater needs, it may have a higher embodied energy costs than the old product, and yet still drive overall efficiency. A thinner saw blade has a smaller kerf, resulting in less raw material turned to dust. And even though the blade contains less steel, that steel is more dear. But I chop down fewer trees or dig up less stone if I use it.
  - elproxy 6y ago
    Not on the right order of magnitude. We need to reduce our material consumption and energy consumption, even keeping them to the present level would not be sufficient, so for what you're talking about we'd need absolute decoupling, and that won't happen through efficiency gains, I'm willing to take that bet any day (and without even invoking Jeavons' paradox). https://eeb.org/decoupling-debunked1/ https://eeb.org/decoupling-debunked1/ PS: this was this week's latest paper that helps comprehend what exponential growth means: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-3010-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-3010-5
auganov 6y ago
Cannot find a simple explanation of what "Ecosystem Accounting" really is. Sounds like a number of disjoint ideas without any specifics. If you want to even start challenging GDP, you need something that can be reliably calculated. I don't think too many people take PPP seriously and that's much easier to calculate, let alone a monstrosity like this.
yodelshady 6y ago
Change my view: GDP is Goodhart's law writ extremely large - and if you think the government is in some way responsible for your lack of material well-being, that complaint is pretty much as valid in times of "good" GDP figures as bad.

111 points by samizdis 6y ago

Natural Capital Accounting for Sustainable Macroeconomic Strategies - UN System of Environmental-Economic Accounting .pdf download: https://seea.un.org/file/17999/download?token=gi33gfel https://seea.un.org/file/17999/download?token=gi33gfel Also referenced in article: Building Forward: Investing in a resilient recovery - Bennett Institute for Public Policy, University of Cambridge https://www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/publications/building-forward-investing-resilient-recovery/ https://www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/publications/building...

Proven 6y ago

That is hilarious. How many people really believe that crap? BNI, we can dooo it! But, like all other attempts at socialism, this one shall fail too.

guscost 6y ago

Funny how the solutions to these “global” problems always involve ending capitalism. Perhaps that’s the real goal?

hhmmmsms 6y ago
It should be.
- guscost 6y ago
  Well you’re more honest than most, and I respect that.
Retric 6y ago
I think it’s more that a single system runs the world so any global issue is assumed to be the fault of that system. Which kind of ignores how every other system also loves oil etc.
golemotron 6y ago
Capitalism can't be ended, it just a word for what people do when they are free to generate and exchange value.
- Miner49er 6y ago
  Not really no, it can be ended by simply changing the idea of land ownership, for example. Land ownership in it's modern form didn't happen in a voluntary way, it was forced through violence.
  - tengbretson 6y ago
    Land ownership in it's modern form is the alternative to constant violence.
    - Miner49er 6y ago
      I was more thinking of the mutualist's idea of land ownership, I don't think it would be any more violent than the current system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutualism_(economic_theory)#Usufruct https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutualism_(economic_theory)#Us... Basically you can only "own" land if you personally actually use it, not just rent it (or do nothing with it).
    - hinkley 6y ago
      There were some alternatives presented but not accepted. In the history of warfare, terrain set boundaries because the defenders had substantial advantage over attackers. I own this side of the river, you own that one. But from an ecological policy standpoint, it’s a disaster. Neither of us own the river, but if I dump shit into it and you have a port at the mouth, then my problems become your problems. The alternative proposal was to divide government along watershed boundaries. Spain and France are still divided by the Pyrenees, because ridge lines are the same boundaries on both maps. But the Rhine and the Rhone say that France is divided from Germany, Italy, and Benelux all wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_watershed#/media/File:Europ%C3%A4ische_Wasserscheiden.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_watershed#/media/File... The river would instead become the middle of a territory, not the edges. My hamlet “owns” the valley it sits in. The county owns the tributary that flows past my hamlet and into another tributary. The state owns the tributary all the way to the Rhone, our nation or a union owns the entire Rhone, and a regional group oversees the Mediterranean, while the UN oversees the oceans in general, when regions don’t agree with themselves or among each other. Anyone who muddies our water is in a direct chain of accountability to everyone down stream. Logistically this is a nightmare. We’ve wiped out any cultures who might have worked this way, and those that remain won’t move political boundaries except under extreme duress, except to expand them (see point 1). But it does have a very Conway’s Law feel to it.
oblio 6y ago
How did you ever come to that conclusion by reading the article?!? If anything, the point of the article is that MORE things should be priced in. Nature's value should be analyzed from a monetary point of view and you shouldn't be allowed to destroy it at 0 cost.
- guscost 6y ago
  Who determines the value of nature? Would you be satisfied letting a market do that, instead of a centralized authority? The fact that “money” is still involved has nothing to do with this argument. Even the Soviet Union issued currency.
  - TT3351 6y ago
    You can actually quantify the specific impact that loss of shoreline has on tourism, fishing etc.
  - oblio 6y ago
    What determines the value of anything? We do it the same way we do with everything else: > The economy of the United States is that of a highly developed country with a mixed economy > A mixed economy is variously defined as an economic system blending elements of a market economy with elements of a planned economy, free markets with state interventionism, or private enterprise with public enterprise. Getting back to your question: We establish a market for this, guided/corrected by state intervention if and when needed.
- elproxy 6y ago
  Fundamentally capitalism isn't about pricing things, it's about growth and extracting a profit.
InitialLastName 6y ago
It's almost like we live in a world that's reeling from the externalities of unfettered global capital. No need to end it, just need to break the tragedy of the commons that makes it so cheap to cause global problems.
- gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
  "fettered" capital has a long history of ecological disasters too... https://socialist-alliance.org/alliance-voices/ecological-disaster-was-ussr-0 https://socialist-alliance.org/alliance-voices/ecological-di... In fact the above link doesn't even mention the whaling atrocity: https://earthtrust.org/savethewhalesintl/homepage/busting-pirate-whalers/ https://earthtrust.org/savethewhalesintl/homepage/busting-pi... My point being - clearly capitalism isn't the cause of ecological ruin.
  - InitialLastName 6y ago
    Pretending that the only options are two extreme ends of a solution scale isn't operating in good faith. Clearly, capitalism isn't the only possible cause of ecological ruin. In this case, however, it appears to be allowing _everyone involved_ to shirk the responsibility to pay for the damage they cause.
    - gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
      I’m not pretending those are the only options - I’m saying that in a nominally anti-capitalist country, they wrought massive ecological destruction.
mattmoose21 6y ago
I see capitalism as a tool in our belt, one that is incredibly powerful but not always the best for a specific job. Like using a hammer on a screw, sure it might work eventually, but its not easy. Though it doesn't mean you should throw away your hammer. this metaphor may have over stayed its welcome.
- Bakary 6y ago
  Given their effect on how we think and live our lives, economic systems are much more than tools. We adapt ourselves to fit to them rather than using them for our own purposes.
  - mattmoose21 6y ago
    I don't see how that is different from a good tool. I purchased a brad-nailer recently and it has changed the way I work with wood. I now look at woodworking problems completely differently. It's like moving from a text editor to an IDE. The developers of today often have different skills than before based on the tools they have at hand.
    - Bakary 6y ago
      In this analogy, you look at woodworking problems differently and might take on new projects but you still generally pick the same type of problem to work on with your newfound tool and retain the same system of values towards woodworking. With economic systems, almost every action and thought-pattern you take in your daily life are reoriented according to the pressures you are subjected to. Even things that seem completely natural like the concept of a "hobby" or "free time" are massively different to previous eras and patterns of thought.
standardUser 6y ago
Funny how few people seem to understand a "mixed" economic system, despite it being virtually the only extant economic system.

ajsk1214 6y ago

Changing the obsession over GDP is one of the ideas put forward in Doughnut Economics. https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/ https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/

golemotron 6y ago

It will be ignored by the market.

reedf1 6y ago
Of course it will, markets already ignore gdp. It's for guiding government policy, like gdp.

xoa 6y ago

Do we really need radical economic changes to deal with pollution versus just plain properly using the effective systems we've got by internalizing the cost? One of the fundamental foundations of Free Markets as tools is to have pricing at each step include costs, and I don't agree that failure to do that means the entire thing must be tossed. On the contrary, I suspect it's a lowest common barrier scenario, that if such a relatively simple thing can't be accomplished by societies why would vastly more difficult and ambitious efforts be successful? Really, global warming at least is a pretty much perfect scenario for market solutions, because it's simultaneously a vastly distributed problem and also can be attacked from anywhere in the world (since greenhouse gases naturally disperse evenly worldwide). Just set the price of emitting/extracting a ton of CO2/equivalent at the price of industrially removing it plus some minimum margin (5-7%). Make the latter a ratcheting auction system, completely revenue-neutral to the government, and countries that don't comply internally can have conservative worst case carbon internalization tariffs applied. Then just leave the markets to sort out the best ways to meet that goal. Everything almost instantly becomes carbon neutral, no need for any sort of moralizing about what luxuries are more important, everyone can just see the real prices and decide accordingly where they want to allocate their resources. And as carbon capture becomes large scale and mature, it'll be cheaper to then go negative carbon and reverse the problem. I'm worried a lot of the feelings-based efforts and attempts to mix in huge revolutions are extremely counter productive to dealing with AGW specifically. Yes, there are lots of other major inequalities and systemic problems that desperately need addressing. But AGW is such a huge controversial deal riders should really, really be minimized. Fundamentally asking that economics be honest and properly account for costs shouldn't be as big an ask as a lot of other things, and it genuinely is for all of our benefit too. If measures like "GDP" are distorted based on externalities, the first thing to do should be un-distort them shouldn't it?

jolux 6y ago
I think what you’re describing constitutes a “radical economic change” unfortunately. I think it’s still a good idea and overall productive approach to price in externalities as taxes, but there’s pretty significant opposition to this in the US, to take one example.

derriz 6y ago

People have been about GDP as a measure of economic progress for decades. Despite its well known flaws, GDP has some great features - it's relatively easy to measure, has more-or-less a standard agreed and universal method of measurement and it is quantitative. As a result, GDP is widely measured and provides a basis for comparison across history and geography. Many proposed alternatives for GDP (as a measure of economic progress) do not have these features. Nor does the proposal in the linked to article. And so I think (like previous proposals) it's doomed to failure.

wyldfire 6y ago
> it's relatively easy to measure, has more-or-less a standard agreed and universal method of measurement and it is quantitative. Our tools have improved so much since we started measuring GDP. Maybe we should raise the bar on metrics: we're bound to find ones that are not-terribly-difficult-to-measure in 2020.
dfxm12 6y ago
it's relatively easy to measure, has more-or-less a standard agreed and universal method of measurement and it is quantitative. These are great features, but interestingly absent from this list is whether GDP is accurate and precise as a measure of economic progress.
- tremon 6y ago
  And whether economic progress is a good proxy for societal progress
- rmah 6y ago
  Changes in GDP can be used a proxy for economic progress. GDP itself is a measure of economic activity. The underlying assumption is that the overall structure of the economy does not change much from one year to the next. Thus, while an increase in GDP is usually analogous to an increase in overall economic well being, one must keep in mind that GDP is NOT a measure economic progress, wealth, income, happiness, well-being, etc.
6y ago

indymike 6y ago

The article is basically saying that "nature" should be more important than GDP. Perhaps that should be. National treasuries are linked to GDP because most taxes are either a consumption or an income tax, both of which are tied to GDP (consumption is paid by a buyer, income tax by a seller, either way, they are parts of GDP). Most arguments that try to say, GDP is unimportant or shouldn't be important are advocating for something that would ultimately shrink GDP, and reduce government incomes. Usually while making no case for anything other than, "making due" or austerity. This usually creates an unsustainable political climate leading to eventual regime change to something that will create economic growth.

pyronik19 6y ago

Anti-capitalist version of "Never waste a good crisis". I choose freedom over this nonsense.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago

> "The extreme human and economic cost of the pandemic arise from a failure to manage natural capital. It has proved far more costly than it would have been to protect wild habitats and biodiversity in the first place to avoid such zoonotic spillover." Actually, if you look compared to the past, this pandemic was much less lethal than those of the past. In addition, we have had much better treatment options. Finally, it was modern development that allowed a vaccine to be made in around 1 year. It seems pandemics are more devastating on people with higher natural capital. Take for example the Native Americans exposed to the European diseases. Also, diseases such as malaria and dengue fever, affect nations with more natural capital than more developed nations.

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
Covid isn't particularly lethal as viruses go. It's still on its way to killing a couple of million people and doing significant and lasting economic damage. Something with the lethality of smallpox or Spanish Flu would have been far harder to deal with. It's not at all obvious that - say - supermarket food delivery would have survived without a complete breakdown. It actually did break down briefly in the UK for a couple of weeks in March. Luckily supermarket logistics are mostly managed by rational adults and services recovered over the next few weeks. But I have a Covid souvenir online shopping screen grab from March which says: Number of users in queue ahead of you: 229343 Estimated wait time: at least an hour

overlordalex 6y ago

This excerpt from a JFK speech[1] is rather relevant: > But even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction - purpose and dignity - that afflicts us all. Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. [1] https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/the-kennedy-family/robert-f-kennedy/robert-f-kennedy-speeches/remarks-at-the-university-of-kansas-march-18-1968 https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/the-kennedy-famil...

jka 6y ago
Nit: RFK rather than JFK, although apparently[1] both speeches shared a quote by George Bernard Shaw: "Some people see things as they are and say, 'why?' I dream things that never were and say, 'why not?'" [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy%27s_remarks_at_the_University_of_Kansas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy%27s_remarks_...
- TT3351 6y ago
  Another by Shaw, one might say in the startup spirit: "“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

gotoeleven 6y ago

Step 1. Change meaning of GDP to include nature. Step 2. Everyone has to eat bug sandwiches Step 3. Camps for people who refuse to eat bug sandwiches.

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
I think you'll find nature will always get the last word on this, no matter what anyone believes politically.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  I don't know. There was a certain Thomas Malthus who was quite convinced that the standard of living in the 1800s was the highest nature would permit, and any country which wanted to avoid famine would need to virtuously restrain itself from seeking to consume more. Maybe it's different this time, and we really are at the limits of what nature will support, but I think we need some explanation of how we know we're not repeating his lack of imagination.
  - elproxy 6y ago
    That's a misread of Malthus: https://twitter.com/g_kallis/status/1285950145553731584?s=20 https://twitter.com/g_kallis/status/1285950145553731584?s=20 And in the meantime the state of science has evolved a bit. We have a better idea today where we stand on planetary boundaries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      This Twitter thread is an overcorrection. I've seen people characterize Malthus's position as "Famine is an inevitable part of the natural order of things" or "The current global population is the maximum we can possibly support", and neither of those are true. But he definitely didn't believe that "there are no limits to resources or food production". He claimed that it was absolutely impossible to improve agricultural productivity more than linearly (https://books.google.com/books?id=9-q_SSfE6skC&pg=PA5#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=9-q_SSfE6skC&pg=PA5#v=onep..., p.10), and questioned whether densely settled countries like Japan and China could ever achieve even twice their current productivity (p. 8).

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago

I'm intensely skeptical of this idea of "inclusive wealth" they're pushing for. It sounds a lot like it's intended to be a general and all-inclusive "what should we do" index, constructed to ensure all good changes increase it and all bad changes decrease it. I don't think such an index is possible to construct, and there's a lot of well-intentioned harm you could do if you think you have one.

hcurtiss 6y ago

If a country's GDP falls consistently over time it invariably leads to a very bad time. I don't have a a problem with using government levers to internalize externalities, but if that were to actually cause GDP decline, the whole system breaks apart and mass death follows.

elproxy 6y ago
In a productivist system that is... The issue is that the options we have on the table at this point are keeping such a system (possibly not keeping growth going anyway I may add) and we’re pretty much guaranteed mass death or coming up with some alternatives.
- hcurtiss 6y ago
  I'm not so pessimistic. I think we can say pretty confidently that Ehrlich was wrong. As was Malthus. Human ingenuity counts for something. And I don't understand how an economy works on anything other than a "productivity system."

acd 6y ago

You cannot grow the economy without increasing energy use. For environment and to reduce global warming need to reuse and recycle and use sustainable materials, yet the boost for economy promotes buy and throw. Economist always promote growth, which grows energy use. Further economist is one science which assume a lot how the world works versus in other sciences that have to measure how the world works. I would say that Keynesian economics and the environment is not coherent. In the sense that Keynesian economics lowers the interest rate in an artificial way, which promotes economic growth. This economic growth increases consumption. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics

hinkley 6y ago
> You cannot grow the economy without increasing energy use. Yes, you can. It’s called Efficiency. In the narrow sense, we are nowhere near the limits of thermodynamics. But there is also efficiency versus effectiveness. If I make a different product that better satisfices the greater needs, it may have a higher embodied energy costs than the old product, and yet still drive overall efficiency. A thinner saw blade has a smaller kerf, resulting in less raw material turned to dust. And even though the blade contains less steel, that steel is more dear. But I chop down fewer trees or dig up less stone if I use it.
- elproxy 6y ago
  Not on the right order of magnitude. We need to reduce our material consumption and energy consumption, even keeping them to the present level would not be sufficient, so for what you're talking about we'd need absolute decoupling, and that won't happen through efficiency gains, I'm willing to take that bet any day (and without even invoking Jeavons' paradox). https://eeb.org/decoupling-debunked1/ https://eeb.org/decoupling-debunked1/ PS: this was this week's latest paper that helps comprehend what exponential growth means: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-3010-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-3010-5

auganov 6y ago

Cannot find a simple explanation of what "Ecosystem Accounting" really is. Sounds like a number of disjoint ideas without any specifics. If you want to even start challenging GDP, you need something that can be reliably calculated. I don't think too many people take PPP seriously and that's much easier to calculate, let alone a monstrosity like this.

yodelshady 6y ago

Change my view: GDP is Goodhart's law writ extremely large - and if you think the government is in some way responsible for your lack of material well-being, that complaint is pretty much as valid in times of "good" GDP figures as bad.