6 ms·

"We have a finite environment—the planet. Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist." David

by hh3k0 6y ago

"We have a finite environment—the planet. Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist." David Attenborough

qazpot 6y ago
SpaceX is trying to solve the finite environment problem.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  That's good. It buys us more time. But we need to ease up on the exponent anyway.
- _qulr 6y ago
  Is it? Earth is, or was, extremely hospitable to humans. Mars is, and will be for a very long time, extremely inhospitable to humans. If we can't even take care of the Earth, what hope is there of taking care of Mars? The more likely scenario is that greedy Martians destroy their own Martian environment very quickly and make themselves extinct. It's much easier to destroy Mars (for human life) than it is to destroy Earth. We need to focus on sustainability, otherwise Mars will also be unsustainable. Just wait until oxygen itself becomes a commodity, like in the film "Total Recall". Except unlike in film, there's no deus ex machina native ancient technology to suddenly make the entire atmosphere breathable.
  - tomatotomato37 6y ago
    Your mistake is thinking that the plan is to move humanity away into space, instead of bringing space (or more accurately mineral-rich asteroids and solar energy) to humanity. That way we can just externalize all industry & pollution to a lagrange point somewhere and let the earth take care of healing itself.
    - shafyy 6y ago
      If we continue like this, humans will be long gone before we reach that point (IF we reach that point at all).
- rapnie 6y ago
  Given the timescale of building an endurable self-sustaining civilization on another planet, and the speed with which we are destructing our own environment for humans to live in (and capability to provide high-tech support for this space adventure), my guess is that this is a pipe dream. And that the Mars thing is a nice rich man's hobby, scientists playground, and bread-and-games diversion tactic for the rest of mankind.
- titzer 6y ago
  Taken to its absolute limit, space travel is limited by the speed of light. So when you get to that limit, you are limited by space, as you can only expand in a sphere--i.e. O(n^3). Space is so enormous that even the tiniest exponential will overrun O(n^3) before even getting out of our galaxy. Result. That exponential is going to flatten out and look more like a sigmoid.
Matticus_Rex 6y ago
One thing this argument misses is that much of economic growth comes not from increasing consumption, but from making that consumption more efficient.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  The problem isn't solved while consumption of matter and energy grows exponentially.
- mromanuk 6y ago
  When efficiency is achieved, the economic growth is later converted to "everybody should use this new efficiency". And more importantly, efficiency in the consumption is not translated in efficiency in the use of resources (which is the important one): transporting goods by horse vs faster transportation with combustion engines.
- A12-B 6y ago
  But the result is more consumption, because you spend the money saved on inefficiency on more consumption. If coca cola produces 1m bottles of coke in 1 year and finds a way to produce that many in half a year, they're not going to produce 1m bottles a year anymore, they're going to produce 2m bottles a year.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    I know it is besides the point, but just to illustrate the scale of Coca-Cola, they produce 108 billion bottles per year.
  - Matticus_Rex 6y ago
    Probably not, no. They're already selling as many as they can at the current price -- there's no shortage of Coke out there. They might lower the price and thereby sell more (though they're unlikely to sell twice as much without more than halving the price), but that's not necessarily a bad thing; it means people are having to do less to get the same amount of Coke.
- 6y ago
belval 6y ago
That quote always bugged me because it disregards that our economic growth is not really tethered to natural resources. Sure a company like Coca-Cola can only grow so much before it effectively covers the entire planet, but they can still reduce costs to improve their profit margins and displace existing drinks from other companies with a new product. The cloud as a business is mostly about building products that address ever changing needs and making the clients more dependent on said products. There are no environmental restrictions here you could grow for as long as user needs grow.
- revax 6y ago
  >That quote always bugged me because it disregards that our economic growth is not really tethered to natural resources. I really think the opposite is true, what makes you think that?
  - sitkack 6y ago
    The only growth that could be tied to non-natural resources is something like the combinatoric possibilities between a set of options. Everything else links back to matter. Even my "internet points" on HN are tied back to the food I had to eat to type in that sweet sweet snark. This notion that economics isn't ultimately a resource scheduling theory that falls out of a base set of behaviors (commerce). If we removed choice, we get operations research. Capitalism is akin to wanting to cook a hotdog on a campfire and burning down an entire house to do it.
- heymijo 6y ago
  “There are no environmental restrictions here.” Cloud is still computing. Computers with a finite life that need to be produced, from natural resources. Computing that needs to be powered and cooled. Those have environmental impacts and very much align with OPs quote.
- baron_harkonnen 6y ago
  This is a wildly out of touch view of how economic growth works. First off, where do you think "the cloud" comes from? Even if we assume 100% renewable grid (which is currently impossible) the computers that run the cloud require an enormous amount raw materials and labor to manufacture. But far more importantly, where does your clients capital come from? The greatest accounting trick capitalism every pulled was to get people to think of individual parts of a system rather then the entire thing. There's real magical thinking involved to think that capital just appears in these clients at now real cost. At some point labor and resource exploitation is required to create economic value which is then passed around throughout the system. Just because you can skim off some surplus value selling some SaaS product in the cloud doesn't mean that the value you are paid with doesn't come from the exploitation of resources. Finally, you can easily dispel this myth by looking at the current state of our global environment. Show me any period of economic growth that isn't also tied to increased energy and resource usage.
joehx2 6y ago
You can have unending growth even with finite resources. It's Zeno's Paradox - if you have use half of the resources, and then half of the remaining, and then half of that remaining, you could continue forever.

by hh3k0 6y ago

"We have a finite environment—the planet. Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist." David Attenborough

qazpot 6y ago

SpaceX is trying to solve the finite environment problem.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
That's good. It buys us more time. But we need to ease up on the exponent anyway.
_qulr 6y ago
Is it? Earth is, or was, extremely hospitable to humans. Mars is, and will be for a very long time, extremely inhospitable to humans. If we can't even take care of the Earth, what hope is there of taking care of Mars? The more likely scenario is that greedy Martians destroy their own Martian environment very quickly and make themselves extinct. It's much easier to destroy Mars (for human life) than it is to destroy Earth. We need to focus on sustainability, otherwise Mars will also be unsustainable. Just wait until oxygen itself becomes a commodity, like in the film "Total Recall". Except unlike in film, there's no deus ex machina native ancient technology to suddenly make the entire atmosphere breathable.
- tomatotomato37 6y ago
  Your mistake is thinking that the plan is to move humanity away into space, instead of bringing space (or more accurately mineral-rich asteroids and solar energy) to humanity. That way we can just externalize all industry & pollution to a lagrange point somewhere and let the earth take care of healing itself.
  - shafyy 6y ago
    If we continue like this, humans will be long gone before we reach that point (IF we reach that point at all).
rapnie 6y ago
Given the timescale of building an endurable self-sustaining civilization on another planet, and the speed with which we are destructing our own environment for humans to live in (and capability to provide high-tech support for this space adventure), my guess is that this is a pipe dream. And that the Mars thing is a nice rich man's hobby, scientists playground, and bread-and-games diversion tactic for the rest of mankind.
titzer 6y ago
Taken to its absolute limit, space travel is limited by the speed of light. So when you get to that limit, you are limited by space, as you can only expand in a sphere--i.e. O(n^3). Space is so enormous that even the tiniest exponential will overrun O(n^3) before even getting out of our galaxy. Result. That exponential is going to flatten out and look more like a sigmoid.

Matticus_Rex 6y ago

One thing this argument misses is that much of economic growth comes not from increasing consumption, but from making that consumption more efficient.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
The problem isn't solved while consumption of matter and energy grows exponentially.
mromanuk 6y ago
When efficiency is achieved, the economic growth is later converted to "everybody should use this new efficiency". And more importantly, efficiency in the consumption is not translated in efficiency in the use of resources (which is the important one): transporting goods by horse vs faster transportation with combustion engines.
A12-B 6y ago
But the result is more consumption, because you spend the money saved on inefficiency on more consumption. If coca cola produces 1m bottles of coke in 1 year and finds a way to produce that many in half a year, they're not going to produce 1m bottles a year anymore, they're going to produce 2m bottles a year.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  I know it is besides the point, but just to illustrate the scale of Coca-Cola, they produce 108 billion bottles per year.
- Matticus_Rex 6y ago
  Probably not, no. They're already selling as many as they can at the current price -- there's no shortage of Coke out there. They might lower the price and thereby sell more (though they're unlikely to sell twice as much without more than halving the price), but that's not necessarily a bad thing; it means people are having to do less to get the same amount of Coke.
6y ago

belval 6y ago

That quote always bugged me because it disregards that our economic growth is not really tethered to natural resources. Sure a company like Coca-Cola can only grow so much before it effectively covers the entire planet, but they can still reduce costs to improve their profit margins and displace existing drinks from other companies with a new product. The cloud as a business is mostly about building products that address ever changing needs and making the clients more dependent on said products. There are no environmental restrictions here you could grow for as long as user needs grow.

revax 6y ago
>That quote always bugged me because it disregards that our economic growth is not really tethered to natural resources. I really think the opposite is true, what makes you think that?
- sitkack 6y ago
  The only growth that could be tied to non-natural resources is something like the combinatoric possibilities between a set of options. Everything else links back to matter. Even my "internet points" on HN are tied back to the food I had to eat to type in that sweet sweet snark. This notion that economics isn't ultimately a resource scheduling theory that falls out of a base set of behaviors (commerce). If we removed choice, we get operations research. Capitalism is akin to wanting to cook a hotdog on a campfire and burning down an entire house to do it.
heymijo 6y ago
“There are no environmental restrictions here.” Cloud is still computing. Computers with a finite life that need to be produced, from natural resources. Computing that needs to be powered and cooled. Those have environmental impacts and very much align with OPs quote.
baron_harkonnen 6y ago
This is a wildly out of touch view of how economic growth works. First off, where do you think "the cloud" comes from? Even if we assume 100% renewable grid (which is currently impossible) the computers that run the cloud require an enormous amount raw materials and labor to manufacture. But far more importantly, where does your clients capital come from? The greatest accounting trick capitalism every pulled was to get people to think of individual parts of a system rather then the entire thing. There's real magical thinking involved to think that capital just appears in these clients at now real cost. At some point labor and resource exploitation is required to create economic value which is then passed around throughout the system. Just because you can skim off some surplus value selling some SaaS product in the cloud doesn't mean that the value you are paid with doesn't come from the exploitation of resources. Finally, you can easily dispel this myth by looking at the current state of our global environment. Show me any period of economic growth that isn't also tied to increased energy and resource usage.

joehx2 6y ago

You can have unending growth even with finite resources. It's Zeno's Paradox - if you have use half of the resources, and then half of the remaining, and then half of that remaining, you could continue forever.