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morally ambiguous act of consuming What? I mean, you can argue that it’s “morally ambiguous” in the same sense that almost everything is ambiguous, for example

morally ambiguous act of consuming What? I mean, you can argue that it’s “morally ambiguous” in the same sense that almost everything is ambiguous, for example being happy and enjoying an evening with your friends while some people in the world are suffering. But otherwise I would argue that buying a smartphone in a capitalist society is a much less “ambiguous” act than eating meat in a communist society, for example. But in general if one is familiar with the basics of economics, one should understand that for the growth of standard of living (that includes health of your parents, for instance, not just “mindless pleasures”) there needs to be the growth of economy. And for that, consumption is essential. So yeah, consumption of in-good-faith sustainable and environmentally-friendly goods, consumption of local stuff and especially consumption of services is not that ambiguous at all. You contribute to economies going and to communities’ well-being.

ramraj07 5y ago
"if one is familiar with the basics of economics" seems like a fairly large assumption to me here, what economics is a science now? To me it just looks like a working theory to explain the world and some of its fundamental assumptions (that the world is not zero sum) are dubious at best. Focusing on this problem we are discussing, how much can you control the effects of whar you consume other than by controlling how much? You might buy vegan patties in whole foods, but other than the fraction of your money that went to the direct purchase of energy or land for agriculture, the money just gets split between roughly the remainder of the economically contributing population. Thus as long as you consume, you only have partial power over it's good-faith nature, the remainder is controlled by how much the entire population (and businesses) act in good faith in general. If you really want to keep your hands clean then I see no way other than not to spend a single dime more than you absolutely need to for your survival. Everything else is morally ambiguous at best. And this statement that we absolutely need the economy to grow for continued prosperity is preposterous. It's clearly A method of continuing prosperity, and clearly a method that at least works. But it's not proven to be the only method and we better start inventing new ones that don't put all their money on what's basically a glorified Ponzi scheme that everyone's forced to play.
- qsort 5y ago
  > some of its fundamental assumptions (that the world is not zero sum) are dubious at best. ??? The world is very decidedly not zero sum, you don't need economics to tell you that. Zero-sum games are a particular case.
  - ramraj07 5y ago
    Can you elaborate how the world is not zero sum? We live in a clearly round planet thats completely isolated except for a daily dose of sunlight. Again this sunlight isn't going to change. You might argue that it's not zero sum for practical purposes, but to me it looks very decidedly zero sum in many different dimensions (usable land, co2 release, fresh water, many minerals, list goes on).
    - qsort 5y ago
      onus probandi incumbit ei qui dicit, non ei qui negat. But anyway. Utility isn't measured in amount of land used or CO2 emitted or minerals extracted. This is not a Starcraft game. Using land better increases the sum. Making energy production more efficient increases the sum. Zero-sum means that any of my gains is someone else's loss, which is not how any human society has ever worked. A zero-sum world implies that any form of human cooperation that isn't literally war is impossible, which doesn't empirically seem to be the case.
  - throwawayzRUU6f 5y ago
    The economy as a whole is definitely not a zero-sum game, there's plenty of evidence of that. However, that doesn't in any way invalidate the claim that parts of the economy are in fact zero-sum. How large are those zero-sum parts - 10%? 20%? 40%? 80%? Nobody truly knows. Needless to say, the optimal survival strategy in a world of 80% zero-sum is vastly different than in the 10% world. Also, although there's no data to back it up, I believe the zero-sum games as a proportion of our society are growing, and quite rapidly at that. It's a very worrying trend.
- beyondcompute 5y ago
agent008t 5y ago
I understand that there are many ways of looking at it, but this seems backwards to me. Consumption does not meaningfully grow the economy; it shrinks it. Once something is consumed, it is used up, gone, no longer available. The notion of consumption being almost some sort of civic duty that appears to be pushed recently (for example, as a rationale for returning to city offices) seems to me like absolute nonsense.
- mateo411 5y ago
  > I understand that there are many ways of looking at it, but this seems backwards to me. Consumption does not meaningfully grow the economy; it shrinks it. Once something is consumed, it is used up, gone, no longer available. This doesn't seem right to me. If I buy food from the grocery store and eat it, does that shrink the economy? If I enjoy a meal at a restaurant and tip the server, does that shrink the economy? I think both of those actions grow the economy. Both of these actions would grow the country's GDP. Even though I don't agree with the reasoning, it is interesting. Essentially since a material has been used, and is no longer available, now the whole economy is poorer. There are different ways of measuring wealth, and you seem to be endorsing the amount of materials that an economy has determines its total wealth.
  - agent008t 5y ago
    If you buy food and eat it, you have personally used it, perhaps enjoyed it, and consumed it. All the effort, materials etc. that went into making the food and getting it to you - have been 'used up', by you. Now, insofar as the goal of the economy is people's enjoyment of stuff, it served its goal, which is great. But don't think that by consuming the food you did everyone else (the economy) any good - you didn't. You personally benefitted, which is great, and used up the resources - people's time and effort as well as materials that went into it. A better illustration would be you commissioning a yacht for yourself, using it recklessly and sinking it (with its value going to 0 - i.e. you consuming all of the value). How did the economy benefit? Engineers that could have worked on better problems, e.g. automating labour, instead spent their time on your yacht. So did workers. So did all the people to procure the materials. And now all of that is at the bottom of the ocean, benefitting nobody. But you had your fun while consuming this product. GDP is a lousy measure of a success of an economy. The point of an economy is to serve the needs of the people - sometimes it seems that some people believe it is the other way round, and people exist to 'grow the GDP'. If people are happy with consuming less, they can work less - what's so bad about that? Or they can invest instead of consuming - that is, work hard now so that they can work less in the future (or have more/better stuff). It is the investment, production and innovation that grows the economy in a meaningful sense (or getting access to cheaper labour, which does not seem very ethical). Encouraging consumption under the guise of benefitting the economy is absurd.

ramraj07 5y ago

"if one is familiar with the basics of economics" seems like a fairly large assumption to me here, what economics is a science now? To me it just looks like a working theory to explain the world and some of its fundamental assumptions (that the world is not zero sum) are dubious at best. Focusing on this problem we are discussing, how much can you control the effects of whar you consume other than by controlling how much? You might buy vegan patties in whole foods, but other than the fraction of your money that went to the direct purchase of energy or land for agriculture, the money just gets split between roughly the remainder of the economically contributing population. Thus as long as you consume, you only have partial power over it's good-faith nature, the remainder is controlled by how much the entire population (and businesses) act in good faith in general. If you really want to keep your hands clean then I see no way other than not to spend a single dime more than you absolutely need to for your survival. Everything else is morally ambiguous at best. And this statement that we absolutely need the economy to grow for continued prosperity is preposterous. It's clearly A method of continuing prosperity, and clearly a method that at least works. But it's not proven to be the only method and we better start inventing new ones that don't put all their money on what's basically a glorified Ponzi scheme that everyone's forced to play.

qsort 5y ago
> some of its fundamental assumptions (that the world is not zero sum) are dubious at best. ??? The world is very decidedly not zero sum, you don't need economics to tell you that. Zero-sum games are a particular case.
- ramraj07 5y ago
  Can you elaborate how the world is not zero sum? We live in a clearly round planet thats completely isolated except for a daily dose of sunlight. Again this sunlight isn't going to change. You might argue that it's not zero sum for practical purposes, but to me it looks very decidedly zero sum in many different dimensions (usable land, co2 release, fresh water, many minerals, list goes on).
  - qsort 5y ago
    onus probandi incumbit ei qui dicit, non ei qui negat. But anyway. Utility isn't measured in amount of land used or CO2 emitted or minerals extracted. This is not a Starcraft game. Using land better increases the sum. Making energy production more efficient increases the sum. Zero-sum means that any of my gains is someone else's loss, which is not how any human society has ever worked. A zero-sum world implies that any form of human cooperation that isn't literally war is impossible, which doesn't empirically seem to be the case.
- throwawayzRUU6f 5y ago
  The economy as a whole is definitely not a zero-sum game, there's plenty of evidence of that. However, that doesn't in any way invalidate the claim that parts of the economy are in fact zero-sum. How large are those zero-sum parts - 10%? 20%? 40%? 80%? Nobody truly knows. Needless to say, the optimal survival strategy in a world of 80% zero-sum is vastly different than in the 10% world. Also, although there's no data to back it up, I believe the zero-sum games as a proportion of our society are growing, and quite rapidly at that. It's a very worrying trend.
beyondcompute 5y ago

agent008t 5y ago

I understand that there are many ways of looking at it, but this seems backwards to me. Consumption does not meaningfully grow the economy; it shrinks it. Once something is consumed, it is used up, gone, no longer available. The notion of consumption being almost some sort of civic duty that appears to be pushed recently (for example, as a rationale for returning to city offices) seems to me like absolute nonsense.

mateo411 5y ago
> I understand that there are many ways of looking at it, but this seems backwards to me. Consumption does not meaningfully grow the economy; it shrinks it. Once something is consumed, it is used up, gone, no longer available. This doesn't seem right to me. If I buy food from the grocery store and eat it, does that shrink the economy? If I enjoy a meal at a restaurant and tip the server, does that shrink the economy? I think both of those actions grow the economy. Both of these actions would grow the country's GDP. Even though I don't agree with the reasoning, it is interesting. Essentially since a material has been used, and is no longer available, now the whole economy is poorer. There are different ways of measuring wealth, and you seem to be endorsing the amount of materials that an economy has determines its total wealth.
- agent008t 5y ago
  If you buy food and eat it, you have personally used it, perhaps enjoyed it, and consumed it. All the effort, materials etc. that went into making the food and getting it to you - have been 'used up', by you. Now, insofar as the goal of the economy is people's enjoyment of stuff, it served its goal, which is great. But don't think that by consuming the food you did everyone else (the economy) any good - you didn't. You personally benefitted, which is great, and used up the resources - people's time and effort as well as materials that went into it. A better illustration would be you commissioning a yacht for yourself, using it recklessly and sinking it (with its value going to 0 - i.e. you consuming all of the value). How did the economy benefit? Engineers that could have worked on better problems, e.g. automating labour, instead spent their time on your yacht. So did workers. So did all the people to procure the materials. And now all of that is at the bottom of the ocean, benefitting nobody. But you had your fun while consuming this product. GDP is a lousy measure of a success of an economy. The point of an economy is to serve the needs of the people - sometimes it seems that some people believe it is the other way round, and people exist to 'grow the GDP'. If people are happy with consuming less, they can work less - what's so bad about that? Or they can invest instead of consuming - that is, work hard now so that they can work less in the future (or have more/better stuff). It is the investment, production and innovation that grows the economy in a meaningful sense (or getting access to cheaper labour, which does not seem very ethical). Encouraging consumption under the guise of benefitting the economy is absurd.