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Growth only means that there is more economic activity. If you reduce the quality of houses and cars but increase the price and your profit, that's also growth.

Growth only means that there is more economic activity. If you reduce the quality of houses and cars but increase the price and your profit, that's also growth. If you cure cancers, that's bad for growth if you made more profit on treatments than the cure. > Developing a more fuel efficient car is also growth, for example. One of the major economic concerns about electric vehicles is that they have fewer moving parts and maintenance requirements, and might cut auto worker jobs in half.[1] I don't think the article got into numbers of job loss in gas stations, oil production and distribution, etc. So the most fuel efficient car possible may prove to be bad for growth in general. > Economic growth does not imply consuming more resources. Technically true, but in practice, if your product is not 100% recycled and 100% carbon negative to produce, you'll need to extract more of the earth to sell it. I will say that with some industries like meat production potentially moving to vats and away from farmed animals, there is a possibility. But you also have to consider the economic damage of eliminating cattle farmers, farm vets, slaughterhouses, meat packing, etc. [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/electric-vehicles-pose-real-risk-autoworkers-halving-number-people-required-n1060426 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/electric-vehicles-pos...

notanzaiiswear 5y ago
"If you cure cancers, that's bad for growth if you made more profit on treatments than the cure." That is simply wrong. If you cure cancers, you save human lives, which is worth a lot of money. You are basically falling for the broken window fallacy - breaking a window is like somebody getting cancer. You think the economy benefits because lots of doctors, nurse, undertakers and whatnot get business out of it. But you are wrong. "Technically true, but in practice, if your product is not 100% recycled and 100% carbon negative to produce, you'll need to extract more of the earth to sell it." Another fallacy to think the economy only consists of producing things. Also you have to think longterm - sometimes it can be worth it to replace old things with more efficient things, sometimes not.
- nicoffeine 5y ago
  > You think the economy benefits because lots of doctors, nurse, undertakers and whatnot get business out of it. But you are wrong. The country that spends the most GDP per capita has the worst outcome for life expectancy of any industrialized nation[1]. There is no inherent monetary value to a human life in the capitalist system, as the data clearly demonstrates. The most ideal scenario in a for-profit healthcare system is to extract every dollar possible from each individual until just before they die, regardless of how old they may be at that time. America does one better, and debtors can pursue the children of the deceased for certain medical bills in certain states.[2] > Another fallacy to think the economy only consists of producing things You can't consume digital goods without a physical computer. You can't get a service that is magically free of dependencies on infrastructure or electricity. There's certainly a scale of environmental sustainability, but you're always dependent on something in meatspace. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health-expenditure https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health... [2] https://www.thebalance.com/debts-from-the-estate-of-a-deceased-person-3505230 https://www.thebalance.com/debts-from-the-estate-of-a-deceas...
  - notanzaiiswear 5y ago
    "The country that spends the most GDP per capita has the worst outcome for life expectancy of any industrialized nation" This does not imply the quality of the medical services is to blame. One issue of the US could be that people have too much surplus (the US is the richest country of the world), so they can eat a lot and get fat (they also have cars and don't have to exercise). Obesity then shortens their lifespans. "There is no inherent monetary value to a human life in the capitalist system, as the data clearly demonstrates" That's just stupid. I bet even the US spends a lot of money on protecting lives, for example install bridges and traffic lights. There is an established science to calculating the value a society assigns to human lives. "You can't consume digital goods without a physical computer. You can't get a service that is magically free of dependencies on infrastructure or electricity. " If a doctor saves your life, you have "consumed" his service. Maybe saving more lives would consume marginally more resources. But that also is not a given, as for example the production of medication can become more efficient. Look at the price of penicillin, or at artificial insulin. Iirc in the beginning insulin was extracted from tons of animal livers, a very wasteful process that has been replaced with something much more efficient. So now you can save more diabetic people at a fraction of the energy. http://www.madehow.com/Volume-7/Insulin.html http://www.madehow.com/Volume-7/Insulin.html

notanzaiiswear 5y ago

"If you cure cancers, that's bad for growth if you made more profit on treatments than the cure." That is simply wrong. If you cure cancers, you save human lives, which is worth a lot of money. You are basically falling for the broken window fallacy - breaking a window is like somebody getting cancer. You think the economy benefits because lots of doctors, nurse, undertakers and whatnot get business out of it. But you are wrong. "Technically true, but in practice, if your product is not 100% recycled and 100% carbon negative to produce, you'll need to extract more of the earth to sell it." Another fallacy to think the economy only consists of producing things. Also you have to think longterm - sometimes it can be worth it to replace old things with more efficient things, sometimes not.

nicoffeine 5y ago
> You think the economy benefits because lots of doctors, nurse, undertakers and whatnot get business out of it. But you are wrong. The country that spends the most GDP per capita has the worst outcome for life expectancy of any industrialized nation[1]. There is no inherent monetary value to a human life in the capitalist system, as the data clearly demonstrates. The most ideal scenario in a for-profit healthcare system is to extract every dollar possible from each individual until just before they die, regardless of how old they may be at that time. America does one better, and debtors can pursue the children of the deceased for certain medical bills in certain states.[2] > Another fallacy to think the economy only consists of producing things You can't consume digital goods without a physical computer. You can't get a service that is magically free of dependencies on infrastructure or electricity. There's certainly a scale of environmental sustainability, but you're always dependent on something in meatspace. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health-expenditure https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health... [2] https://www.thebalance.com/debts-from-the-estate-of-a-deceased-person-3505230 https://www.thebalance.com/debts-from-the-estate-of-a-deceas...
- notanzaiiswear 5y ago
  "The country that spends the most GDP per capita has the worst outcome for life expectancy of any industrialized nation" This does not imply the quality of the medical services is to blame. One issue of the US could be that people have too much surplus (the US is the richest country of the world), so they can eat a lot and get fat (they also have cars and don't have to exercise). Obesity then shortens their lifespans. "There is no inherent monetary value to a human life in the capitalist system, as the data clearly demonstrates" That's just stupid. I bet even the US spends a lot of money on protecting lives, for example install bridges and traffic lights. There is an established science to calculating the value a society assigns to human lives. "You can't consume digital goods without a physical computer. You can't get a service that is magically free of dependencies on infrastructure or electricity. " If a doctor saves your life, you have "consumed" his service. Maybe saving more lives would consume marginally more resources. But that also is not a given, as for example the production of medication can become more efficient. Look at the price of penicillin, or at artificial insulin. Iirc in the beginning insulin was extracted from tons of animal livers, a very wasteful process that has been replaced with something much more efficient. So now you can save more diabetic people at a fraction of the energy. http://www.madehow.com/Volume-7/Insulin.html http://www.madehow.com/Volume-7/Insulin.html