3 ms·

Notably this article doesn't mention water, and doesn't discuss land much other than a single line about Malthus and farmland. Then there's this assertion: >

Notably this article doesn't mention water, and doesn't discuss land much other than a single line about Malthus and farmland. Then there's this assertion: > "But the deeper reason is that there’s really no such thing as a natural resource. All resources are artificial. They are a product of technology. And economic growth is ultimately driven, not by material resources, but by ideas." Arable land - i.e. topsoil - is not a product of technology, it's a product of geology and biology, namely the erosion of rocks and the accumulation of biomass. Yes, one can indeed make an artificial soil-like system (hydroponics), but this in turn requires raw materials (typically clay pebbles, plastic pots, plastic pipes, plus a complete nutrient mixture of simple chemicals) which are in turn made from limited material resources. Similarly, fresh water is a limited natural resource, and in the absence of water, human populations do not grow. Just look at a population density map of the United States - note how few people live in the desert zones. Again, there are technological approaches: desalinate ocean water, pump it to the desert, and grow food hydroponically. This requires an investment of material resources and energy. I get this feeling that economimsts who makes these claims about infinite growth have simply never studied the conservation of energy, or the conservation of mass. Every source I've looked at puts the minimal land area for food production for one human at about two hectares with traditional agriculture, and maybe half that with modern industrial double cropping methods. US farmland is about 166 million hectares, so that sort of fits, as the US population is about 330 million; exports of food also appear to match imports of food so that's a wash. So clearly there are limits on the growth of the human population on a finite planet. If the question is, "can you have infinite economic growth with a fixed human population", well, whatever discipline makes claims like that is one entirely divorced from physical reality. Inflation maybe?

munk-a 4y ago
While the world has numerous issues that need to be solved - I think we've, for the time being, been able to classify exhaustion of materials as a problem we won't have to deal with for a long time. The earth has a lot of matter in it - it is absurdly massive - technological advances in replicating necessary raw resources (and your topsoil one is particularly good to demonstrate this) have pushed us from looking at an absolute limit to instead viewing the perpetual creation of new components as a steadily rising economic burden. One raw resource that is actually quickly depleting is river sand for concrete - our current consumption trends are extremely scary here and some governments (CoughIndiaCough) are doing an absolutely terrible job at properly enforcing externality costs on extraction leading to mass habitat destruction. But, if we suddenly found ourselves without easy access to rough river sand we do have alternative construction materials including processed wood in various forms that can be extremely resilient. I don't really like the wording of the article in defining all resources as artificial - but the natural components driving the economy are quite abundant.
- walleeee 4y ago
  > the natural components driving the economy are quite abundant defined narrowly, yes, most of them, but consider ecosystem services as equally important economic inputs and the picture looks very different on this view things like stable weather patterns etc are also natural components driving the economy, and we are rapidly rendering this and many others scarce
marvin 4y ago
> Similarly, fresh water is a limited natural resource, and in the absence of water, human populations do not grow This isn't really true any longer. Desalinating seawater costs about $1 per 1000 liters. You need a relatively prosperous country to be able to afford that, of course, but an industrialized economy with reasonable levels of corruption is perfectly capable of desalinating enough water to make civilization work. It's practically tautological that there's limits to population size in a finite world, and that growth cannot be infinite in a finite universe. But I think people often frame this question the wrong way. It's a bit of a straw man. Economic growth is proportional to the amount of problems solved that humans care about. And the cost of the solution, of course, in terms of human effort. It isn't necessarily proportional to the amount of physical resources consumed or bound. It's a reasonable assumption that there's generally a positive correlation, but the function and coefficients don't have to be linear. That leaves a lot of headroom. People should rather think about infinite (arbitrary!!) economic growth in terms of what can be done to make the lives of humans better, on average. Even in the Western world, we are so far away from the hedonistic limits that it's ridiculous. It's trivial to imagine a world with no illness, perfect health, indefinite lifespan, very high freedom and low repression, no seriously bothersome and mandatory chores for anyone and so on. What can be done to get closer to such a world? So much. The limit isn't defined by how polluting our cars can be, or how much beef we're able to produce. Many of these arguments collapse into the completely unimaginative.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  "Desalinating seawater costs about $1 per 1000 liters..." Ah... so if I'm in the middle of the Mojave Desert, and have no water, but I do have a dollar in my pocket, someone will deliver me 1000 liters of water, sourced from desalination of Pacific Ocean water? How much energy will that take?
  - marvin 4y ago
    I imagine that if civilization reaches a developmental limit in access to natural fresh water, migration will happen to somewhat developed coastal areas rather than the Mojave Desert.
  - 4y ago
vineyardmike 4y ago
> Every source I've looked at puts the minimal land area for food production for one human at about two hectares with traditional agriculture, and maybe half that with modern industrial double cropping methods. You yourself said that technology doubled the output with the same input. The whole articles point is that tech enables us to get more from what we have, to support growth. Maybe enough smart Americans will find a way to double it again, so the US can support 660M people with our 166 Hectares. Maybe then we’ll support 1.2B after a new invention! Maybe they’ll discover a way to grow plants with salt water allowing use of the ocean while saving the freshwater. Maybe then they’ll find a way to make hydroponics less material intense, and they’ll build floating farms on the ocean, giving us more “land”. Given enough smart people, there’s so much more room for growth. That’s the point. We’re not at the breaking point yet.

munk-a 4y ago

While the world has numerous issues that need to be solved - I think we've, for the time being, been able to classify exhaustion of materials as a problem we won't have to deal with for a long time. The earth has a lot of matter in it - it is absurdly massive - technological advances in replicating necessary raw resources (and your topsoil one is particularly good to demonstrate this) have pushed us from looking at an absolute limit to instead viewing the perpetual creation of new components as a steadily rising economic burden. One raw resource that is actually quickly depleting is river sand for concrete - our current consumption trends are extremely scary here and some governments (CoughIndiaCough) are doing an absolutely terrible job at properly enforcing externality costs on extraction leading to mass habitat destruction. But, if we suddenly found ourselves without easy access to rough river sand we do have alternative construction materials including processed wood in various forms that can be extremely resilient. I don't really like the wording of the article in defining all resources as artificial - but the natural components driving the economy are quite abundant.

walleeee 4y ago
> the natural components driving the economy are quite abundant defined narrowly, yes, most of them, but consider ecosystem services as equally important economic inputs and the picture looks very different on this view things like stable weather patterns etc are also natural components driving the economy, and we are rapidly rendering this and many others scarce

marvin 4y ago

> Similarly, fresh water is a limited natural resource, and in the absence of water, human populations do not grow This isn't really true any longer. Desalinating seawater costs about $1 per 1000 liters. You need a relatively prosperous country to be able to afford that, of course, but an industrialized economy with reasonable levels of corruption is perfectly capable of desalinating enough water to make civilization work. It's practically tautological that there's limits to population size in a finite world, and that growth cannot be infinite in a finite universe. But I think people often frame this question the wrong way. It's a bit of a straw man. Economic growth is proportional to the amount of problems solved that humans care about. And the cost of the solution, of course, in terms of human effort. It isn't necessarily proportional to the amount of physical resources consumed or bound. It's a reasonable assumption that there's generally a positive correlation, but the function and coefficients don't have to be linear. That leaves a lot of headroom. People should rather think about infinite (arbitrary!!) economic growth in terms of what can be done to make the lives of humans better, on average. Even in the Western world, we are so far away from the hedonistic limits that it's ridiculous. It's trivial to imagine a world with no illness, perfect health, indefinite lifespan, very high freedom and low repression, no seriously bothersome and mandatory chores for anyone and so on. What can be done to get closer to such a world? So much. The limit isn't defined by how polluting our cars can be, or how much beef we're able to produce. Many of these arguments collapse into the completely unimaginative.

photochemsyn 4y ago
"Desalinating seawater costs about $1 per 1000 liters..." Ah... so if I'm in the middle of the Mojave Desert, and have no water, but I do have a dollar in my pocket, someone will deliver me 1000 liters of water, sourced from desalination of Pacific Ocean water? How much energy will that take?
- marvin 4y ago
  I imagine that if civilization reaches a developmental limit in access to natural fresh water, migration will happen to somewhat developed coastal areas rather than the Mojave Desert.
- 4y ago

vineyardmike 4y ago

> Every source I've looked at puts the minimal land area for food production for one human at about two hectares with traditional agriculture, and maybe half that with modern industrial double cropping methods. You yourself said that technology doubled the output with the same input. The whole articles point is that tech enables us to get more from what we have, to support growth. Maybe enough smart Americans will find a way to double it again, so the US can support 660M people with our 166 Hectares. Maybe then we’ll support 1.2B after a new invention! Maybe they’ll discover a way to grow plants with salt water allowing use of the ocean while saving the freshwater. Maybe then they’ll find a way to make hydroponics less material intense, and they’ll build floating farms on the ocean, giving us more “land”. Given enough smart people, there’s so much more room for growth. That’s the point. We’re not at the breaking point yet.