3 ms·
I'd like to offer a differing perspective. Let's say you have a company that makes shoes. You attract investors by growing steadily at 3% a year. At some point,
by softcactus 4y ago
I'd like to offer a differing perspective. Let's say you have a company that makes shoes. You attract investors by growing steadily at 3% a year. At some point, the market becomes crowded or monopolized such that you can no longer grow at 3% by attracting new customers or creating new products. So you start to increase profit by reducing your margins-- using worse materials and worse construction methods. You use planned obsolescence to increase the number of times customers have to buy your products.
Ask yourself, once this inflection point is reached and quality is no longer increasing, does a growth economy make sense? At this terminal stage of economic growth there is an increase in negative externalities in the pursuit of ever-diminishing profits. Much more waste as the shoes are built with worse and worse materials. More exploitation in an attempt to reduce labor costs. Do you think that over the last 30 years, shoes have increased in quality relative to the profit margins of these companies? If the answer is no, then it means we need to figure out a way to deal with terminal-stage industries.
Sure, there are people advocating for everyone to go live like the Amish, but to me degrowth means that if an industry can no longer achieve growth through innovation or increases in productivity, we should acknowledge that that industry has peaked, and not try to squeeze every last dollar out of it through exploitation or waste.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminishing_returns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminishing_returns
- barry-cotter 4y agoWhat does that have to do with the voluntary poverty movement? How ate “degrowth” and allocating resources based on prospects for growth related?
- softcactus 4y agoI'm not sure I understand your question. The point I was trying to make is that moving away from a growth-based economy is inevitable on a planet with finite resources. It doesn't mean we all need to live in mud puddles and eat slop.
- specialist 4y agoI have a very hard time reasoning about this stuff. It seems to me the current choices, dictated by culture, capital, and economics, are a) grow or b) decline. Is a steady state possible? Can a cobbler, independent farmer, carpet cleaning service, or whatever, do their thing for 40+ years? I don't know. Certainly not if they accept outside investment capital, where the lender is expecting an ever greater return on their investment. Certainly not if when there are predators. eg "Your margin is my opportunity" -- Jeff Bezos Certainly not if your gig is mooted by technological progress. Examples of successful steady state ventures would help me (us) think through these issues. But I'm struggling to think of some. Residential plumber (and similar trades)? Automobile mechanic?
- softcactus 4y agoI think that's the big question isn't it? We're now at a point in human history where a few percentage points of annual growth, when compounded, can lead us into an extinction event/societal collapse. The big question of the 21st century is how long can this continue before we have to hit the brakes? The closest thing I can think of is small family-owned ventures. Or on a larger scale perhaps the Cuban cigar industry? It remains labor intensive and is locked to a specific region which means growth prospects are limited. It also exists under a socialist regime so there's no incentive for growth.
- edzillion 4y agoDoesn't Japan have a tradition of long surviving privately held companies? Perhaps there are some lessons there > Back in 2008, a Bank of Korea report found that of 5,586 companies older than 200 years in 41 countries, 56% of them were in Japan. In 2019, there were over 33,000 businesses in Japan over a century old, according to research firm Teikoku Data Bank. The oldest hotel in the world has been open since 705 in Yamanashi and confectioner Ichimonjiya Wasuke has been selling sweet treats in Kyoto since 1000. https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200211-why-are-so-many-old-companies-in-japan https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200211-why-are-so-man... I've often wondered why Japan seems to maintain a culture of high quality artisinal work when the rest of the world is trending toward cheaper, lower quality mass produced goods. Perhaps these are related.
- adrianN 4y agoIt's hard to stop growing because you will be outcompeted by those who continue growing: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TxcRbCYHaeL59aY7E/meditations-on-moloch https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TxcRbCYHaeL59aY7E/meditation...