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Technology and innovation are also much more interesting that squabbling about government policy and income redistribution schemes. Let's find ways to drive cos

Technology and innovation are also much more interesting that squabbling about government policy and income redistribution schemes. Let's find ways to drive costs to zero so everyone on the planet (to the greatest extent possible) can live like today's billionaires without causing any damage to the environment.

jacquesm 4y ago
The interesting thing is that we were effectively there 50 years ago: were (the rich West) were living like the kings of yesteryear (or even better in many cases). But we didn't exactly stop wanting stuff and further improvements, hedonic adaptation pretty much guarantees that no matter what our position we will always want more so how this could happen without damage to the environment is a mystery to me. The environment doesn't vote, it doesn't lobby and every institution that claims to do that is first and foremost in the business of keeping itself alive.
- kbutler 4y ago
  50 years ago, half the population of the world lived in extreme poverty. This percentage and the total number of people in extreme poverty have made extreme declines since that time. https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty This is one of the great achievements of humankind, and while we have much more to do, it's good to recognize the progress we've made. And while I'm also skeptical about the amount of resources organizations use to maintain themselves, any organization or organism or community that does not have a primary goal of keeping itself alive will in short order cease to exist. If you think your organization has a long-term beneficial purpose, you better design it to be self-sustaining, and with a large margin of safety.
- carapace 4y ago
  Vaclav Smil says something like "Would it be so bad, going back to a 1960's level of energy consumption?" in the context of energy usages (and therefore roughly CO2 emissions) of Western and particularly American lifestyles. (I'm paraphrasing: Václav Smil at Driva Climate Investment Meeting 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkj_91IJVBk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkj_91IJVBk ) > hedonic adaptation pretty much guarantees that no matter what our position we will always want more There's an Indian holy man, now deceased, who said we need to learn to practice "ceiling on desires". It may be that only the expression of our higher values can clear this logjam? > so how this could happen without damage to the environment One thought that occurs to me is if we could create a kind of split-level economy. There would be a real-world ecologically-informed economy that met basic needs as efficiently as possible. On top of that substrate we would have a computer-mediated virtual economy where there were no (or very few) effective limits on hedonistic adaptation (or status-symbol seeking, or whatever). It seems like we're seeing something like that emerge "naturally" anyway, eh? NFT & "crypto", in-game purchases, whatever FB's metaverse becomes, etc. Eventually, people might submit voluntarily to enter "the Matrix": your physical body kept perfectly safe, and the only limits are your imagination? Not my cup of tea, but not insane on the face of it, eh?
dbingham 4y ago
Nothing happens with out squabbling about government policy. Government policy literally defines the rules of the market. It is government policy that allows investors to ask for equity ownership. Government policy defines the legal shapes organizations and business can take. Government policy defines the very existence of property (personal and otherwise). You cannot remove government policy from the equation. It's like trying to solve a problem with code while removing the computer. The code runs on the computer, with out it, it's meaningless.
- BobbyJo 4y ago
  While I agree with your point to a degree, I think you are taking it to an extreme. Government policy may lay ground rules, like private property, but 99% of any given agreement, like equity for cash, is precedence and preference, not legislative decision. The government could stop passing any new laws and things would chug along fine for quite a while. I think that was the parent's point. We don't need anything new out g Washington, as driving prices to 0 is already pretty strongly incentivized.
  - dbingham 4y ago
    Driving prices to 0 is not incentivized at all, in fact quite the opposite. The current system incentivizes driving prices as high as humanly possible in order to allow the investors to take get as much of a return as they can. That's part of what's driving inflation. And that's what inevitably happens when sectors consolidate towards monopoly or small enough oligopolies where company's convergent interests can align and they start competing on things other than price. This is part of what we see driving current inflation. There's a lot of talk about how the labor market is driving inflation, or pandemic shocks are, and both of those are true. But corporate profits are still at record highs and rising. If supply shocks and labor prices were truly the main driver, then corporate profits should be near zero. They're not. Companies are taking advantage of the fact that inflation is already going up and that they have convenient scapegoats to raise their prices far more than they need to in order to cover labor increases or increase supply. There are reports of executives bragging about this to their boards. [1] Edit: To follow up, these ideas that the Capitalist free market system and competition incentivize innovation aren't actually founded in empirical research of any kind. It's pure theorizing and it's theorizing based on a house of cards of bad assumptions. One can zoom out and look at history and see that the standard of living for people has steadily increased, and humans have steadily innovated. But there's no empirical evidence to support the idea that it's a capitalist free market driving those advances. Yes they advanced further in free societies, most of which have up until now employed some version of a Capitalist free market linked to more or less social democracy. But you could just as readily theorize that those advances are just down to an innate desire in people to make the world a better place for everyone, an innate desire to innovate. And that authoritarian societies squash their opportunities to do so, while freer societies leave enough opportunities open that they enable them. But they don't necessarily add incentives for that innovation in addition to the innate incentives. [1]https://www.businessinsider.com/big-companies-keep-bragging-to-investors-about-price-hikes-2021-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/big-companies-keep-bragging-...
geysersam 4y ago
More interesting perhaps, but less effective. To get most benefit from our technical sophistication we need democratic decision making.

jacquesm 4y ago

The interesting thing is that we were effectively there 50 years ago: were (the rich West) were living like the kings of yesteryear (or even better in many cases). But we didn't exactly stop wanting stuff and further improvements, hedonic adaptation pretty much guarantees that no matter what our position we will always want more so how this could happen without damage to the environment is a mystery to me. The environment doesn't vote, it doesn't lobby and every institution that claims to do that is first and foremost in the business of keeping itself alive.

kbutler 4y ago
50 years ago, half the population of the world lived in extreme poverty. This percentage and the total number of people in extreme poverty have made extreme declines since that time. https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty This is one of the great achievements of humankind, and while we have much more to do, it's good to recognize the progress we've made. And while I'm also skeptical about the amount of resources organizations use to maintain themselves, any organization or organism or community that does not have a primary goal of keeping itself alive will in short order cease to exist. If you think your organization has a long-term beneficial purpose, you better design it to be self-sustaining, and with a large margin of safety.
carapace 4y ago
Vaclav Smil says something like "Would it be so bad, going back to a 1960's level of energy consumption?" in the context of energy usages (and therefore roughly CO2 emissions) of Western and particularly American lifestyles. (I'm paraphrasing: Václav Smil at Driva Climate Investment Meeting 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkj_91IJVBk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkj_91IJVBk ) > hedonic adaptation pretty much guarantees that no matter what our position we will always want more There's an Indian holy man, now deceased, who said we need to learn to practice "ceiling on desires". It may be that only the expression of our higher values can clear this logjam? > so how this could happen without damage to the environment One thought that occurs to me is if we could create a kind of split-level economy. There would be a real-world ecologically-informed economy that met basic needs as efficiently as possible. On top of that substrate we would have a computer-mediated virtual economy where there were no (or very few) effective limits on hedonistic adaptation (or status-symbol seeking, or whatever). It seems like we're seeing something like that emerge "naturally" anyway, eh? NFT & "crypto", in-game purchases, whatever FB's metaverse becomes, etc. Eventually, people might submit voluntarily to enter "the Matrix": your physical body kept perfectly safe, and the only limits are your imagination? Not my cup of tea, but not insane on the face of it, eh?

dbingham 4y ago

Nothing happens with out squabbling about government policy. Government policy literally defines the rules of the market. It is government policy that allows investors to ask for equity ownership. Government policy defines the legal shapes organizations and business can take. Government policy defines the very existence of property (personal and otherwise). You cannot remove government policy from the equation. It's like trying to solve a problem with code while removing the computer. The code runs on the computer, with out it, it's meaningless.

BobbyJo 4y ago
While I agree with your point to a degree, I think you are taking it to an extreme. Government policy may lay ground rules, like private property, but 99% of any given agreement, like equity for cash, is precedence and preference, not legislative decision. The government could stop passing any new laws and things would chug along fine for quite a while. I think that was the parent's point. We don't need anything new out g Washington, as driving prices to 0 is already pretty strongly incentivized.
- dbingham 4y ago
  Driving prices to 0 is not incentivized at all, in fact quite the opposite. The current system incentivizes driving prices as high as humanly possible in order to allow the investors to take get as much of a return as they can. That's part of what's driving inflation. And that's what inevitably happens when sectors consolidate towards monopoly or small enough oligopolies where company's convergent interests can align and they start competing on things other than price. This is part of what we see driving current inflation. There's a lot of talk about how the labor market is driving inflation, or pandemic shocks are, and both of those are true. But corporate profits are still at record highs and rising. If supply shocks and labor prices were truly the main driver, then corporate profits should be near zero. They're not. Companies are taking advantage of the fact that inflation is already going up and that they have convenient scapegoats to raise their prices far more than they need to in order to cover labor increases or increase supply. There are reports of executives bragging about this to their boards. [1] Edit: To follow up, these ideas that the Capitalist free market system and competition incentivize innovation aren't actually founded in empirical research of any kind. It's pure theorizing and it's theorizing based on a house of cards of bad assumptions. One can zoom out and look at history and see that the standard of living for people has steadily increased, and humans have steadily innovated. But there's no empirical evidence to support the idea that it's a capitalist free market driving those advances. Yes they advanced further in free societies, most of which have up until now employed some version of a Capitalist free market linked to more or less social democracy. But you could just as readily theorize that those advances are just down to an innate desire in people to make the world a better place for everyone, an innate desire to innovate. And that authoritarian societies squash their opportunities to do so, while freer societies leave enough opportunities open that they enable them. But they don't necessarily add incentives for that innovation in addition to the innate incentives. [1]https://www.businessinsider.com/big-companies-keep-bragging-to-investors-about-price-hikes-2021-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/big-companies-keep-bragging-...

geysersam 4y ago

More interesting perhaps, but less effective. To get most benefit from our technical sophistication we need democratic decision making.