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It means other parts of the economy must shrink. Population is no longer increasing which means every percentage of growth in one sector is offset by losses in

It means other parts of the economy must shrink. Population is no longer increasing which means every percentage of growth in one sector is offset by losses in another. There are only finitely many people and each person can only be in one sector at a time vs the previous regime where population growth meant every sector could grow concurrently by hiring from a growing population. Modern capitalism requires an infinite supply of people to maintain economic growth. The model is entirely busted because it is at odds with physical constraints and dynamics of a finite planet. I personally consider the whole thing a collective delusion because infinite growth on a finite planet is a logical and physical impossibility. Unless everyone decides to live in VR where nothing matters then the economic models must at some point make a connection with reality and at that point it becomes obvious that the capitalist model of infinite growth is untenable unless there is a supply of people growing at a faster rate than whatever economic metrics are used to measure the real economy.

twblalock 4y ago
This is entirely mistaken. Wealth creation is not zero-sum. Per-worker productivity is not static. The carrying capacity of the planet is not static either.
- koyanisqatsi 4y ago
  Have you personally done any work to increase the planet's carrying capacity? More specifically, what is its current capacity and how is it calculated? Seems like you would know this based on what you have stated.
stocknoob 4y ago
Do you think the economy is zero sum? Go back 50k years, all the current wealth must have been distributed among a mere 50k cavemen. Were they all billionaires? Quality of life must have been amazing for them. When you go into the woods and stack rocks into a house, you created value. What part of the economy shrank?
- koyanisqatsi 4y ago
  How many jobs do you have? Like as a professional in some sector of the economy, how many sectors do you personally occupy? Are you a farmer that also writes iOS software? No, obviously not. Whatever job you do is fixed and it contributes a finite amount of economic value. Since the population is now decreasing there are fewer people, which means if all the economic value from everyone is added up then the total contribution will be less than another population with more people. It doesn't make sense to talk about zero-sum economics because economics is always a positive sum arrangement of work and specializations. The number of workers is the main limiting factor in any productive economy, every other measure is essentially an approximate proxy of that. The financial sector on the other hand is indeed a zero-sum system. If someone is making money then someone else must be losing it because there is a finite supply of dollars in the economy at any given moment so if the supply is fixed then the monetary economy is a zero-sum game. All of this is derivable from first principles but for some reason most people are constantly parroting some nonsense about wealth and zero-sums.
  - stocknoob 4y ago
    Even finance isn’t zero sum. The money supply is literally something that is managed. When you take a loan, the bank has created money, since the deposits are still on the books. When you buy insurance, you are getting security, insurance company is getting a premium, and you are both happy. When you take a loan and start a business, the bank makes money on the interest, and you (hopefully) make money because your business is providing more value than it was. You bought a new machine and make widgets 10x faster, etc. Also, people confuse money and wealth. One is bandwidth, the other is data. You use bandwidth to transfer data, which is what you care about, and its possibility for creation is basically limitless.
    - koyanisqatsi 4y ago
      You probably should spend some more time thinking about how that all fits together because saying that the bank creates money from interest rates means that the central bank sets the rate according to what economic growth they're expecting. If the rate is decoupled then it stops tracking real economic productivity as I've defined it. The obvious logical conclusion is that raising rates will lead to a recession because economic productivity has been stagnant for some time now. So if the rate is above actual economic productivity then that will reduce the total money supply and this seems to be their main goal. There is no way to reduce inflation without destroying money.

twblalock 4y ago

This is entirely mistaken. Wealth creation is not zero-sum. Per-worker productivity is not static. The carrying capacity of the planet is not static either.

koyanisqatsi 4y ago
Have you personally done any work to increase the planet's carrying capacity? More specifically, what is its current capacity and how is it calculated? Seems like you would know this based on what you have stated.

stocknoob 4y ago

Do you think the economy is zero sum? Go back 50k years, all the current wealth must have been distributed among a mere 50k cavemen. Were they all billionaires? Quality of life must have been amazing for them. When you go into the woods and stack rocks into a house, you created value. What part of the economy shrank?

koyanisqatsi 4y ago
How many jobs do you have? Like as a professional in some sector of the economy, how many sectors do you personally occupy? Are you a farmer that also writes iOS software? No, obviously not. Whatever job you do is fixed and it contributes a finite amount of economic value. Since the population is now decreasing there are fewer people, which means if all the economic value from everyone is added up then the total contribution will be less than another population with more people. It doesn't make sense to talk about zero-sum economics because economics is always a positive sum arrangement of work and specializations. The number of workers is the main limiting factor in any productive economy, every other measure is essentially an approximate proxy of that. The financial sector on the other hand is indeed a zero-sum system. If someone is making money then someone else must be losing it because there is a finite supply of dollars in the economy at any given moment so if the supply is fixed then the monetary economy is a zero-sum game. All of this is derivable from first principles but for some reason most people are constantly parroting some nonsense about wealth and zero-sums.
- stocknoob 4y ago
  Even finance isn’t zero sum. The money supply is literally something that is managed. When you take a loan, the bank has created money, since the deposits are still on the books. When you buy insurance, you are getting security, insurance company is getting a premium, and you are both happy. When you take a loan and start a business, the bank makes money on the interest, and you (hopefully) make money because your business is providing more value than it was. You bought a new machine and make widgets 10x faster, etc. Also, people confuse money and wealth. One is bandwidth, the other is data. You use bandwidth to transfer data, which is what you care about, and its possibility for creation is basically limitless.
  - koyanisqatsi 4y ago
    You probably should spend some more time thinking about how that all fits together because saying that the bank creates money from interest rates means that the central bank sets the rate according to what economic growth they're expecting. If the rate is decoupled then it stops tracking real economic productivity as I've defined it. The obvious logical conclusion is that raising rates will lead to a recession because economic productivity has been stagnant for some time now. So if the rate is above actual economic productivity then that will reduce the total money supply and this seems to be their main goal. There is no way to reduce inflation without destroying money.