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<< Get people in rich countries to give up cheap disposable stuff and give up energy consuming entertainment (international travel, etc) and get them to live fr

<< Get people in rich countries to give up cheap disposable stuff and give up energy consuming entertainment (international travel, etc) and get them to live frugally, obviously including the superwealthy. You may be onto something. It is fine to pay lip service to this ideal in an abstract, but as Covid pandemic has shown, politicians will drop the facade of masks at the drop of a hat if they are personally inconvenienced ( CA comes to mind, but it is not an isolated incident ). At the end of the day, I want the rules to be applied equally, but they are not ( and likely never will be ). Come to think of it, and it is going to sound truly awful, why do we devote so much energy to other countries instead of focusing on what is happening in US? Wouldn't it be a time better spent to make US ( the land I and Gates live in ) a better place? << Don’t celebrate consumerism. I am not sure you appreciate how much US economy relies on this. << Put down tiktok, put down instagram. No argument from me. << Practice secular (or religious) asceticism and be comfortable with that. Eh. I think the question that comes to mind is why. I am not trying to be combative, but why do you think it is reasonable to impose your vision upon others.

mc32 4y ago
Endless growth is not attainable on this Earth. Japan hit the inflection point some decades ago. They are doing alright. They still innovate. In some respects it's stagnant, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It does mean that offspring will not perpetually think "they will (potentially) earn more than their parents" and that's okay. We need to accelerate this in places that are still growing, slow them down but also modernize them. Asceticism may not be necessary, but it is a target. Like many targets it's one one may miss, but in going for it it reduces footprint.
- peteradio 4y ago
  When I google asceticism I see a picture of a monk with rib bones sticking out, not too dissimilar from a mummy.
- ctoth 4y ago
  It is an excellent thing, then, that we are not simply stuck on this Earth.
  - tmtvl 4y ago
    For practical purposes we are. At least for the foreseeable future. Yes, we can support a handful of people on a space station for a few months, but that's no long-term solution. Unless you mean we could simply run like Logan, which, while indeed a possible solution, is not a particularly attractive solution.
    - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
      <<Unless you mean we could simply run like Logan, which, while indeed a possible solution, is not a particularly attractive solution. I will admit that I think Bill Burr put the issue of overpopulation in mainstream consciousness and I can't deny that I worry that the solutions ( or forced by circumstances -- war comes to mind ) proposed are unlikely to be pleasant for the globe as a whole. Still, in parent's defense, I am not seeing that stance in my interpretation of that post.
      - falcor84 4y ago
        Is there some interesting connection between Bill Burr and Logan's Run that I'm not familiar with?
        A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
        Not directly. It made me think of it, because of the premise of the movie ( utopian society based on killing off undesirable society members ). Bill Burr's running joke is that there is too many people in the world and if he was a dictator, he would be quietly depopulating the earth by sinking cruise ships ( and help economy by building more cruise ships ), because people who use cruise ships are likely low value individuals ( paraphrasing for brevity ). The connection is there, but it is not apparent ( and not that many people these days are familiar with Logan's Run ).
- kiba 4y ago
  Endless growth is not attainable on this Earth. Japan hit the inflection point some decades ago. They are doing alright. They still innovate. In some respects it's stagnant, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It does mean that offspring will not perpetually think "they will (potentially) earn more than their parents" and that's okay. It depends on what you mean by this. But I think more growth is possible. The problem is negative externality.
- pyuser583 4y ago
  Why isn’t endless growth attainable? It’s like saying “we can’t keep writing poems forever.” Sure we can. Realistically, many poems will be forgotten. During my lifetime, we’ve probably forgotten/lost more poems than were written in all of history before my birth. But we can keep making them, just as we can keeping building parents and software and flux capacitors and warp drives. Why is there an inevitable limit, I truely don’t understand.
  - yunwal 4y ago
    There are zero-sum portions of the economy (land, non-renewable resources), and expanding-sum portions. However, the laws of supply and demand dictate that as the marginal cost of producing a good approach zero, the cost goes down. This is why poetry is pretty much worthless in terms of money, despite providing value to many. The issue here is that "growth" is ambiguous, and right now is mostly defined as "GDP" or some other measure of money. Unfortunately, the nature of money is that zero-sum portions of the economy can get more expensive, but expanding-sum portions have a fundamental price limit. Therefore, if you define growth as "money", you can't have endless growth. Of course, you can have endless improvements to quality of life that don't involve constrained resources, it just won't increase GDP.
    - pyuser583 4y ago
      What are the “zero-sum” goods? Land isn’t zero-sum. If an acre of land loses value, that doesn’t mean other acres must cumulatively raise by the same amount. Likewise, rises in value don’t need to be offset by losses elsewhere. Sorry if that’s nitpicky, but you’re placing a lot of importance on the “zero-sum” portions of the economy. The international currency market is zero-sum. If the dollar loses value, it must lose value against another currency, and that currency must rise. Do you think currency will eventually restrain growth, despite being (mostly) created by fiat?
      - yunwal 4y ago
        > Land isn’t zero-sum Yes it is. There’s only a finite amount of land in the world, and the fact that you own some means someone else can’t. > Do you think currency will eventually restrain growth, despite being (mostly) created by fiat? There’s no “game” in life where the end goal is having currency in the economy. In the end currency is a means to an end (even if we may forget that). Land is one part of that end, and there’s only a finite amount.

mc32 4y ago

Endless growth is not attainable on this Earth. Japan hit the inflection point some decades ago. They are doing alright. They still innovate. In some respects it's stagnant, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It does mean that offspring will not perpetually think "they will (potentially) earn more than their parents" and that's okay. We need to accelerate this in places that are still growing, slow them down but also modernize them. Asceticism may not be necessary, but it is a target. Like many targets it's one one may miss, but in going for it it reduces footprint.

peteradio 4y ago
When I google asceticism I see a picture of a monk with rib bones sticking out, not too dissimilar from a mummy.
ctoth 4y ago
It is an excellent thing, then, that we are not simply stuck on this Earth.
- tmtvl 4y ago
  For practical purposes we are. At least for the foreseeable future. Yes, we can support a handful of people on a space station for a few months, but that's no long-term solution. Unless you mean we could simply run like Logan, which, while indeed a possible solution, is not a particularly attractive solution.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
    <<Unless you mean we could simply run like Logan, which, while indeed a possible solution, is not a particularly attractive solution. I will admit that I think Bill Burr put the issue of overpopulation in mainstream consciousness and I can't deny that I worry that the solutions ( or forced by circumstances -- war comes to mind ) proposed are unlikely to be pleasant for the globe as a whole. Still, in parent's defense, I am not seeing that stance in my interpretation of that post.
    - falcor84 4y ago
      Is there some interesting connection between Bill Burr and Logan's Run that I'm not familiar with?
      - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
        Not directly. It made me think of it, because of the premise of the movie ( utopian society based on killing off undesirable society members ). Bill Burr's running joke is that there is too many people in the world and if he was a dictator, he would be quietly depopulating the earth by sinking cruise ships ( and help economy by building more cruise ships ), because people who use cruise ships are likely low value individuals ( paraphrasing for brevity ). The connection is there, but it is not apparent ( and not that many people these days are familiar with Logan's Run ).
kiba 4y ago
Endless growth is not attainable on this Earth. Japan hit the inflection point some decades ago. They are doing alright. They still innovate. In some respects it's stagnant, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It does mean that offspring will not perpetually think "they will (potentially) earn more than their parents" and that's okay. It depends on what you mean by this. But I think more growth is possible. The problem is negative externality.
pyuser583 4y ago
Why isn’t endless growth attainable? It’s like saying “we can’t keep writing poems forever.” Sure we can. Realistically, many poems will be forgotten. During my lifetime, we’ve probably forgotten/lost more poems than were written in all of history before my birth. But we can keep making them, just as we can keeping building parents and software and flux capacitors and warp drives. Why is there an inevitable limit, I truely don’t understand.
- yunwal 4y ago
  There are zero-sum portions of the economy (land, non-renewable resources), and expanding-sum portions. However, the laws of supply and demand dictate that as the marginal cost of producing a good approach zero, the cost goes down. This is why poetry is pretty much worthless in terms of money, despite providing value to many. The issue here is that "growth" is ambiguous, and right now is mostly defined as "GDP" or some other measure of money. Unfortunately, the nature of money is that zero-sum portions of the economy can get more expensive, but expanding-sum portions have a fundamental price limit. Therefore, if you define growth as "money", you can't have endless growth. Of course, you can have endless improvements to quality of life that don't involve constrained resources, it just won't increase GDP.
  - pyuser583 4y ago
    What are the “zero-sum” goods? Land isn’t zero-sum. If an acre of land loses value, that doesn’t mean other acres must cumulatively raise by the same amount. Likewise, rises in value don’t need to be offset by losses elsewhere. Sorry if that’s nitpicky, but you’re placing a lot of importance on the “zero-sum” portions of the economy. The international currency market is zero-sum. If the dollar loses value, it must lose value against another currency, and that currency must rise. Do you think currency will eventually restrain growth, despite being (mostly) created by fiat?
    - yunwal 4y ago
      > Land isn’t zero-sum Yes it is. There’s only a finite amount of land in the world, and the fact that you own some means someone else can’t. > Do you think currency will eventually restrain growth, despite being (mostly) created by fiat? There’s no “game” in life where the end goal is having currency in the economy. In the end currency is a means to an end (even if we may forget that). Land is one part of that end, and there’s only a finite amount.