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I'm always puzzled why the basic underlying assumption in this context is "we should have limitless exponential growth in productivity". For millennia, there wa

I'm always puzzled why the basic underlying assumption in this context is "we should have limitless exponential growth in productivity". For millennia, there was barely any growth at all and the very concept of progress was dubious. We have only so much population growth and people can work only so many hours a day (and many prefer to work less if they can). This way of looking at GDP growth figures and then going "hey, we have technology X, so why isn't growth the same as when we were rebuilding after the last war?" seems like a category error to me. Our lives are changing at an unprecedented speed and nobody can even tell what skills will be needed in the job market a few decades into the future. Is that what "The Great Stagnation" looks like? We should be concerned with how to stabilize the economy at the high levels of prosperity we have and how to enable poorer societies to achieve the same while surviving the challenges ahead. It's pretty clear to me that computers would be a great help doing that, if we really wanted to.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
> For millennia, there was barely any growth at all and the very concept of progress was dubious. This is known as the Malthusian Trap: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism It's not that there was no growth for millennia. It's that people reproduced until any increase in productivity was eaten away by having more mouths to feed. Once birth rates started to go down, and the industrial revolution happened - population growth stopped exceeding productivity growth - and living conditions started improving instead of declining. As long as birth rates keep going down - I don't think we have to worry about Malthusianism returning.
- nerdponx 4y ago
  But that's their very point: birth rates can't go down forever. The productivity gains of declining birth rates (which themselves are a product of scientific advancement and productivity gains leading to greater health and quality of life) might also be a relatively short-lived phenomenon. What if the population replacement rate starts to stabilize around 0? it's already happening in some places, and there are arguments to be made that is a desirable outcome.
- smolder 4y ago
  Population growth stopped exceeding productivity growth when we figured out how to do everything with energy taken from non-renewable natural resources. We grow people from oil, cities from oil, etc. Malthusian limits may not be an issue as long as we have oil, but of course we also are making earth inhospitable to human life as we go.
- moffkalast 4y ago
  That doesn't make any sense, with a larger population you can just grow more food as long as there's space. One person has been able to farm far more food than they could eat from the early bronze age onwards and population growth has been mostly linear since, up till the last century when it became exponential with mechanization making food ridiculously plentiful. The problem with tech progress is that it's cumulative and you need to figure out the prerequisites first and with a small number of people. After that it just snowballs faster and faster. With a larger population you also get ever increasing chances for someone to invent something new.
  - mech765 4y ago
    IIRC until a couple of centuries ago a super high percentage of the population was employed in agriculture. Like 50 percent or more.
    - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
      It was >60% almost everywhere until ~1600: https://ourworldindata.org/employment-in-agriculture https://ourworldindata.org/employment-in-agriculture
  - vkou 4y ago
    > That doesn't make any sense, with a larger population you can just grow more food as long as there's space. A smaller population only lives in the most productive parts of their living space. A larger population has a lot more people living in the marginal parts, and if growing food is more difficult in them, the people on the margins will be doing more work all-in-all. Meanwhile, in the more productive parts, some king, despot, warlord, or relative thereof will happily steal all the surplus. > One person has been able to farm far more food than they could eat from the early bronze age onwards Until textile production was mechanized around by the industrial revolution, you also needed something like 3,000 hours of manual labour a year to clothe a family. You needed someone to go do all the work of collecting firewood (As it turns out, all the easily-accessible-to-your-community firewood has been cut down a long, long time ago, so you'll be walking a fair ways to get it.) Oh, and that king, despot and warlord? He will happily take every surplus penny, shirt, and turnip that you have. And the one across the river will happily take what's left.
lkrubner 4y ago
"people can work only so many hours a day" All productivity numbers are per hour, so they are not effected by how many hours in a day people work. "why isn't growth the same as when we were rebuilding after the last war" Tyler Cowen, and myself, are both talking about the USA, which did not have to rebuild after the last war.
- staunton 4y ago
  > All productivity numbers are per hour which numbers? GP was talking about numbers of companies and the article is pretty low on data either way. In any case, the points I was trying to make were: there are eventually diminishing returns on individual productivity and looking at the number of startups is a very weird way to evaluate how useful a technology is. > the USA, which did not have to rebuild after the last war. So the post-war US economy should be directly compared to today's while completely ignoring the war?

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago

> For millennia, there was barely any growth at all and the very concept of progress was dubious. This is known as the Malthusian Trap: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism It's not that there was no growth for millennia. It's that people reproduced until any increase in productivity was eaten away by having more mouths to feed. Once birth rates started to go down, and the industrial revolution happened - population growth stopped exceeding productivity growth - and living conditions started improving instead of declining. As long as birth rates keep going down - I don't think we have to worry about Malthusianism returning.

nerdponx 4y ago
But that's their very point: birth rates can't go down forever. The productivity gains of declining birth rates (which themselves are a product of scientific advancement and productivity gains leading to greater health and quality of life) might also be a relatively short-lived phenomenon. What if the population replacement rate starts to stabilize around 0? it's already happening in some places, and there are arguments to be made that is a desirable outcome.
smolder 4y ago
Population growth stopped exceeding productivity growth when we figured out how to do everything with energy taken from non-renewable natural resources. We grow people from oil, cities from oil, etc. Malthusian limits may not be an issue as long as we have oil, but of course we also are making earth inhospitable to human life as we go.
moffkalast 4y ago
That doesn't make any sense, with a larger population you can just grow more food as long as there's space. One person has been able to farm far more food than they could eat from the early bronze age onwards and population growth has been mostly linear since, up till the last century when it became exponential with mechanization making food ridiculously plentiful. The problem with tech progress is that it's cumulative and you need to figure out the prerequisites first and with a small number of people. After that it just snowballs faster and faster. With a larger population you also get ever increasing chances for someone to invent something new.
- mech765 4y ago
  IIRC until a couple of centuries ago a super high percentage of the population was employed in agriculture. Like 50 percent or more.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    It was >60% almost everywhere until ~1600: https://ourworldindata.org/employment-in-agriculture https://ourworldindata.org/employment-in-agriculture
- vkou 4y ago
  > That doesn't make any sense, with a larger population you can just grow more food as long as there's space. A smaller population only lives in the most productive parts of their living space. A larger population has a lot more people living in the marginal parts, and if growing food is more difficult in them, the people on the margins will be doing more work all-in-all. Meanwhile, in the more productive parts, some king, despot, warlord, or relative thereof will happily steal all the surplus. > One person has been able to farm far more food than they could eat from the early bronze age onwards Until textile production was mechanized around by the industrial revolution, you also needed something like 3,000 hours of manual labour a year to clothe a family. You needed someone to go do all the work of collecting firewood (As it turns out, all the easily-accessible-to-your-community firewood has been cut down a long, long time ago, so you'll be walking a fair ways to get it.) Oh, and that king, despot and warlord? He will happily take every surplus penny, shirt, and turnip that you have. And the one across the river will happily take what's left.

lkrubner 4y ago

"people can work only so many hours a day" All productivity numbers are per hour, so they are not effected by how many hours in a day people work. "why isn't growth the same as when we were rebuilding after the last war" Tyler Cowen, and myself, are both talking about the USA, which did not have to rebuild after the last war.

staunton 4y ago
> All productivity numbers are per hour which numbers? GP was talking about numbers of companies and the article is pretty low on data either way. In any case, the points I was trying to make were: there are eventually diminishing returns on individual productivity and looking at the number of startups is a very weird way to evaluate how useful a technology is. > the USA, which did not have to rebuild after the last war. So the post-war US economy should be directly compared to today's while completely ignoring the war?