8 ms·

A reasonable question, and one not terribly often asked, is "What is the point of the economy, growth, etc?" Is it to serve human health, happiness, prosperity

by Syonyk 3y ago

A reasonable question, and one not terribly often asked, is "What is the point of the economy, growth, etc?" Is it to serve human health, happiness, prosperity... or is it to just grow for the sake of "numbers go up"? Is the economy made for man, or man for the economy? We (collectively, western, industrial, etc) are trapped in the "growth" thinking - the way out of any problem is to grow out of it, which works fairly well until you start hitting the problems caused by growth - which, I'd argue, we are now facing. Carbon emissions, general "stripping large parts of the planet for the mineral goodies under it," etc. And, of course, we've ended up in a debt-based economy that works great, until growth slows down. It's going to be an interesting ride, and the best suggestions I've seen are to simply get ahead of the curve, and figure out how to live on LESS (Less Energy, Simulation, and Stuff) now, while we still have the resources to make mistakes and figure out the details - because that lower energy future (or, at least, more limits on energy, growth, etc) is coming down the tunnel at a good clip. I deal with it regularly, since my office is a standalone, off grid power system. I just use less energy, by an order of magnitude or so, in the winter - and I bundle up out here.

wahnfrieden 3y ago
You believe in a consumer driven solution?
- Syonyk 3y ago
  I can hope for a mass change (reduction) in energy use, consumption, etc, driven by consumers - though I don't believe it's likely to happen until the issue is forced by something like "unavailability of resources compared to income" - as we're seeing right now in various ways. I fully expect us as a society to hit the various walls at speed, and have to find some way to do something useful with the various pieces remaining. But, given that, "working out the useful things one can do beforehand" is useful - because you can afford to screw up, to learn what works well locally, and have the resources to experiment. I'll point to things like "direct solar heating of homes" (solar thermal air collectors) as the sort of thing that take some learning how to build and use effectively, and it's useful to work that out while Home Depot still is tolerably well stocked. And/or to collect supplies ahead of time. I'm aware it's a pessimistic view, but it's been working just fine for modeling reality.
  - wahnfrieden 3y ago
    I'll try to summarize to check I understand: people won't take real action until suffering is unbearable; and, you suggest becoming an ecological disaster prepper.
    - Syonyk 3y ago
      If you want to phrase it that way, sure. I won't argue. It gets at the core of it well enough. Though I'd rephrase the second part as "Building a robust lifestyle against a wide range of possible disruptions." Ecological, food security, financial, etc. It happens to be grand fun, in the deal, and far more fun than staring at screens filled with little glowing dots.
      - wahnfrieden 3y ago
        Pretty devastating. What's the optimistic case you're rooting for? edit: no techno optimism here... poking around for people's ideas on regular folks relations to state and capital on this issue
        Syonyk 3y ago
        "Rooting for"? Odd sentiment, for sure. Something like "Go Team Star Trek! Humans through the universe!" regardless of the chances of it actually happening? I think the chances of doing much useful in terms of "long term sustainability and living within our energy budget" went sailing past in the 1980s, so adapting to a lower energy and lower energy reliability future seems wise to me. Though there are certainly useful things that can be done on the path. But I'd be happy with a return to far more local systems of food and energy production, and people adapting to living within the currently available energy at any given point in time. Having "solar days" in the winter like we have snow days is a lot easier than building power systems to deal with a week of heavy inversion at "normal energy use."
    - UncleOxidant 3y ago
      > people won't take real action until suffering is unbearable Do you see much evidence that suggests otherwise?
UncleOxidant 3y ago
> Is the economy made for man, or man for the economy? Pendulums swing. Right now we're in the part of the cycle where man is being adapted to the economic system (so the latter). We're in a situation where more and more capital seems to be ending up in fewer hands - the rise of AI seems likely to accelerate that trend and lead to even more income inequality if we're not very careful. The rising tide was supposed to raise all boats, but that doesn't seem to be happening as much anymore as it did earlier. We've sort of been here before (The Gilded Age) and we were able to get the pendulum to swing back in favor of the workers through mass labor movements in the late 19th and early 20th centuries - that was a move towards the economy made for man. Will we be able to do that again?
- prottog 3y ago
  At the time of the Gilded Age, there was no income tax (personal or corporate), and government expenditure as a ratio of GDP was at single-digit percents; yet there was massive productivity gains and corresponding massive real wage growth among unskilled workers[0], even against the backdrop of surging immigration. Stupendous private fortunes later funded philanthropic efforts behind some of the most renowned institutions of today. In contrast, today, we have government expenditures at a full third of GDP[1] and progressive taxation (with public calls by elected officials for truly confiscatory levels of taxation), yet real wages (as you point out) are rising a lot slower[2] than in the Gilded Age, and the poverty rate has more or less remained constant for decades[3]. I, too, wonder if we can move towards an economy made for man again. [0]: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w14555/w14555.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w14555/w145... [1]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=8fX https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=8fX [2]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q [3]: https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/private/pdf/154286/50YearTrends.pdf https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/private/pdf/154286/...
  - rovolo 3y ago
    > At the time of the Gilded Age, [1] starts at 1947; [2] starts at 1979; [3] starts at 1964. None of your sources show that poverty was less of a problem during the Gilded Age (1877 to 1896). I find it very hard to believe the Gilded Age handled poverty better since it predates Social Security and the Great Depression.
prottog 3y ago
The history of human progress is one of harnessing more energy per capita in a mighty struggle to leave behind the disadvantaged state of man in nature ("solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"). We've done quite well so far. I'd like for humanity to keep going until the average Sri Lankan or Congolese can live like the average Texan or Swiss[0] does now, and hopefully until everyone can live in a true post-scarcity world a la Star Trek. It's all well and good for an individual living in the developed world to freely choose to try and consume less energy, but degrowth as a whole I'm afraid would mean that the global poor stay globally poor. [0]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use
- UncleOxidant 3y ago
  > I'd like for humanity to keep going until the average Sri Lankan or Congolese can live like the average Texan or Swiss does now What if the average Texan could use 1/2 as much energy as they do now and still have a decent lifestyle? Even a better lifestyle. In a lot of ways cars are not healthy for us, for example. What if we made more of our trips on ebikes, for example? Much less energy use and a bit of exercise. I'm not sure the average Sri Lankan wants to be as obese as the average Texan - similar for rates of diabetes. I think Sri Lankans can do better than the average Texan by keeping their cities walkable (and bikeable) and not putting in a lot of car-centric development which is the norm in Texas.
  - prottog 3y ago
    > What if the average Texan could use 1/2 as much energy as they do now and still have a decent lifestyle? Absolutely! This would be marvelous, and can happen through technological advances. Imagine if a lifted F-250 could still get 50mpg ;-) Jokes aside, you are quite right that an abundance material wealth can sometimes go hand in hand with unhealthy lifestyles. Better to die of too much than too little, I suppose; Texas and Sri Lanka actually have life expectancies very close to each other, at 76 years and change, but in those 76 years, the Texan would have had many more opportunities at the pursuit of happiness than the Sri Lankan, enabled by an order of a magnitude higher energy expenditure per capita.
Aunche 3y ago
Who exactly are the boogeymen who are tunnel visioned on making "numbers go up"? The vast majority of people's political beliefs instead come from narratives that resonate with them, which is how you get ridiculous ideas such as degrowth will magically solve climate change and catalyze a proletariat revolution. IMO, we would be in a place if people genuinely tried to shape their beliefs based on raw numbers. In the few instances that people care about numbers, it is to do the opposite: cherry-picking numbers that reinforce their worldview.
- ben_w 3y ago
  > Who exactly are the boogeymen who are tunnel visioned on making "numbers go up"? If my (literally and proudly to-the-left-of-Castro communist) ex is anything to go by: billionaires. I am not clear if she's representative in this regard, what with her being an actual communist and all.
  - Turskarama 3y ago
    I think this is almost tautologically true though. Why do Billionaires exist? What is the purpose of being a billionaire? They do not need to work to live well, so why do they work at all? A lot of them might say something like "to improve the world" but the fact of the matter is very few of them are willing to actually _spend money_ (i.e. make a loss) on something which can have a massive benefit (to someone else), they will only ever "invest". So I say it's very nearly tautological that Billionaires are _exactly_ the people focused on making numbers go up, since every decision they make seems to ultimately revolve around making this happen.
    - nly 3y ago
      A lot of successful business people are motivated by being the best, or close to the best, in their area of business. It's about power and ego.
- green_man_lives 3y ago
  I am not even saying that this is a bad point of view, but isn't the belief of most mainstream economists that GDP must grow each year? Also I am not a conspiracy theorist and I don't really have any beef with the WEF, but I mean growth is one of their stated goals. If there was ever an elite boogeyman driving for growth wouldn't they be the obvious candidate? https://www.weforum.org/events/the-growth-summit-jobs-and-opportunity-for-all-2023 https://www.weforum.org/events/the-growth-summit-jobs-and-op... I am not trying to argue I am trying to genuinely answer your question.
scythe 3y ago
>I just use less energy, by an order of magnitude or so, in the winter - and I bundle up out here. Unfortunately this is about as far as "degrowth" gets: "what if we were just cold?" Or worse, hot? How do we enforce this, anyway? Rationing? Taxes on energy? Have you seen what happens to politicians when gas prices go up? People complain about fast fashion — should we have a tax on clothes? People moan about airplanes — do we want it to be harder to travel? >we've ended up in a debt-based economy If you want to be taken seriously, step one is not adopting Ron Paul's economics rhetoric. >because that lower energy future (or, at least, more limits on energy, growth, etc) is coming down the tunnel at a good clip. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics >Is the economy made for man, or man for the economy? "The economy" is a description of what people are doing. Do we do things for ourselves, or do we do them for the doing — is this the right question? Is it even a meaningful question?
- Syonyk 3y ago
  Well, I'm a bit limited on thermal mass out here in my office - and quite honestly, I'd have built things somewhat differently were I to do it again. I didn't know nearly what I did now, seven years ago when I built it. I'd focus quite a bit more on thermal mass in the structure instead of just insulation, and would probably put in some containers for holding a good bit of liquid for thermal storage. But I also wouldn't say I'm "cold" out here in the winter, because I dress for the conditions. I'm entirely comfortable out of the wind at 45-50F until the place heats up a bit from my limited energy use and my thermal output (a human is around 100W thermal at rest). Insulating and heating people directly takes a lot less energy than heating entire structures, and radiant heat does a good job of this as well - we should be doing more radiant heat panels in offices in the winter and keep the air a good bit cooler, IMO. As for debt and interest, I've no idea what of Ron Paul's stuff you think I follow. A debt based economy either grows or defaults, those are pretty much the options as demonstrated by history. It doesn't work well in a degrowth environment, which is a problem that has to be solved (or it will be solved by default). The economy is a description of what people are doing, but the spirit of the question was, "Are we doing things that align with what we know makes humans happy, healthy, and prosperous, or are we being {driven, influenced, manipulated} to do that which is the most profitable to various well funded corporate entities?" I'll argue we're doing the second, and I could point to a range of areas. But, to keep it short, are people staring at social media feeds endlessly because they want to, or because well paid people have made it their career to find ways to exploit the human brain to keep us doing it, because it's profitable to their companies? I'd argue it's very much the second, and that's an example of "man bending to the whims of the economy," in my (admittedly short) phrase.
maxerickson 3y ago
Energy is gonna be as cheap as it has ever been over the coming decades, there's no good reason to plan on less. Like on the whole, people simply won't let it happen. Maybe in a few countries, but the young people in India and the various large countries of Africa aren't going to do with less just because you think it's a good idea.
- UncleOxidant 3y ago
  > Energy is gonna be as cheap as it has ever been over the coming decades Is this assuming some kind of breakthrough in fusion power? Or just cheaper solar, wind, tidal power?
  - nine_k 3y ago
    Cheap solar, cheaper storage. Battery technology is now a very hot area, with a lot of R&D and constant improvements, like silicon chips in 1990s when the demand for computers started to turn truly massive. Now we have massive demand for EVs, large-scale storage, and the usual mobile device power.
    - tonyedgecombe 3y ago
      I doubt technology is going to solve our environmental issues. I see this assumption all the time, that the same thinking that got us into these problems is going to get us out of them. Technology rarely delivers on its promises.
      - nine_k 3y ago
        OK, what would help, in your view? What has definitely helped in the past, that we could reuse or emulate?
        tonyedgecombe 3y ago
        Accepting the reality of the situation we have found ourselves in would be a good start.
helicalmix 3y ago
> A reasonable question, and one not terribly often asked, is "What is the point of the economy, growth, etc?" This is asked all the time. Google "economy growth reddit" and you'll see a bunch of posts questioning why it's important. > I deal with it regularly, since my office is a standalone, off grid power system. I just use less energy, by an order of magnitude or so, in the winter - and I bundle up out here. I mean, yes, on margin for a single person, this reduces overall energy consumption. However, cities are more energy-efficient per capita. Take a look at the energy expenditure per-capita states by state, and you'll see that the states with the smallest energy expenditure per-capita generally have the largest cities, and the ones with the most energy expenditure are rural states: https://www.eia.gov/state/seds/data.php?incfile=/state/seds/sep_sum/html/rank_use_capita.html&sid=US https://www.eia.gov/state/seds/data.php?incfile=/state/seds/....
- marginalia_nu 3y ago
  > This is asked all the time. Google "economy growth reddit" and you'll see a bunch of posts questioning why it's important. This is a pretty awful way of looking anything up to be honest. Reddit is just a big echo chamber that will mindlessly parrot anything that is the common consensus for the particular subreddit.
  - helicalmix 3y ago
    I mean, I agree it's a pretty awful way of reaching the truth or mass consensus, but in terms of gauging how much interest a certain subject has in absolute terms, I think it's a good gauge. What I'm trying to get at is that the original commenter is implying that people rarely question the value of economic growth, but if you google search the term "economic growth" generically, with no prompt on questioning its value, on a popular forum site, you'll see that one of the top questions is questioning its value.
opportune 3y ago
I agree with this sentiment. Imagine if we tied reductions in working hours to productivity increases… The fundamental problem, IMO, is unintuitive: it’s property rights. Specifically, we have all these complex financial instruments (assets) and have commodified/securitized/priced in many assumptions resulting in a price. Even small changes in those underlying assumptions can hugely affect asset prices and result in some entities losing massive amounts of asset value. This is very upsetting to precisely the people with the most power and influence, who don’t even stand to gain much from things like income redistribution or a reduction in output so we get what you’d expect given that That’s why we often end up with hugely wasteful things like the military industrial complex, US insurance system, or the grant system in the EU. Once people are extracting huge amounts of value from something, even if everybody else would be better of on average if the thing stopped, it’s hard to stop it. There’s also of course the global competitiveness problem. As you note we can simply reduce consumption to address that, but the semantics of that at scale are a hard sell in many cases. When it’s demand driven, like central business district coffee shops going out of business because consumers don’t want to shop there anymore due to WFH, it’s not so bad. But if it’s not demand driven, you end up in a situation like the UK is in now where inflation goes haywire and everybody is sad that the economy sucks.
627467 3y ago
> A reasonable question, and one not terribly often asked, is "What is the point of the economy, growth, etc?" My take is that is terribly often asked that question. And the degrowth-camp have been answering with 'is not really about the economy, it's about [insert your fab quality of life kpi]' My take - and probably not terribly unique - is that while the traditional political discourse focuses on growth as a goal in itself - we don't measure growth and set growth goals because thats what we want. We want the things that 'they' claim to come with growth. And while economical growth is maybe not the best indicator for how well other things are - in aggregate - it is definitely not the worst one.
refurb 3y ago
Economic growth is due to one of two things: 1) increased population or 2) increased efficiency. Increased efficiency directly addresses the problem you raised. Creating LED light bulbs that produce the same amount of light at 1/6th the electrical power just freed up 5/6th’s of that power for something else at no net increase in electrical generation.
- emsimot 3y ago
  What about increased natural resource consumption?
  - refurb 3y ago
    Consumption requires someone or something to create demand.
  - ChatGTP 3y ago
    This is an inconvenient truth!!!
tomcar288 3y ago
I'm just glad people are starting to realize this is a reality. If you look at all the projections, right now, most people still think everything's gonna keep going up in that exponential growth curve. As for economic growth. The point is to increase material living standards but this isn't the case anymore. We've already peaked, as of 20 years ago in the US. If you take GDP per capita and divide it by any reasonable measure of inflation such as the case shiller housing index, you'll find that our ability to shelter people has decreased for nearly 25 years now and arguably even longer than that. 200 years ago, Henry david thoreaugh was saying people had mortgages of 10 to 15 years which he felt was an extremely long time. Now, it's quite common to have them be 30 years!
tomcar288 3y ago
I think it's okay to pursue economic efficiency and productivity gains/GDP but not at the expense of happiness, not at the expense of health, not at the expense of worklife balance, not at the expense of the environment. It's a matter of having our priority list straight.

by Syonyk 3y ago

wahnfrieden 3y ago

You believe in a consumer driven solution?

Syonyk 3y ago
I can hope for a mass change (reduction) in energy use, consumption, etc, driven by consumers - though I don't believe it's likely to happen until the issue is forced by something like "unavailability of resources compared to income" - as we're seeing right now in various ways. I fully expect us as a society to hit the various walls at speed, and have to find some way to do something useful with the various pieces remaining. But, given that, "working out the useful things one can do beforehand" is useful - because you can afford to screw up, to learn what works well locally, and have the resources to experiment. I'll point to things like "direct solar heating of homes" (solar thermal air collectors) as the sort of thing that take some learning how to build and use effectively, and it's useful to work that out while Home Depot still is tolerably well stocked. And/or to collect supplies ahead of time. I'm aware it's a pessimistic view, but it's been working just fine for modeling reality.
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  I'll try to summarize to check I understand: people won't take real action until suffering is unbearable; and, you suggest becoming an ecological disaster prepper.
  - Syonyk 3y ago
    If you want to phrase it that way, sure. I won't argue. It gets at the core of it well enough. Though I'd rephrase the second part as "Building a robust lifestyle against a wide range of possible disruptions." Ecological, food security, financial, etc. It happens to be grand fun, in the deal, and far more fun than staring at screens filled with little glowing dots.
    - wahnfrieden 3y ago
      Pretty devastating. What's the optimistic case you're rooting for? edit: no techno optimism here... poking around for people's ideas on regular folks relations to state and capital on this issue
      - Syonyk 3y ago
        "Rooting for"? Odd sentiment, for sure. Something like "Go Team Star Trek! Humans through the universe!" regardless of the chances of it actually happening? I think the chances of doing much useful in terms of "long term sustainability and living within our energy budget" went sailing past in the 1980s, so adapting to a lower energy and lower energy reliability future seems wise to me. Though there are certainly useful things that can be done on the path. But I'd be happy with a return to far more local systems of food and energy production, and people adapting to living within the currently available energy at any given point in time. Having "solar days" in the winter like we have snow days is a lot easier than building power systems to deal with a week of heavy inversion at "normal energy use."
  - UncleOxidant 3y ago
    > people won't take real action until suffering is unbearable Do you see much evidence that suggests otherwise?

UncleOxidant 3y ago

> Is the economy made for man, or man for the economy? Pendulums swing. Right now we're in the part of the cycle where man is being adapted to the economic system (so the latter). We're in a situation where more and more capital seems to be ending up in fewer hands - the rise of AI seems likely to accelerate that trend and lead to even more income inequality if we're not very careful. The rising tide was supposed to raise all boats, but that doesn't seem to be happening as much anymore as it did earlier. We've sort of been here before (The Gilded Age) and we were able to get the pendulum to swing back in favor of the workers through mass labor movements in the late 19th and early 20th centuries - that was a move towards the economy made for man. Will we be able to do that again?

prottog 3y ago
At the time of the Gilded Age, there was no income tax (personal or corporate), and government expenditure as a ratio of GDP was at single-digit percents; yet there was massive productivity gains and corresponding massive real wage growth among unskilled workers[0], even against the backdrop of surging immigration. Stupendous private fortunes later funded philanthropic efforts behind some of the most renowned institutions of today. In contrast, today, we have government expenditures at a full third of GDP[1] and progressive taxation (with public calls by elected officials for truly confiscatory levels of taxation), yet real wages (as you point out) are rising a lot slower[2] than in the Gilded Age, and the poverty rate has more or less remained constant for decades[3]. I, too, wonder if we can move towards an economy made for man again. [0]: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w14555/w14555.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w14555/w145... [1]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=8fX https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=8fX [2]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q [3]: https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/private/pdf/154286/50YearTrends.pdf https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/private/pdf/154286/...
- rovolo 3y ago
  > At the time of the Gilded Age, [1] starts at 1947; [2] starts at 1979; [3] starts at 1964. None of your sources show that poverty was less of a problem during the Gilded Age (1877 to 1896). I find it very hard to believe the Gilded Age handled poverty better since it predates Social Security and the Great Depression.

prottog 3y ago

The history of human progress is one of harnessing more energy per capita in a mighty struggle to leave behind the disadvantaged state of man in nature ("solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"). We've done quite well so far. I'd like for humanity to keep going until the average Sri Lankan or Congolese can live like the average Texan or Swiss[0] does now, and hopefully until everyone can live in a true post-scarcity world a la Star Trek. It's all well and good for an individual living in the developed world to freely choose to try and consume less energy, but degrowth as a whole I'm afraid would mean that the global poor stay globally poor. [0]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use

UncleOxidant 3y ago
> I'd like for humanity to keep going until the average Sri Lankan or Congolese can live like the average Texan or Swiss does now What if the average Texan could use 1/2 as much energy as they do now and still have a decent lifestyle? Even a better lifestyle. In a lot of ways cars are not healthy for us, for example. What if we made more of our trips on ebikes, for example? Much less energy use and a bit of exercise. I'm not sure the average Sri Lankan wants to be as obese as the average Texan - similar for rates of diabetes. I think Sri Lankans can do better than the average Texan by keeping their cities walkable (and bikeable) and not putting in a lot of car-centric development which is the norm in Texas.
- prottog 3y ago
  > What if the average Texan could use 1/2 as much energy as they do now and still have a decent lifestyle? Absolutely! This would be marvelous, and can happen through technological advances. Imagine if a lifted F-250 could still get 50mpg ;-) Jokes aside, you are quite right that an abundance material wealth can sometimes go hand in hand with unhealthy lifestyles. Better to die of too much than too little, I suppose; Texas and Sri Lanka actually have life expectancies very close to each other, at 76 years and change, but in those 76 years, the Texan would have had many more opportunities at the pursuit of happiness than the Sri Lankan, enabled by an order of a magnitude higher energy expenditure per capita.

Aunche 3y ago

Who exactly are the boogeymen who are tunnel visioned on making "numbers go up"? The vast majority of people's political beliefs instead come from narratives that resonate with them, which is how you get ridiculous ideas such as degrowth will magically solve climate change and catalyze a proletariat revolution. IMO, we would be in a place if people genuinely tried to shape their beliefs based on raw numbers. In the few instances that people care about numbers, it is to do the opposite: cherry-picking numbers that reinforce their worldview.

ben_w 3y ago
> Who exactly are the boogeymen who are tunnel visioned on making "numbers go up"? If my (literally and proudly to-the-left-of-Castro communist) ex is anything to go by: billionaires. I am not clear if she's representative in this regard, what with her being an actual communist and all.
- Turskarama 3y ago
  I think this is almost tautologically true though. Why do Billionaires exist? What is the purpose of being a billionaire? They do not need to work to live well, so why do they work at all? A lot of them might say something like "to improve the world" but the fact of the matter is very few of them are willing to actually _spend money_ (i.e. make a loss) on something which can have a massive benefit (to someone else), they will only ever "invest". So I say it's very nearly tautological that Billionaires are _exactly_ the people focused on making numbers go up, since every decision they make seems to ultimately revolve around making this happen.
  - nly 3y ago
    A lot of successful business people are motivated by being the best, or close to the best, in their area of business. It's about power and ego.
green_man_lives 3y ago
I am not even saying that this is a bad point of view, but isn't the belief of most mainstream economists that GDP must grow each year? Also I am not a conspiracy theorist and I don't really have any beef with the WEF, but I mean growth is one of their stated goals. If there was ever an elite boogeyman driving for growth wouldn't they be the obvious candidate? https://www.weforum.org/events/the-growth-summit-jobs-and-opportunity-for-all-2023 https://www.weforum.org/events/the-growth-summit-jobs-and-op... I am not trying to argue I am trying to genuinely answer your question.

scythe 3y ago

>I just use less energy, by an order of magnitude or so, in the winter - and I bundle up out here. Unfortunately this is about as far as "degrowth" gets: "what if we were just cold?" Or worse, hot? How do we enforce this, anyway? Rationing? Taxes on energy? Have you seen what happens to politicians when gas prices go up? People complain about fast fashion — should we have a tax on clothes? People moan about airplanes — do we want it to be harder to travel? >we've ended up in a debt-based economy If you want to be taken seriously, step one is not adopting Ron Paul's economics rhetoric. >because that lower energy future (or, at least, more limits on energy, growth, etc) is coming down the tunnel at a good clip. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics >Is the economy made for man, or man for the economy? "The economy" is a description of what people are doing. Do we do things for ourselves, or do we do them for the doing — is this the right question? Is it even a meaningful question?

Syonyk 3y ago
Well, I'm a bit limited on thermal mass out here in my office - and quite honestly, I'd have built things somewhat differently were I to do it again. I didn't know nearly what I did now, seven years ago when I built it. I'd focus quite a bit more on thermal mass in the structure instead of just insulation, and would probably put in some containers for holding a good bit of liquid for thermal storage. But I also wouldn't say I'm "cold" out here in the winter, because I dress for the conditions. I'm entirely comfortable out of the wind at 45-50F until the place heats up a bit from my limited energy use and my thermal output (a human is around 100W thermal at rest). Insulating and heating people directly takes a lot less energy than heating entire structures, and radiant heat does a good job of this as well - we should be doing more radiant heat panels in offices in the winter and keep the air a good bit cooler, IMO. As for debt and interest, I've no idea what of Ron Paul's stuff you think I follow. A debt based economy either grows or defaults, those are pretty much the options as demonstrated by history. It doesn't work well in a degrowth environment, which is a problem that has to be solved (or it will be solved by default). The economy is a description of what people are doing, but the spirit of the question was, "Are we doing things that align with what we know makes humans happy, healthy, and prosperous, or are we being {driven, influenced, manipulated} to do that which is the most profitable to various well funded corporate entities?" I'll argue we're doing the second, and I could point to a range of areas. But, to keep it short, are people staring at social media feeds endlessly because they want to, or because well paid people have made it their career to find ways to exploit the human brain to keep us doing it, because it's profitable to their companies? I'd argue it's very much the second, and that's an example of "man bending to the whims of the economy," in my (admittedly short) phrase.

maxerickson 3y ago

Energy is gonna be as cheap as it has ever been over the coming decades, there's no good reason to plan on less. Like on the whole, people simply won't let it happen. Maybe in a few countries, but the young people in India and the various large countries of Africa aren't going to do with less just because you think it's a good idea.

UncleOxidant 3y ago
> Energy is gonna be as cheap as it has ever been over the coming decades Is this assuming some kind of breakthrough in fusion power? Or just cheaper solar, wind, tidal power?
- nine_k 3y ago
  Cheap solar, cheaper storage. Battery technology is now a very hot area, with a lot of R&D and constant improvements, like silicon chips in 1990s when the demand for computers started to turn truly massive. Now we have massive demand for EVs, large-scale storage, and the usual mobile device power.
  - tonyedgecombe 3y ago
    I doubt technology is going to solve our environmental issues. I see this assumption all the time, that the same thinking that got us into these problems is going to get us out of them. Technology rarely delivers on its promises.
    - nine_k 3y ago
      OK, what would help, in your view? What has definitely helped in the past, that we could reuse or emulate?
      - tonyedgecombe 3y ago
        Accepting the reality of the situation we have found ourselves in would be a good start.

helicalmix 3y ago

> A reasonable question, and one not terribly often asked, is "What is the point of the economy, growth, etc?" This is asked all the time. Google "economy growth reddit" and you'll see a bunch of posts questioning why it's important. > I deal with it regularly, since my office is a standalone, off grid power system. I just use less energy, by an order of magnitude or so, in the winter - and I bundle up out here. I mean, yes, on margin for a single person, this reduces overall energy consumption. However, cities are more energy-efficient per capita. Take a look at the energy expenditure per-capita states by state, and you'll see that the states with the smallest energy expenditure per-capita generally have the largest cities, and the ones with the most energy expenditure are rural states: https://www.eia.gov/state/seds/data.php?incfile=/state/seds/sep_sum/html/rank_use_capita.html&sid=US https://www.eia.gov/state/seds/data.php?incfile=/state/seds/....

marginalia_nu 3y ago
> This is asked all the time. Google "economy growth reddit" and you'll see a bunch of posts questioning why it's important. This is a pretty awful way of looking anything up to be honest. Reddit is just a big echo chamber that will mindlessly parrot anything that is the common consensus for the particular subreddit.
- helicalmix 3y ago
  I mean, I agree it's a pretty awful way of reaching the truth or mass consensus, but in terms of gauging how much interest a certain subject has in absolute terms, I think it's a good gauge. What I'm trying to get at is that the original commenter is implying that people rarely question the value of economic growth, but if you google search the term "economic growth" generically, with no prompt on questioning its value, on a popular forum site, you'll see that one of the top questions is questioning its value.

opportune 3y ago

I agree with this sentiment. Imagine if we tied reductions in working hours to productivity increases… The fundamental problem, IMO, is unintuitive: it’s property rights. Specifically, we have all these complex financial instruments (assets) and have commodified/securitized/priced in many assumptions resulting in a price. Even small changes in those underlying assumptions can hugely affect asset prices and result in some entities losing massive amounts of asset value. This is very upsetting to precisely the people with the most power and influence, who don’t even stand to gain much from things like income redistribution or a reduction in output so we get what you’d expect given that That’s why we often end up with hugely wasteful things like the military industrial complex, US insurance system, or the grant system in the EU. Once people are extracting huge amounts of value from something, even if everybody else would be better of on average if the thing stopped, it’s hard to stop it. There’s also of course the global competitiveness problem. As you note we can simply reduce consumption to address that, but the semantics of that at scale are a hard sell in many cases. When it’s demand driven, like central business district coffee shops going out of business because consumers don’t want to shop there anymore due to WFH, it’s not so bad. But if it’s not demand driven, you end up in a situation like the UK is in now where inflation goes haywire and everybody is sad that the economy sucks.

627467 3y ago

> A reasonable question, and one not terribly often asked, is "What is the point of the economy, growth, etc?" My take is that is terribly often asked that question. And the degrowth-camp have been answering with 'is not really about the economy, it's about [insert your fab quality of life kpi]' My take - and probably not terribly unique - is that while the traditional political discourse focuses on growth as a goal in itself - we don't measure growth and set growth goals because thats what we want. We want the things that 'they' claim to come with growth. And while economical growth is maybe not the best indicator for how well other things are - in aggregate - it is definitely not the worst one.

refurb 3y ago

Economic growth is due to one of two things: 1) increased population or 2) increased efficiency. Increased efficiency directly addresses the problem you raised. Creating LED light bulbs that produce the same amount of light at 1/6th the electrical power just freed up 5/6th’s of that power for something else at no net increase in electrical generation.

emsimot 3y ago
What about increased natural resource consumption?
- refurb 3y ago
  Consumption requires someone or something to create demand.
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  This is an inconvenient truth!!!

tomcar288 3y ago

I'm just glad people are starting to realize this is a reality. If you look at all the projections, right now, most people still think everything's gonna keep going up in that exponential growth curve. As for economic growth. The point is to increase material living standards but this isn't the case anymore. We've already peaked, as of 20 years ago in the US. If you take GDP per capita and divide it by any reasonable measure of inflation such as the case shiller housing index, you'll find that our ability to shelter people has decreased for nearly 25 years now and arguably even longer than that. 200 years ago, Henry david thoreaugh was saying people had mortgages of 10 to 15 years which he felt was an extremely long time. Now, it's quite common to have them be 30 years!

tomcar288 3y ago

I think it's okay to pursue economic efficiency and productivity gains/GDP but not at the expense of happiness, not at the expense of health, not at the expense of worklife balance, not at the expense of the environment. It's a matter of having our priority list straight.