5 ms·

Degrowth is a euphemism for economic recession/depression.

green_man_lives 3y ago
I think that what people mean, or think they mean, when they say "de-growth" is switching from pure GDP as a metric of standard of living, to a normalized GDP-per capita. Probably GDP per capita divided by hours of labor and also negative externalities like pollution and stuff. The idea here is that GDP should rise from a rise in productivity, rather than relying on an increase in population or working hours or increased environmental exploitation to achieve growth. It's annoyingly used in the case of this article to point to economic stagnation and say "look here's the de-growth you wanted". When the whole point is that GDP should be increasing, just not at the expense of the citizens or the planet.
- peepeepoopoo5 3y ago
  GDP per capita would effectively give you the same metric, unless you're also implying that we need to cull the human population.
  - green_man_lives 3y ago
    > GDP per capita would effectively give you the same metric My point is that GDP per capita can increase because of reasons that don't necessarily make your life better. Working longer hours, or even an increase in productivity with a simultaneous increase in inequality, meaning that the per-capita GDP is increasing but income is stagnating. > unless you're also implying that we need to cull the human population. My point in bringing up population was that our GDP growth can be attributed to population growth, which is likely going to be a logistic curve. So we can't rely on population growth to contribute to GDP.
- dukeyukey 3y ago
  In contexts where living standards are important, we already talk about stuff like productivity, dollars-per-worker-hour and stuff like that. And in contexts where absolute GDP is important, like international relations, we talk about that instead.
  - green_man_lives 3y ago
    I am sure that's true among economists and sociologists. To the layperson (me), the way I usually hear it from other normies and in media, GDP per capita is the metric that translates to QOL. Unless you are listening to Planet Money or some niche econ-related media. Even then there's a lot of bad economics infotainment that uses GDP in this way.
crispinb 3y ago
Economic growth is a euphemism for biosphere destruction. Borrowing your phrase. More truthfully 'economic growth' and biosphere destruction are literally two terms for the exact same physical process. Circular economy stories excluded for the sci-fi fantasies they are, of course.
well_actulily 3y ago
On a finite planet, how is perpetual growth supposed to work indefinitely?
- peepeepoopoo5 3y ago
  The space of possible future human technologies is effectively infinite, to say nothing of extraplanetary resources.
  - tzs 3y ago
    > The space of possible future human technologies is effectively infinite, to say nothing of extraplanetary resources. You are underestimating how quickly exponential growth gets out of hand. Take population for example. If we wanted to have 1% annual population growth, in ~12 100 years the volume of humans would be 9 x 10^60 m^3. If we started expanding into space right now, and we expanded at the speed of light, in 12 100 years we'd have access to 6 x 10^60 m^3, which is not big enough. Of course by then we may have bioengineered smaller humans. That doesn't help much. It just changes that 12 100 to 12 800. Or how about energy? If human energy use grows by 1% a year in ~9300 years we will be using 5.3 x 10^59 Joules per year. That's about the same as the amount of energy you would get if the entire mass of the Milky Way galaxy were converted to energy (E=mc^2). Forget the Milky Way. Let's think big. What if we converted the entire freaking universe--all the observable mass, and all the dark matter, and all the dark energy--into energy for humanity. At 1% annual growth from now we'd be using that much per year in 12 000 years.
    - dublinben 3y ago
      If human civilization has been growing exponentially for a while, how have we not already hit these enormous galaxy-straining limits? The total number of humans still easily fits on just the Earth alone.
      - tzs 3y ago
        We haven't been growing exponentially for very long. Before agriculture was invented there wasn't much growth at all. We were limited by how much hunter-gatherers could hunt and gather. Growth happened when people expanded to some new territory, and that was limited by poor transportation options. When agriculture was invented around 12000 years ago growth picked up, with the population doubling around every 1000 years. That lasted until around 5000 years ago, when the population was around 100 million. There wasn't much grown for the next couple thousand years. Around 3000 years ago growth picked up and the population tripled by 2000 years ago. It slowed again until around the industrial revolution and then picked up quite a bit. The world population growth rate went from around 0.1% per year before the industrial revolution to around 0.6%. The 20th century brought many developments that allowed for even more growth. That allowed the growth rate to hit around 2.24% in 1964. It's been declining since then, dropping to a little below 1% a couple years ago. It's been pretty much the same pattern since we became Homo sapiens. When there is an increase in available resources or we get new technology that lets us better utilize resources we can have a relatively short period of exponential growth until we reach the limits of those resources and then growth slows or stops. With the industrial revolution and then the developments in the 20th century we were able to have about a century of sustained high growth, but we're reaching the end of that expansion and the growth rate is declining. We'll almost surely have more breakthroughs that allow for growth increases, but some people want to plan based on the assumption that we'll have such breakthroughs often enough that we can count on high growth indefinitely. The point of the galaxy-straining limit calculation is that the past pattern of periods of exponential growth being followed by declining growth is something inherent in exponential growth. It's not something that can be escaped by finding new places to settle or more efficient ways to use existing resources. Thus, we should be planning on the recent period of exponential growth ending rather than becoming depending on exponential growth continuing indefinitely.
Syonyk 3y ago
That's rather wrong, though it's a common enough bit of nonsense slung at the degrowth movement. In any reasonably modern use of the word, "growth" is defined as "exponential growth" - percent year over year growth. We expect companies to grow by N percent, every year - this is how expectations are phrased. And while it may be a small number, "1% growth, year over year," is still an exponential curve. The first question that matters is, "Can exponential growth continue forever on a finite planet?" We do live on a finite planet. Pick whatever metric you want and continue exponentially, you will run into limits, eventually. Various physics bloggers have played with this rather extensively over the years. A trivially true statement we don't often consider is, "Anything that can't go on forever will stop at some point." Combine those two, and exponential growth on a finite planet will stop at some point. People try to argue around it via "decoupling" or "But asteroids" or various other methods, and some have some effects, but so far, they've either been "one time" sort of gains (various lighting or transportation efficiency gains), or "slowing the rate of the exponential growth" - but not fundamentally changing the problem of it being exponential. Given that, if you agree with both, there are then two general categories of response to it. The first, and I'd argue the current default, is to kick the can, and assume that someone or something else will fix the problem (or, more practically, that you'll die before it becomes a problem you have to deal with). This means that the collisions with the end of growth will be uncontrolled and generally quite destructive (as "accelerating into the approaching cliff face" tends to be). The alternative, which is what the degrowth movement argues for, is finding ways to terminate the exponential growth before we hit those walls. Under our current economic systems, that does imply something that looks like a recession/depression, but that's not the goal - that's just a transition from a "must grow" economy to a "steady state" sort of economy in action. And there's a lot of debate what it looks like, but I'm not convinced it's worth going into the details of that here, now. So... if you're going to criticize a movement, at least try to understand it first?
- peepeepoopoo5 3y ago
  You opened by saying that you're not proposing economic stagnation, but then wrote several paragraphs arguing for economic stagnation. Human technology isn't a finite resource.
goodpoint 3y ago
Don't make things up.

I think that what people mean, or think they mean, when they say "de-growth" is switching from pure GDP as a metric of standard of living, to a normalized GDP-per capita. Probably GDP per capita divided by hours of labor and also negative externalities like pollution and stuff. The idea here is that GDP should rise from a rise in productivity, rather than relying on an increase in population or working hours or increased environmental exploitation to achieve growth. It's annoyingly used in the case of this article to point to economic stagnation and say "look here's the de-growth you wanted". When the whole point is that GDP should be increasing, just not at the expense of the citizens or the planet.

peepeepoopoo5 3y ago
GDP per capita would effectively give you the same metric, unless you're also implying that we need to cull the human population.
- green_man_lives 3y ago
  > GDP per capita would effectively give you the same metric My point is that GDP per capita can increase because of reasons that don't necessarily make your life better. Working longer hours, or even an increase in productivity with a simultaneous increase in inequality, meaning that the per-capita GDP is increasing but income is stagnating. > unless you're also implying that we need to cull the human population. My point in bringing up population was that our GDP growth can be attributed to population growth, which is likely going to be a logistic curve. So we can't rely on population growth to contribute to GDP.
dukeyukey 3y ago
In contexts where living standards are important, we already talk about stuff like productivity, dollars-per-worker-hour and stuff like that. And in contexts where absolute GDP is important, like international relations, we talk about that instead.
- green_man_lives 3y ago
  I am sure that's true among economists and sociologists. To the layperson (me), the way I usually hear it from other normies and in media, GDP per capita is the metric that translates to QOL. Unless you are listening to Planet Money or some niche econ-related media. Even then there's a lot of bad economics infotainment that uses GDP in this way.

crispinb 3y ago

Economic growth is a euphemism for biosphere destruction. Borrowing your phrase. More truthfully 'economic growth' and biosphere destruction are literally two terms for the exact same physical process. Circular economy stories excluded for the sci-fi fantasies they are, of course.

well_actulily 3y ago

On a finite planet, how is perpetual growth supposed to work indefinitely?

peepeepoopoo5 3y ago
The space of possible future human technologies is effectively infinite, to say nothing of extraplanetary resources.
- tzs 3y ago
  > The space of possible future human technologies is effectively infinite, to say nothing of extraplanetary resources. You are underestimating how quickly exponential growth gets out of hand. Take population for example. If we wanted to have 1% annual population growth, in ~12 100 years the volume of humans would be 9 x 10^60 m^3. If we started expanding into space right now, and we expanded at the speed of light, in 12 100 years we'd have access to 6 x 10^60 m^3, which is not big enough. Of course by then we may have bioengineered smaller humans. That doesn't help much. It just changes that 12 100 to 12 800. Or how about energy? If human energy use grows by 1% a year in ~9300 years we will be using 5.3 x 10^59 Joules per year. That's about the same as the amount of energy you would get if the entire mass of the Milky Way galaxy were converted to energy (E=mc^2). Forget the Milky Way. Let's think big. What if we converted the entire freaking universe--all the observable mass, and all the dark matter, and all the dark energy--into energy for humanity. At 1% annual growth from now we'd be using that much per year in 12 000 years.
  - dublinben 3y ago
    If human civilization has been growing exponentially for a while, how have we not already hit these enormous galaxy-straining limits? The total number of humans still easily fits on just the Earth alone.
    - tzs 3y ago
      We haven't been growing exponentially for very long. Before agriculture was invented there wasn't much growth at all. We were limited by how much hunter-gatherers could hunt and gather. Growth happened when people expanded to some new territory, and that was limited by poor transportation options. When agriculture was invented around 12000 years ago growth picked up, with the population doubling around every 1000 years. That lasted until around 5000 years ago, when the population was around 100 million. There wasn't much grown for the next couple thousand years. Around 3000 years ago growth picked up and the population tripled by 2000 years ago. It slowed again until around the industrial revolution and then picked up quite a bit. The world population growth rate went from around 0.1% per year before the industrial revolution to around 0.6%. The 20th century brought many developments that allowed for even more growth. That allowed the growth rate to hit around 2.24% in 1964. It's been declining since then, dropping to a little below 1% a couple years ago. It's been pretty much the same pattern since we became Homo sapiens. When there is an increase in available resources or we get new technology that lets us better utilize resources we can have a relatively short period of exponential growth until we reach the limits of those resources and then growth slows or stops. With the industrial revolution and then the developments in the 20th century we were able to have about a century of sustained high growth, but we're reaching the end of that expansion and the growth rate is declining. We'll almost surely have more breakthroughs that allow for growth increases, but some people want to plan based on the assumption that we'll have such breakthroughs often enough that we can count on high growth indefinitely. The point of the galaxy-straining limit calculation is that the past pattern of periods of exponential growth being followed by declining growth is something inherent in exponential growth. It's not something that can be escaped by finding new places to settle or more efficient ways to use existing resources. Thus, we should be planning on the recent period of exponential growth ending rather than becoming depending on exponential growth continuing indefinitely.

Syonyk 3y ago

That's rather wrong, though it's a common enough bit of nonsense slung at the degrowth movement. In any reasonably modern use of the word, "growth" is defined as "exponential growth" - percent year over year growth. We expect companies to grow by N percent, every year - this is how expectations are phrased. And while it may be a small number, "1% growth, year over year," is still an exponential curve. The first question that matters is, "Can exponential growth continue forever on a finite planet?" We do live on a finite planet. Pick whatever metric you want and continue exponentially, you will run into limits, eventually. Various physics bloggers have played with this rather extensively over the years. A trivially true statement we don't often consider is, "Anything that can't go on forever will stop at some point." Combine those two, and exponential growth on a finite planet will stop at some point. People try to argue around it via "decoupling" or "But asteroids" or various other methods, and some have some effects, but so far, they've either been "one time" sort of gains (various lighting or transportation efficiency gains), or "slowing the rate of the exponential growth" - but not fundamentally changing the problem of it being exponential. Given that, if you agree with both, there are then two general categories of response to it. The first, and I'd argue the current default, is to kick the can, and assume that someone or something else will fix the problem (or, more practically, that you'll die before it becomes a problem you have to deal with). This means that the collisions with the end of growth will be uncontrolled and generally quite destructive (as "accelerating into the approaching cliff face" tends to be). The alternative, which is what the degrowth movement argues for, is finding ways to terminate the exponential growth before we hit those walls. Under our current economic systems, that does imply something that looks like a recession/depression, but that's not the goal - that's just a transition from a "must grow" economy to a "steady state" sort of economy in action. And there's a lot of debate what it looks like, but I'm not convinced it's worth going into the details of that here, now. So... if you're going to criticize a movement, at least try to understand it first?

peepeepoopoo5 3y ago
You opened by saying that you're not proposing economic stagnation, but then wrote several paragraphs arguing for economic stagnation. Human technology isn't a finite resource.

goodpoint 3y ago

Don't make things up.