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I used to think this way. I guess it is possible, in the long-term, that we might see some kind of social collapse due to a tragedy-of-the-commons driven deplet

I used to think this way. I guess it is possible, in the long-term, that we might see some kind of social collapse due to a tragedy-of-the-commons driven depletion of some critical resource. But I see no evidence this is close. Humans are flourishing more than ever before. And in the places that humans aren't flourishing, this is more due to social issues (inequality, deaths of despair) than to resource depletion. Moreover, stalling birthrates obviate any kind of Malthusian concerns for at least a generation or so. People have been predicting resource-driven collapses for a long time now, since the Club of Rome and Donella Meadow’s Limits to Growth in the 70s. I haven't read Geoffrey West but it looks like he is in the same camp. A lot of very smart modelers and game theoreticians have come up with models predicting collapse. But they've been wrong so far when pressed to make falsifiable predictions (see the Simon-Erlich wager). And beyond falsifiable predictions, more empirical and less theoretical work also seems to show that models of resource-depletion and collapse are too simple to map on to what actually happens. See for example, Elinor Ostrom’s Governing the Commons, about how societies around the world and through history have successfully managed common-pool resources. So Im not worried about resource-depletion-driven collapse.

dottjt 3y ago
I think the thing that people miscalculate is that resource-depletion-driven collapse happens once. Everything the happens prior to the collapse is largely irrelevant, irrespective of how nice life was prior to the collapse. Ultimately we live in a world of physical limits. Current society is predicated upon exponential growth, it is literally unsustainable by definition.
- jvanderbot 3y ago
  This is not true. A total collapse can happen many times, and there can be innumerable reaource-driven collapses of societies or even civilizations. What is conjectures in this thread is that it hasn't happened yet (debatable) but that doesn't mean it can only happen one more time.
  - dottjt 3y ago
    You're conflating two separate things. Yes, society can collapse multiple times. Yes, there can be innumerable resource-driven collapses. These are given. What I'm referring to is the literal running out of the necessary resources to progress modern society in the same way that we have up until now. This is also a given. Take oil for example, and think of the vast amounts of plastic we rely on, which we currently have no equivalent alternative. Of course, this is only relevant to modern society. This is not to say that humans cannot exist in a pre-modern society. It just won't be pleasant.
- bumby 3y ago
  >Current society is predicated upon exponential growth Is it though? There is no law in economics that I’m aware of that bars steady state. Exponential growth seems to be nothing more that a (possibly shortsighted) preference
  - dottjt 3y ago
    Can you name a modern society that doesn't aim to maintain positive economic growth year on year?
    - s1artibartfast 3y ago
      Economic growth doesn't necessarily mean increased resource consumption, especially when you take into account services. For example, Having more doctors and fewer unemployed people improves your GDP, but doesn't require more food to feed more people
      - dottjt 3y ago
        Your response is resource blind, and is part of the problem why we're in the predicament we're in. Think of the amount of resources that a doctor consumes in the services they provide, from all the medical equipment to the medicines and other devices that they administer to their patients.
        s1artibartfast 3y ago
        Take a minute to imagine more medical doctors without more resources. It is pretty easy
        bumby 3y ago
        There is an important distinction between using resources more efficiently and requiring more resources. My point is that we may not be using resources to efficiently raise quality of life. Just adding more resources to that problem seems to ironically be blind to the process and goal.
climatologist 3y ago
What is your opinion on industrial pollution?
- flownoon 3y ago
  My opinion? I think it sucks. PM2.5 kills. CO2 is causing climate change. But living in a world with industrial pollution is better than living in a pre-industrial world.
forty 3y ago
The issue is not resource depletion, but more how we f* the planet by producing / consuming too much (heating it and killing biodiversity in miscellaneous other ways).
Zandikar 3y ago
> Humans are flourishing more than ever before Quantify that (yes, I'm serious). > this is more due to social issues (inequality, deaths of despair) than to resource depletion You've missed the point if you think this is about resource depletion. There is an abundance of resources. It's the process of extracting them and refining them that is killing life on this planet (it's not just about humans).
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > Quantify that Population, Kardashev scale, literacy rates, child mortality rates, sexual equality, the very definition of poverty, per-capita frequency of violent death, great-power war frequency, vaccine and medical sophistication, education rates, patent filings… It takes a cantankerous set of blinders to see us as being in anything but a golden age. Much of the hand wringing arises precisely from the fact that we don’t want to lose what we have.
  - Zandikar 3y ago
    > Population Projected to stop growing this decade and go down, with many fist world countries staring the barrel of socioeconomic collapse due to lack of new births to grow into the workforce to sustain the outsized outgoing aging population, while developing nations are seeing population booms that they cannot sustain as a result of many of the easily extracted resources already being plundered or polluted (Fish, Clean water). So many of the countries that are losing are projected to soon start losing population (To name some big ones, Japan, South Korea, China countries and if US immigration faulters, USA as well) and face a demographic retirement crisis, while many of the countries that are projected to (keep) gain(ing) are doing so without the access to resources to acquire them. You need blinders to look at the current population demographic and think "Yeah, this everybody is flourishing, this is going to work out great" > Kardashev Scale Not taking this seriously I see as we don't even rank, We're over 5 orders of magnitude from the first threshold, so it's not even like it's close. So a meaningless suggestion. > literacy rates No argument there, but if basic human literacy is "flourishing" to you I see the bar you've set and I've set for "Flourishing" are as stark as "Alive" and "Dead". > sexual equality Those rose tinted glasses are polarized as fuck > the very definition of poverty The goalposts they keep moving so that less people than ever qualify so as to appear as poverty rates have largely remained stable instead of ballooning 3 fold in the US as they slowly squeeze the middle class out? Yeah. Real Flourishing. > per-capita frequency of violent death Fair point here too, Has been on a general decline in the 2000's, and too soon to say anything about the 2020's. The first thing you've listed I'd agree as actually "Flourishing". > great-power war frequency You mean the continuous Great Power Proxy struggles that have killed millions with regularity across the world, forcing non-great powers to suffer the evils of war while those great powers sit back in comfort and throw shit at each other on twitter/TV/Newspapers? Yeah. Really flourishing. That MAD policy was a reaaaal step forward for life on Earth. > vaccine and medical sophistication Hey, another one you slam dunked. > education rates You seem to keep repeating the mistake at looking at averages of people that are just "educated" and not looking at the level of education. More people recieve AN Education today than ever before, even as a percentage of population, true, on a global scale. However, general performance across the board has been on the decline, as have academic and journalistic standards and integrity. From China to the US, the education systems are doing a worse and worse job of educating people, despite churning out more white papers and degrees than ever. > patent filings lol no. This is like measuring a mobile phone platforms app stores success by how many apps it has. If it has 100,000 shitty flappy bird clones, but no weather, social media, entertainment, finance, or other very common tools, that doesn't mean it's good or flourishing. People flooding the Patent office with bullshit just to compete on "Patents filed" is Cold War era childish oneupsmanship. Quantity is Not Quality. > Much of the hand wringing arises precisely from the fact that we don’t want to lose what we have Yes, and their wringing their hands because they're losing it. It takes a cantankerous set of blinders to look at everything they HAVE and assume it'll just continue being that way.

dottjt 3y ago

I think the thing that people miscalculate is that resource-depletion-driven collapse happens once. Everything the happens prior to the collapse is largely irrelevant, irrespective of how nice life was prior to the collapse. Ultimately we live in a world of physical limits. Current society is predicated upon exponential growth, it is literally unsustainable by definition.

jvanderbot 3y ago
This is not true. A total collapse can happen many times, and there can be innumerable reaource-driven collapses of societies or even civilizations. What is conjectures in this thread is that it hasn't happened yet (debatable) but that doesn't mean it can only happen one more time.
- dottjt 3y ago
  You're conflating two separate things. Yes, society can collapse multiple times. Yes, there can be innumerable resource-driven collapses. These are given. What I'm referring to is the literal running out of the necessary resources to progress modern society in the same way that we have up until now. This is also a given. Take oil for example, and think of the vast amounts of plastic we rely on, which we currently have no equivalent alternative. Of course, this is only relevant to modern society. This is not to say that humans cannot exist in a pre-modern society. It just won't be pleasant.
bumby 3y ago
>Current society is predicated upon exponential growth Is it though? There is no law in economics that I’m aware of that bars steady state. Exponential growth seems to be nothing more that a (possibly shortsighted) preference
- dottjt 3y ago
  Can you name a modern society that doesn't aim to maintain positive economic growth year on year?
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    Economic growth doesn't necessarily mean increased resource consumption, especially when you take into account services. For example, Having more doctors and fewer unemployed people improves your GDP, but doesn't require more food to feed more people
    - dottjt 3y ago
      Your response is resource blind, and is part of the problem why we're in the predicament we're in. Think of the amount of resources that a doctor consumes in the services they provide, from all the medical equipment to the medicines and other devices that they administer to their patients.
      - s1artibartfast 3y ago
        Take a minute to imagine more medical doctors without more resources. It is pretty easy
      - bumby 3y ago
        There is an important distinction between using resources more efficiently and requiring more resources. My point is that we may not be using resources to efficiently raise quality of life. Just adding more resources to that problem seems to ironically be blind to the process and goal.

climatologist 3y ago

What is your opinion on industrial pollution?

flownoon 3y ago
My opinion? I think it sucks. PM2.5 kills. CO2 is causing climate change. But living in a world with industrial pollution is better than living in a pre-industrial world.

forty 3y ago

The issue is not resource depletion, but more how we f* the planet by producing / consuming too much (heating it and killing biodiversity in miscellaneous other ways).

Zandikar 3y ago

> Humans are flourishing more than ever before Quantify that (yes, I'm serious). > this is more due to social issues (inequality, deaths of despair) than to resource depletion You've missed the point if you think this is about resource depletion. There is an abundance of resources. It's the process of extracting them and refining them that is killing life on this planet (it's not just about humans).

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> Quantify that Population, Kardashev scale, literacy rates, child mortality rates, sexual equality, the very definition of poverty, per-capita frequency of violent death, great-power war frequency, vaccine and medical sophistication, education rates, patent filings… It takes a cantankerous set of blinders to see us as being in anything but a golden age. Much of the hand wringing arises precisely from the fact that we don’t want to lose what we have.
- Zandikar 3y ago
  > Population Projected to stop growing this decade and go down, with many fist world countries staring the barrel of socioeconomic collapse due to lack of new births to grow into the workforce to sustain the outsized outgoing aging population, while developing nations are seeing population booms that they cannot sustain as a result of many of the easily extracted resources already being plundered or polluted (Fish, Clean water). So many of the countries that are losing are projected to soon start losing population (To name some big ones, Japan, South Korea, China countries and if US immigration faulters, USA as well) and face a demographic retirement crisis, while many of the countries that are projected to (keep) gain(ing) are doing so without the access to resources to acquire them. You need blinders to look at the current population demographic and think "Yeah, this everybody is flourishing, this is going to work out great" > Kardashev Scale Not taking this seriously I see as we don't even rank, We're over 5 orders of magnitude from the first threshold, so it's not even like it's close. So a meaningless suggestion. > literacy rates No argument there, but if basic human literacy is "flourishing" to you I see the bar you've set and I've set for "Flourishing" are as stark as "Alive" and "Dead". > sexual equality Those rose tinted glasses are polarized as fuck > the very definition of poverty The goalposts they keep moving so that less people than ever qualify so as to appear as poverty rates have largely remained stable instead of ballooning 3 fold in the US as they slowly squeeze the middle class out? Yeah. Real Flourishing. > per-capita frequency of violent death Fair point here too, Has been on a general decline in the 2000's, and too soon to say anything about the 2020's. The first thing you've listed I'd agree as actually "Flourishing". > great-power war frequency You mean the continuous Great Power Proxy struggles that have killed millions with regularity across the world, forcing non-great powers to suffer the evils of war while those great powers sit back in comfort and throw shit at each other on twitter/TV/Newspapers? Yeah. Really flourishing. That MAD policy was a reaaaal step forward for life on Earth. > vaccine and medical sophistication Hey, another one you slam dunked. > education rates You seem to keep repeating the mistake at looking at averages of people that are just "educated" and not looking at the level of education. More people recieve AN Education today than ever before, even as a percentage of population, true, on a global scale. However, general performance across the board has been on the decline, as have academic and journalistic standards and integrity. From China to the US, the education systems are doing a worse and worse job of educating people, despite churning out more white papers and degrees than ever. > patent filings lol no. This is like measuring a mobile phone platforms app stores success by how many apps it has. If it has 100,000 shitty flappy bird clones, but no weather, social media, entertainment, finance, or other very common tools, that doesn't mean it's good or flourishing. People flooding the Patent office with bullshit just to compete on "Patents filed" is Cold War era childish oneupsmanship. Quantity is Not Quality. > Much of the hand wringing arises precisely from the fact that we don’t want to lose what we have Yes, and their wringing their hands because they're losing it. It takes a cantankerous set of blinders to look at everything they HAVE and assume it'll just continue being that way.