3 ms·

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.
      • s1artibartfast 3y ago
        I don't think you even need to make an efficiency argument. More doctors can provide more benefit even if you gave them no medical devices and medicine. They can answer questions, diagnose, triage, ect. There is a whole class of knowledge services in the economy that can scale without consuming more resources. Therapists, musicians, architects, educators, home-decoration consultants, ect.
        • bumby 3y ago
          I think that is an efficiency argument. Whether time or knowledge, the resource doesn’t go away. It just gets placed into a more useful direction. The distinction is how the utility is measured. They later point is that sometimes that definition of utility function can sometimes maximize economic measures while turning a blind eye to societal ones. I’d argue the former puts the cart before the horse, I.e., the economy should serve society and not ur other way around
          • s1artibartfast 3y ago
            Oh, I certainly agree there is an efficiency opportunity as well, I was just saying that it isn't strictly necessary to improve resource efficiency to have growth. How do you think that having two doctors instead of one, where the 2nd has no access to tools is still a resource efficiency solution? It could be even better by having them share fixed resources, but that isn't strictly necessary to see benefit and economic growth (medical advice still adds value). I don't have much to say about your second point, except that you can prioritize any measures you want. Growth of those measures, economic or social, are not bound by resource consumption. I think most reasonable people would agree that economic growth for its own sake isn't important. Its value is simply as an imperfect approximation of other things that society does value.
            • bumby 3y ago
              >How do you think that having two doctors instead of one, where the 2nd has no access to tools is still a resource efficiency solution? Because you are still more efficiently using that 2nd doctors time. Time is the resource in that case. And I agree with your last point. The mail issue I’m bringing up is that economic growth, as traditionally defined, is a blunt tool at best to measure what we really care about: quality of life. I think there is a good argument that there is marginal utility past a certain point, if not outright negative impacts. We confuse the measure for the target.
              • s1artibartfast 3y ago
• bumby 3y ago
  Besides the fact that people like Robert Solow say the same thing, I feel like this comment misses the point. It’s begging the question. It’s like pointing to people who are constantly trying to increase their salary as evidence that increasing your salary is necessary. When the measure becomes the target it ceases to be a good measure. To answer your question directly, Japan has had roughly the same GDP for nearly 30 years.