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I don’t really understand the “atoms in the universe” argument. That has nothing to do with the size of an economy. We don’t need an atom to represent every “bi

I don’t really understand the “atoms in the universe” argument. That has nothing to do with the size of an economy. We don’t need an atom to represent every “bit” of an economy.

swid 3y ago
It’s a poor way of phrasing things, but think like this - there are certain physical inputs to the economy. Ores, power, water, stuff like that. That stuff is processed into stuff of greater value, and that adds value to the economy. We can also increase the value by extracting more raw inputs. So let’s say the economy is growing exponentially, some percentage per year. Either we keep using more raw inputs, or we keep increasing the value of those inputs. That is where the 2% growth comes from. If we don’t add new inputs, and exponential growth continues, the outputs will grow to such great value that the raw materials are relatively worthless. But that seems wrong to me - if the physical materials are worthless, someone could buy them all and corner the market and charge whatever they want. It can only happen if scarcity is completely eliminated.
dwaltrip 3y ago
Economic growth is strongly correlated with energy usage. Energy requires atoms.
- konschubert 3y ago
  > A number of countries have decoupled economic growth from energy use, even if we take offshored production into account https://ourworldindata.org/energy-gdp-decoupling https://ourworldindata.org/energy-gdp-decoupling
  - dwaltrip 3y ago
    Ah good point, I forgot the degree to which that is happening. I’m very curious to see how that plays out long term.
rvbissell 3y ago
Their point was that -- since there are a finite number of atoms in the universe-- it is a given that there exists some upper-bound on growth. They are intentionally calling attention to that absurd extreme as a rhetoric device, not out of a belief that that's when we'll hit the wall. (It's a safe bet they believe will hit the wall much much much sooner.)
- konschubert 3y ago
  You can have growth without using more material or more energy.
  - NotYourLawyer 3y ago
    Yeah, you can get more efficient up to a point. What does that buy you, maybe another factor of 10?
  - rvbissell 3y ago
    Ultimately, economic growth is driven by population growth.[0] And also, there is a feedback loop where population growth is encouraged by economic growth. Since people require material and energy input, and there is a limit to both on this planet,[1] economic growth is expected to flatten once the population outstrips the Earth's resources. [0] There is also the growth that comes in spurts from technological innovations. Those spurts should be amortized across the entire ranges of years that follow them when assessing the resultant growth. IMO, such technological innovations are akin to data compression, increasing entropy. Over the loooong haul, I'd expect such spurts to have diminishing returns (just like compressing a compressed file has diminishing returns.) [1] I guess expanding our reach beyond Earth would be one of those 'spurts'. EDIT: fixed a word
    - andrewjl 3y ago
      > There is also the growth that comes in spurts from technological innovations. Those spurts should be amortized across the entire ranges of years that follow them when assessing the resultant growth. Technological spurts ultimately drive productivity and the latter in turn drives growth. Why do these spurts need to be amortized across longer periods of time? Especially when many have compounding effects?
bloaf 3y ago
Fundamentally, the "size of the economy" measures value creation, i.e. the conversion of low value atoms into higher value atoms. The economy grows by either converting more atoms, or changing the value of the in/output. Obviously "sustaining more people" requires proportionally more atoms, so exponentially growing population implies exponential economic growth. What happens in the constant population assumption is an open question. It could be that our rate of atom conversion also becomes constant/decline. We might become more efficient and grow the economy by increasing the value of the atoms we convert. The economy might cease growing altogether because we reach a technological plateau and need satiety. But it's also possible that we'll decouple demand from the capitas, and find whole new ways and reasons to increase atom conversion.
Sniffnoy 3y ago
The post links to a followup post where he discusses this point further: https://www.cold-takes.com/more-on-multiple-world-size-economies-per-atom/ https://www.cold-takes.com/more-on-multiple-world-size-econo...

I don’t really understand the “atoms in the universe” argument. That has nothing to do with the size of an economy. We don’t need an atom to represent every “bit” of an economy.

swid 3y ago

It’s a poor way of phrasing things, but think like this - there are certain physical inputs to the economy. Ores, power, water, stuff like that. That stuff is processed into stuff of greater value, and that adds value to the economy. We can also increase the value by extracting more raw inputs. So let’s say the economy is growing exponentially, some percentage per year. Either we keep using more raw inputs, or we keep increasing the value of those inputs. That is where the 2% growth comes from. If we don’t add new inputs, and exponential growth continues, the outputs will grow to such great value that the raw materials are relatively worthless. But that seems wrong to me - if the physical materials are worthless, someone could buy them all and corner the market and charge whatever they want. It can only happen if scarcity is completely eliminated.

dwaltrip 3y ago

Economic growth is strongly correlated with energy usage. Energy requires atoms.

konschubert 3y ago
> A number of countries have decoupled economic growth from energy use, even if we take offshored production into account https://ourworldindata.org/energy-gdp-decoupling https://ourworldindata.org/energy-gdp-decoupling
- dwaltrip 3y ago
  Ah good point, I forgot the degree to which that is happening. I’m very curious to see how that plays out long term.

rvbissell 3y ago

Their point was that -- since there are a finite number of atoms in the universe-- it is a given that there exists some upper-bound on growth. They are intentionally calling attention to that absurd extreme as a rhetoric device, not out of a belief that that's when we'll hit the wall. (It's a safe bet they believe will hit the wall much much much sooner.)

konschubert 3y ago
You can have growth without using more material or more energy.
- NotYourLawyer 3y ago
  Yeah, you can get more efficient up to a point. What does that buy you, maybe another factor of 10?
- rvbissell 3y ago
  Ultimately, economic growth is driven by population growth.[0] And also, there is a feedback loop where population growth is encouraged by economic growth. Since people require material and energy input, and there is a limit to both on this planet,[1] economic growth is expected to flatten once the population outstrips the Earth's resources. [0] There is also the growth that comes in spurts from technological innovations. Those spurts should be amortized across the entire ranges of years that follow them when assessing the resultant growth. IMO, such technological innovations are akin to data compression, increasing entropy. Over the loooong haul, I'd expect such spurts to have diminishing returns (just like compressing a compressed file has diminishing returns.) [1] I guess expanding our reach beyond Earth would be one of those 'spurts'. EDIT: fixed a word
  - andrewjl 3y ago
    > There is also the growth that comes in spurts from technological innovations. Those spurts should be amortized across the entire ranges of years that follow them when assessing the resultant growth. Technological spurts ultimately drive productivity and the latter in turn drives growth. Why do these spurts need to be amortized across longer periods of time? Especially when many have compounding effects?

bloaf 3y ago

Fundamentally, the "size of the economy" measures value creation, i.e. the conversion of low value atoms into higher value atoms. The economy grows by either converting more atoms, or changing the value of the in/output. Obviously "sustaining more people" requires proportionally more atoms, so exponentially growing population implies exponential economic growth. What happens in the constant population assumption is an open question. It could be that our rate of atom conversion also becomes constant/decline. We might become more efficient and grow the economy by increasing the value of the atoms we convert. The economy might cease growing altogether because we reach a technological plateau and need satiety. But it's also possible that we'll decouple demand from the capitas, and find whole new ways and reasons to increase atom conversion.

Sniffnoy 3y ago

The post links to a followup post where he discusses this point further: https://www.cold-takes.com/more-on-multiple-world-size-economies-per-atom/ https://www.cold-takes.com/more-on-multiple-world-size-econo...