5 ms·

I think the claims in the piece are fairly robust to changes in the definition of economic growth. That is: for any reasonable definition of terms like "economy

by gjm11 3y ago

I think the claims in the piece are fairly robust to changes in the definition of economic growth. That is: for any reasonable definition of terms like "economy", "wealth", etc., it seems (1) fairly clear that "the economy", meaning in some sense the total amount of actual "wealth", has been growing at a few percent per year on average for quite a while, and (2) monstrously unlikely that "the economy", meaning in some sense the total amount of actual "wealth", can continue to grow at a few percent per year on average for, say, the next 10k years. (Because, as the author says, that would mean having as much of whatever-it-is-that-economies-are-made-of per atom in the galaxy as we currently have in total.) So for that sort of growth to continue for that long, something very radical would have to change. (We discover how to teleport arbitrary distances, or to move to entirely different universes, so we are no longer limited by the size of this galaxy. It turns out that humans really are immaterial souls that just live in material bodies, and we find a way to break free of the physical world altogether. At least that sort of level of radical-ness.) Hence, either the growth we are all used to will have to slow dramatically, or some other radical change will have to happen, or both. None of this depends on the details of how you define "the size of the economy" -- though, as you say, some particular choices you can make (but that no one ever actually does) would invalidate the argument. (When people talk about economic growth, they never mean growth in nominal dollars or whatever. That would be silly. They never mean mere population increase, independent of the wealth of that population. That would be silly.)

Supermancho 3y ago
> it seems (1) fairly clear that "the economy", meaning in some sense the total amount of actual "wealth", has been growing at a few percent per year on average for quite a while, It's not clear at all and I certainly don't think that's the case, personally. Dollar numbers went up, population went up (barely - https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/population-growth-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/popu...). Wealth was extracted and concentrated, not necessarily grown. The wealth was extracted from more primitive foreign economies as the poor of the US became less attractive for labor. The number of fabs/factories that moved out the US is a telling factor.
- abecedarius 3y ago
  How do you extract, like, 10x wealth from the poor of a world that had less than x wealth in total a few centuries ago? Without ever increasing the total amount of actual wealth?
  - Supermancho 3y ago
    > 10x wealth from the poor of a world The middle class of Asia happily became the workhorse of the US. The median quality of life for the planet improved, but that was about technology and efficiency of the systems moving about goods...to the richer countries profiting. The movie Outsourced was an on-the-nose look at the effect the US had on poorer nations from the 2000s to today.
    - abecedarius 3y ago
      Exploitation does exist. It sounds like you're not disagreeing however about real growth, or even that it's been reaching more of the world.
- gjm11 3y ago
  Could you be a bit more explicit here? I mean, pick a specific reasonably long period of time over which you consider real economic growth not to have been as much as say 2% per year, and explain a bit about what you think actually happened? It seems to me that ... ... in general poor people, and especially poor people in poor countries, don't have all that much wealth to extract, so if rich people in rich countries have become substantially richer in real terms (which seems hard to deny) it's not clear that it can have come from poor people in poor countries; ... poor people in poor countries have in fact been getting richer, not poorer, for the last several decades; ... surely if poor people in the US become less attractive as employees the effect is to make people in "more primitive foreign economies" richer rather than poorer (because those people start taking jobs that would previously have been done by poor people in the US, and miserable though those jobs may be compared with the ones we[1] are lucky enough to have, presumably they're better than the ones they had before because otherwise they wouldn't have taken them); ... the question was about the world economy, not the US economy, and I don't see any particular reason to assume that when a fab or factory moves from the US to somewhere else it makes the world poorer (or for that matter that it makes the world richer). [1] Meaning "folks on HN in general"; of course there will be exceptions. There's definitely a case to be made that since somewhere around 1980 most gains have gone disproportionately to richer people. Or for that matter that all the time most gains go disproportionately to richer people. (Which shouldn't be a surprise. Being rich means having more resources to use to make things go the way you want, and most people want to be richer. If at any place and time economic gains aren't going disproportionately to richer people, it's probably because a vigorous effort is being made to make that not happen despite its "natural" tendency to do so.) But, again, it doesn't look to me as if poorer people are generally getting poorer in real terms, and even if they were they don't have enough for the rich to get much richer just by taking from them.
skybrian 3y ago
I think it does matter which way you think about growth because the bottlenecks differ and the solutions or workarounds differ. Energy use seems likely to remain a bottleneck? Even if the energy itself became much cheaper, you need to figure out what to do with the heat.
wizofaus 3y ago
> for any reasonable definition of terms like "economy", "wealth"... By today's standards, I'd probably agree. But in 100, 200, 500 and certainly 1000 years time, I suspect we'll have quite different ideas of what economic growth looks like.
- econobasics 3y ago
  Suppose we redefine wealth to be the number of electrons you own. Further suppose you own one electron. At 5% growth a year in that means that the number of electrons you own will double every 14 years or so. The total number of electrons in the universe is on the order of 10^80, lg(10^80) = 266. So in about 4,000 you will own every electron in the universe and need to find another universe to keep this rate of growth going for another 14 years.
  - wizofaus 3y ago
    Supposed we redefine wealth to be the degree to which you're able to achieve all your desires...
    - ben_w 3y ago
      Congratulations, now everyone's high on a mix of cocaine, LSD, weed, … Or maxing out their levels in a realistic video game… Whatever you do, it's not "this" going on. But even if it was, there's some maximum level of information that can cram into a human brain (regardless of if it's natural or an uploaded consciousness), and if the data rate giving you fulfilling experiences goes up 2% per year, then we go from "half-full" to "overloaded" in 35 years.
      - wizofaus 3y ago
        I'm not so sure after another 1000 years of technological development they'll be anything much left of human brains the way we currently recognise them. Maybe we'll all have merged into one mega-consciousness...it's fun to speculate but not particularly helpful. I'm far more concerned about how we'll navigate the next 100 years, which won't be constrained by the amount of matter/energy in the universe.

by gjm11 3y ago

Supermancho 3y ago

> it seems (1) fairly clear that "the economy", meaning in some sense the total amount of actual "wealth", has been growing at a few percent per year on average for quite a while, It's not clear at all and I certainly don't think that's the case, personally. Dollar numbers went up, population went up (barely - https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/population-growth-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/popu...). Wealth was extracted and concentrated, not necessarily grown. The wealth was extracted from more primitive foreign economies as the poor of the US became less attractive for labor. The number of fabs/factories that moved out the US is a telling factor.

abecedarius 3y ago
How do you extract, like, 10x wealth from the poor of a world that had less than x wealth in total a few centuries ago? Without ever increasing the total amount of actual wealth?
- Supermancho 3y ago
  > 10x wealth from the poor of a world The middle class of Asia happily became the workhorse of the US. The median quality of life for the planet improved, but that was about technology and efficiency of the systems moving about goods...to the richer countries profiting. The movie Outsourced was an on-the-nose look at the effect the US had on poorer nations from the 2000s to today.
  - abecedarius 3y ago
    Exploitation does exist. It sounds like you're not disagreeing however about real growth, or even that it's been reaching more of the world.
gjm11 3y ago
Could you be a bit more explicit here? I mean, pick a specific reasonably long period of time over which you consider real economic growth not to have been as much as say 2% per year, and explain a bit about what you think actually happened? It seems to me that ... ... in general poor people, and especially poor people in poor countries, don't have all that much wealth to extract, so if rich people in rich countries have become substantially richer in real terms (which seems hard to deny) it's not clear that it can have come from poor people in poor countries; ... poor people in poor countries have in fact been getting richer, not poorer, for the last several decades; ... surely if poor people in the US become less attractive as employees the effect is to make people in "more primitive foreign economies" richer rather than poorer (because those people start taking jobs that would previously have been done by poor people in the US, and miserable though those jobs may be compared with the ones we[1] are lucky enough to have, presumably they're better than the ones they had before because otherwise they wouldn't have taken them); ... the question was about the world economy, not the US economy, and I don't see any particular reason to assume that when a fab or factory moves from the US to somewhere else it makes the world poorer (or for that matter that it makes the world richer). [1] Meaning "folks on HN in general"; of course there will be exceptions. There's definitely a case to be made that since somewhere around 1980 most gains have gone disproportionately to richer people. Or for that matter that all the time most gains go disproportionately to richer people. (Which shouldn't be a surprise. Being rich means having more resources to use to make things go the way you want, and most people want to be richer. If at any place and time economic gains aren't going disproportionately to richer people, it's probably because a vigorous effort is being made to make that not happen despite its "natural" tendency to do so.) But, again, it doesn't look to me as if poorer people are generally getting poorer in real terms, and even if they were they don't have enough for the rich to get much richer just by taking from them.

skybrian 3y ago

I think it does matter which way you think about growth because the bottlenecks differ and the solutions or workarounds differ. Energy use seems likely to remain a bottleneck? Even if the energy itself became much cheaper, you need to figure out what to do with the heat.

wizofaus 3y ago

> for any reasonable definition of terms like "economy", "wealth"... By today's standards, I'd probably agree. But in 100, 200, 500 and certainly 1000 years time, I suspect we'll have quite different ideas of what economic growth looks like.

econobasics 3y ago
Suppose we redefine wealth to be the number of electrons you own. Further suppose you own one electron. At 5% growth a year in that means that the number of electrons you own will double every 14 years or so. The total number of electrons in the universe is on the order of 10^80, lg(10^80) = 266. So in about 4,000 you will own every electron in the universe and need to find another universe to keep this rate of growth going for another 14 years.
- wizofaus 3y ago
  Supposed we redefine wealth to be the degree to which you're able to achieve all your desires...
  - ben_w 3y ago
    Congratulations, now everyone's high on a mix of cocaine, LSD, weed, … Or maxing out their levels in a realistic video game… Whatever you do, it's not "this" going on. But even if it was, there's some maximum level of information that can cram into a human brain (regardless of if it's natural or an uploaded consciousness), and if the data rate giving you fulfilling experiences goes up 2% per year, then we go from "half-full" to "overloaded" in 35 years.
    - wizofaus 3y ago
      I'm not so sure after another 1000 years of technological development they'll be anything much left of human brains the way we currently recognise them. Maybe we'll all have merged into one mega-consciousness...it's fun to speculate but not particularly helpful. I'm far more concerned about how we'll navigate the next 100 years, which won't be constrained by the amount of matter/energy in the universe.