4 ms·

I think there is one escape from this, basically confining more and more "growth" to artificial numbers on paper (or in a DB). Cryptocurrencies are kind of goi

by xg15 3y ago

I think there is one escape from this, basically confining more and more "growth" to artificial numbers on paper (or in a DB). Cryptocurrencies are kind of going in that direction, where the "value" that is reported as economic growth doesn't correspond to any kind of real-world matter or activity, but is simply assigned to some specific group of bits. I can kind of believe that this virtual kind of growth could continue a long time without boiling the planet, but of course that doesn't make things less absurd, as the "value" would represent nothing objectively useful and would have to be maintained artificially - either through scarcity mechanisms like PoW etc, or through locked-down devices and ecosystems. So that kind of "growth" could go on forever without burning the planet but would probably be a step back for civilization.

dredmorbius 3y ago
The problem with this, or any other hypothetical "decoupled growth" argument is that, well, it's purely hypothetical. There's no evidence whatsoever that economic growth can be decoupled from resource, and most especially energy, usage. There are instances of increased efficiencies, which thanks to the Jevons Paradox increase overall resource utilisation (economically, efficiency is equivalent to a reduced price, and hence induces greater demand). And there are instances of outsourced resource utilisation (both in terms of inputs and of waste sinks), most notably that of China which has committed tremendous domestic resources and incurred immense environmental insult in providing "cheap goods" (that is: goods lacking fully-costed externality impacts) to developed countries. But there's nary a trace of actual empirical evidence of substantive decoupling in the real world. Much handwaving and could-be's, however.
- XorNot 3y ago
  Conversely the people who argue against growth never have any answers they want to elaborate on. They have "well we can't have endless growth" and that's where the conversation stops. They never want to examine the consequences of that thought (no growth means we're into a zero-sum game) or whether they think we're even plausibly close to the limit (instead they want to have a proxy argument about environmental damage or global warming, and are very uninterested in any specific solutions to their go to examples - i.e. "we can't possibly stop emitting CO2 from power generation, we must simply use less power!").
  - dredmorbius 3y ago
    I'd really like to see you point to specific instances of this. I could point to any number of examples refuting this, but really prefer you lay your cards on the table first.
    - XorNot 3y ago
      I mean you're doing that right now. You seem to believe we can't have infinite growth. Okay...and? Do you have anything more to add other then a mathematical reductio ad absurdum talking about 1000 year timespans? What tangible actions and economic model do you believe this should inform in the next 5 to 10 years, which you as a citizen of a democracy have some role in choosing and advocating for?
      - dredmorbius 3y ago
        <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37386474 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37386474> Again: I have sources. You? I'm reading this as you don't.
        dredmorbius 3y ago
        Update: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37399144 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37399144>
        XorNot 3y ago
        Linking to a half-dozen separate arguments, and presenting no original conclusion or summarizing thought on what you took from those works isn't an argument. In fact it's very much not an argument - it's you presuming that I haven't read those, because otherwise how could I disagree? My question was quite specific: what do you think we should do in the next 5 to 10 years? Apparently you've read widely on this topic! So widely that when asked this question, the only thing you did was throw book titles and author names around and talk about how great they are. Rather then anything about what they say. I mean presumably all these distinguished luminaries drew some actionable conclusions right? Because you are calling for actionable things to happen - such as?
- snowwrestler 3y ago
  It’s only hypothetical in that the future hasn’t arrived yet. Most predictions are hypothetical by that criteria. We know the economy is decoupled from physical limits because we have built it to be that way. If you go to my bank right now, they are not going to have a physical pile of valuable objects there which is my account balance. They have a computer that stores numbers, and obviously it needs energy to operate, but it doesn’t cost 10x energy to store 10,000 instead of 1,000 in the database entry for my account balance.
  - dredmorbius 3y ago
    Qing Dynasty China had "decoupled" its currency from specie by way of the first paper-based currency I'm aware of. See: Richard von Glahn, Fountain of Fortune: Money and Monetary Policy in China 1000-1700 (1996). But that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with decoupling the actual economy from its physical foundations. Long after Qing, China remained fundamentally dependent on rice and wheat harvests (and suffered tremendous population losses, as much as 8 million deaths) many centuries later. The wealth-tracking representation has been decoupled from any substance with intrinsic value, but the economy has not. Put another way: you could have a monetary system in which currency was entirely backed in precious gold and silver, and introduce huge quantities of same to your economy ... without increasing the actual wealth of the nation by Adam Smith's definition, "annual produce and labour of the nation". This was precisely the situation Spain found itself in following its conquest of the Americas and importation of vast quantities of South American gold and silver.
    - snowwrestler 3y ago
      > The wealth-tracking representation has been decoupled from any substance with intrinsic value, but the economy has not. If you insist on measuring the economy solely in terms of "substances with intrinsic value," you will find the limit of economic growth at approximately the limit of those substances. However this is begging the question because it's not the only way (and not the currently accepted way) of measuring economies. Anyway, it's not just the representation, wealth itself is increasingly nonphysical and hypothetical. For example not only is my $1,000 bank account just a database entry, my database entry is most likely offset by about $900 in loans to other people. So my saved cash is actually about 90% claims on future payments by other people. Or look at stocks; at a P/E of around 20 currently, 95% of the value of my SP500 index fund is hypothetical. And of course the whole point of a bond is future payments. Market-winning behaviors are also becoming less physically correlated. Did Barbie take 5x as much energy as The Flash to make or present? Does a 3 bedroom row house in San Francisco use 5x as much energy as a similar house in Detroit? Does Apple use 3x as much energy as Amazon? Does it take twice as much energy to make a Mercedes C class as a Honda Accord? There are tons of examples like this. Rice and wheat harvests are a pretty small part of modern economies now. Look, I agree that a certain level of energy usage is required to enable economic activity. If we were to cut our energy use too much, we would limit or perhaps crash the economy. People need food, clothes, shelter, plumbing, communications, etc. I'm just saying: that is not equivalent to proving that future economic growth is bounded by energy usage. One does not logically follow from the other.

by xg15 3y ago

dredmorbius 3y ago

The problem with this, or any other hypothetical "decoupled growth" argument is that, well, it's purely hypothetical. There's no evidence whatsoever that economic growth can be decoupled from resource, and most especially energy, usage. There are instances of increased efficiencies, which thanks to the Jevons Paradox increase overall resource utilisation (economically, efficiency is equivalent to a reduced price, and hence induces greater demand). And there are instances of outsourced resource utilisation (both in terms of inputs and of waste sinks), most notably that of China which has committed tremendous domestic resources and incurred immense environmental insult in providing "cheap goods" (that is: goods lacking fully-costed externality impacts) to developed countries. But there's nary a trace of actual empirical evidence of substantive decoupling in the real world. Much handwaving and could-be's, however.

XorNot 3y ago
Conversely the people who argue against growth never have any answers they want to elaborate on. They have "well we can't have endless growth" and that's where the conversation stops. They never want to examine the consequences of that thought (no growth means we're into a zero-sum game) or whether they think we're even plausibly close to the limit (instead they want to have a proxy argument about environmental damage or global warming, and are very uninterested in any specific solutions to their go to examples - i.e. "we can't possibly stop emitting CO2 from power generation, we must simply use less power!").
- dredmorbius 3y ago
  I'd really like to see you point to specific instances of this. I could point to any number of examples refuting this, but really prefer you lay your cards on the table first.
  - XorNot 3y ago
    I mean you're doing that right now. You seem to believe we can't have infinite growth. Okay...and? Do you have anything more to add other then a mathematical reductio ad absurdum talking about 1000 year timespans? What tangible actions and economic model do you believe this should inform in the next 5 to 10 years, which you as a citizen of a democracy have some role in choosing and advocating for?
    - dredmorbius 3y ago
      <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37386474 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37386474> Again: I have sources. You? I'm reading this as you don't.
      - dredmorbius 3y ago
        Update: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37399144 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37399144>
        XorNot 3y ago
        Linking to a half-dozen separate arguments, and presenting no original conclusion or summarizing thought on what you took from those works isn't an argument. In fact it's very much not an argument - it's you presuming that I haven't read those, because otherwise how could I disagree? My question was quite specific: what do you think we should do in the next 5 to 10 years? Apparently you've read widely on this topic! So widely that when asked this question, the only thing you did was throw book titles and author names around and talk about how great they are. Rather then anything about what they say. I mean presumably all these distinguished luminaries drew some actionable conclusions right? Because you are calling for actionable things to happen - such as?
snowwrestler 3y ago
It’s only hypothetical in that the future hasn’t arrived yet. Most predictions are hypothetical by that criteria. We know the economy is decoupled from physical limits because we have built it to be that way. If you go to my bank right now, they are not going to have a physical pile of valuable objects there which is my account balance. They have a computer that stores numbers, and obviously it needs energy to operate, but it doesn’t cost 10x energy to store 10,000 instead of 1,000 in the database entry for my account balance.
- dredmorbius 3y ago
  Qing Dynasty China had "decoupled" its currency from specie by way of the first paper-based currency I'm aware of. See: Richard von Glahn, Fountain of Fortune: Money and Monetary Policy in China 1000-1700 (1996). But that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with decoupling the actual economy from its physical foundations. Long after Qing, China remained fundamentally dependent on rice and wheat harvests (and suffered tremendous population losses, as much as 8 million deaths) many centuries later. The wealth-tracking representation has been decoupled from any substance with intrinsic value, but the economy has not. Put another way: you could have a monetary system in which currency was entirely backed in precious gold and silver, and introduce huge quantities of same to your economy ... without increasing the actual wealth of the nation by Adam Smith's definition, "annual produce and labour of the nation". This was precisely the situation Spain found itself in following its conquest of the Americas and importation of vast quantities of South American gold and silver.
  - snowwrestler 3y ago
    > The wealth-tracking representation has been decoupled from any substance with intrinsic value, but the economy has not. If you insist on measuring the economy solely in terms of "substances with intrinsic value," you will find the limit of economic growth at approximately the limit of those substances. However this is begging the question because it's not the only way (and not the currently accepted way) of measuring economies. Anyway, it's not just the representation, wealth itself is increasingly nonphysical and hypothetical. For example not only is my $1,000 bank account just a database entry, my database entry is most likely offset by about $900 in loans to other people. So my saved cash is actually about 90% claims on future payments by other people. Or look at stocks; at a P/E of around 20 currently, 95% of the value of my SP500 index fund is hypothetical. And of course the whole point of a bond is future payments. Market-winning behaviors are also becoming less physically correlated. Did Barbie take 5x as much energy as The Flash to make or present? Does a 3 bedroom row house in San Francisco use 5x as much energy as a similar house in Detroit? Does Apple use 3x as much energy as Amazon? Does it take twice as much energy to make a Mercedes C class as a Honda Accord? There are tons of examples like this. Rice and wheat harvests are a pretty small part of modern economies now. Look, I agree that a certain level of energy usage is required to enable economic activity. If we were to cut our energy use too much, we would limit or perhaps crash the economy. People need food, clothes, shelter, plumbing, communications, etc. I'm just saying: that is not equivalent to proving that future economic growth is bounded by energy usage. One does not logically follow from the other.