4 ms·
I kind of figured the rebuttal was going to be "we don't literally mean literally infinite growth forever, but our models do, and we believe our models, don't c
by CatWChainsaw 3y ago
I kind of figured the rebuttal was going to be "we don't literally mean literally infinite growth forever, but our models do, and we believe our models, don't call it a strawman."
If the rate of economic growth merely slows, we get a recession. What kind of hell happens if the rate goes negative and the economy shrinks? For too long? I don't feel obligated to point at any one person who says "yes I believe growth can continue infinitely forever" because it's the most basic assumption baked into economic models on how prosperity works. An assumption of infinite growth, and assumption that "progress" is also eternal, that there is always something more.
- erulabs 3y agoIt is absolutely not the most basic assumption based into economic models. Neither you nor I can find one single person who believes that. It is the weakest possible form of an argument you are intentionally misconstruing. This is the straw in the straw man. The steelman version of that argument is "can logarithmic growth continue for one hundred thousand times longer than the expected lifetime of our sun?". I think it's actually quite easy to say yes to that. One fun idea here is Von Neumann probes[1]. There is infinite distance between infinity and a negative number. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft#Von_Neumann_probes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft#Vo...
- CatWChainsaw 3y agoThere is infinite distance between 0 and 1. Fantastical machines as evidence for a fantastical argument is not compelling in the slightest.