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I miss the cultural era that was enthusiastic about economic growth. Most stories I see on HN, and other places, now react with reflexive condemnation of any ki

I miss the cultural era that was enthusiastic about economic growth. Most stories I see on HN, and other places, now react with reflexive condemnation of any kind of human industry. I worry about where this zeitgeist will lead us.

ddulaney 2y ago
I miss that era too. But the shift isn’t purely cultural: it’s an acknowledgement of the underlying reality that climate change is getting to be real bad. I worry about where a growth-at-all-costs mindset has lead us at least as much.
- creer 2y ago
  Has "at-all-costs" ever been the idea? Is it the only way?
convolvatron 2y ago
I'm confused as to why growth and progress as a species is tied inexorably to the mindlessly wasteful consumption of fossil fuels to the detriment of our own ability to live comfortably and feed ourselves. aren't we clever? can't we progress without screwing up the planet?
- creer 2y ago
  Right? That's the problem. There is nothing inexorable about it. France ages ago noticed a problematic reliance on fossile fuels and decided to actually solve that problem (for power and heating). That was a super ambitious program of building an entire, country-size industry capable of designing, building, fueling, running and reprocessing grid-scale nuclear reactors. It even worked. Growth WHILE solving problems. But yeah, in France as elsewhere, that effort was and is tied to political will and electoral moods. And so now it's in jeopardy.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  > can't we progress without screwing up the planet? Probably yes. Can we progress without screwing the planet and still making the top 0.01% ever exponentially richer? Probably not. Here lies the rub.
  - Nasrudith 2y ago
    Where did this cliche come from? I see it repeated everywhere from minds clearly not creative enough for said notion. Wishful thinking that they can just blame deep structural issues like oil dependency and problematic chains of logistics on rich people and that in their absence all problems would magically solve themselves and flowers would bloom?
mandmandam 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction Until we recognize and reverse course on the mass extinction we're in, that era is never coming back nor should it.
- Nasrudith 2y ago
  We were causing mass extinctions with pointy sticks as the state of the art, in charismatic mega fauna no less. As common the mythical era of "not causing mass extinctions" never even existed. Even when humanity was at its lowest creating the genetic bottleneck we were nomadic because we ate the prior area empty. Now we've progressed to sedentary lifestyles being possible long term and even soil management. The only path out is up.
  - mandmandam 2y ago
    > We were causing mass extinctions with pointy sticks as the state of the art Not at anything like this scale, nor this rate, as is clear from the wiki article linked above. > the mythical era of "not causing mass extinctions" never even existed. It existed everywhere we weren't, and again, scale and rate both matter. > Even when humanity was at its lowest creating the genetic bottleneck we were nomadic because we ate the prior area empty. The current consensus is a lot more complex than humans being "purely nomadic" because they "ate the prior area empty." Evidence of early permanent settlement appears much earlier than the advent of agriculture ~12,000 years ago. Ohalo II in Israel is 23,000 years old. There's likely many other sites as old and older, but our archaeology is not advanced enough to know more. > Now we've progressed to sedentary lifestyles being possible long term and even soil management ... What?? We're only now rediscovering soil management practices which were used hundreds/thousands of years ago by people native to areas we've all but destroyed. If we'd listened to them instead of dehumanizing and murdering them things could be different, but we can still at least not whitewash them out of history. Globally speaking, top soil is in a variety of concurrent crises. It's in the worst shape it's ever been.
creer 2y ago
I think this is a very serious problem. There are still ambitious people, but ambition is now ipso facto evil (whether in business, tech, science, finance, law). That's the politically correct meme. Automatic. And hard to reverse as nieces and nephew have reported constant "save the planet" themes in school work. With "shrink the economy" being the only solution ever suggested. When whichever cause may be yours (climate, housing, faster cat photos) might actually benefit from ambition, scale, technology focused progress, better ways to even think about anything and everything.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  The problem is not growing the economy per se. The problem is the economy has always grown by making profit of externalising negative impacts. Be it environmental, humanistic. We have to learn to grow but to do it fair. Fair for the environment and for the people (meaning not having the profits end up with the 0.01% while the workers toil for minimum wage). Only then can we really grow as humanity. The problem is what we call "ambition" is just greed. And that keeps us in this circle of destruction.
  - creer 2y ago
    This, horribly, may be a current Silicon Valley view. That's the problem. By contrast the example I gave elsewhere in this discussion is "France ages ago noticed a problematic reliance on fossil fuels and decided to actually solve that problem (for power and heating). That was a super ambitious program of building an entire, country-size industry capable of designing, building, fueling, running and reprocessing grid-scale nuclear reactors. It even worked. Growth WHILE solving problems. But yeah, in France as elsewhere, that effort was and is tied to political will and electoral moods. And so now it's in jeopardy." That was a giant program with participation of many private companies - not even one private one dominating costs or profits that I noticed. The newly created companies forming the project started for some, and ended up for others owned by France through many different channels: national research labs, national electric utility, development banks, government agencies, etc, etc. No doubt some private companies made excellent money from that project - but that is not its most prominent feature by far. It was an ambitious engineering and organizational effort. So yes "ambitious" is a good thing.
keybored 2y ago
Reflexive? Take a look in the mirror. The condemnation is based on arguments that you can try to refute; or you can be reflexively enthusiastic, it’s up to you.
lesuorac 2y ago
Eh, there's a lot of enthusiasm for all those battery threads. I think there's really two factors going on. 1) Everything has trade-offs and a lot of the economic growth comes with a trade-off they don't like. The top comment in this thread isn't even "screw economics", it's "I wish they built them where the wind power was". What does the N+1 data center even get us as a society while a rocket to the moon is literal science fiction. 2) Some of the "economic growth" is really just stagnation at a cheaper price. Firing ~10% of your workforce because AI-tooling (allegedly) lets you produce the same amount with less people isn't growth.

ddulaney 2y ago

I miss that era too. But the shift isn’t purely cultural: it’s an acknowledgement of the underlying reality that climate change is getting to be real bad. I worry about where a growth-at-all-costs mindset has lead us at least as much.

creer 2y ago
Has "at-all-costs" ever been the idea? Is it the only way?

convolvatron 2y ago

I'm confused as to why growth and progress as a species is tied inexorably to the mindlessly wasteful consumption of fossil fuels to the detriment of our own ability to live comfortably and feed ourselves. aren't we clever? can't we progress without screwing up the planet?

creer 2y ago
Right? That's the problem. There is nothing inexorable about it. France ages ago noticed a problematic reliance on fossile fuels and decided to actually solve that problem (for power and heating). That was a super ambitious program of building an entire, country-size industry capable of designing, building, fueling, running and reprocessing grid-scale nuclear reactors. It even worked. Growth WHILE solving problems. But yeah, in France as elsewhere, that effort was and is tied to political will and electoral moods. And so now it's in jeopardy.
wkat4242 2y ago
> can't we progress without screwing up the planet? Probably yes. Can we progress without screwing the planet and still making the top 0.01% ever exponentially richer? Probably not. Here lies the rub.
- Nasrudith 2y ago
  Where did this cliche come from? I see it repeated everywhere from minds clearly not creative enough for said notion. Wishful thinking that they can just blame deep structural issues like oil dependency and problematic chains of logistics on rich people and that in their absence all problems would magically solve themselves and flowers would bloom?

mandmandam 2y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction Until we recognize and reverse course on the mass extinction we're in, that era is never coming back nor should it.

Nasrudith 2y ago
We were causing mass extinctions with pointy sticks as the state of the art, in charismatic mega fauna no less. As common the mythical era of "not causing mass extinctions" never even existed. Even when humanity was at its lowest creating the genetic bottleneck we were nomadic because we ate the prior area empty. Now we've progressed to sedentary lifestyles being possible long term and even soil management. The only path out is up.
- mandmandam 2y ago
  > We were causing mass extinctions with pointy sticks as the state of the art Not at anything like this scale, nor this rate, as is clear from the wiki article linked above. > the mythical era of "not causing mass extinctions" never even existed. It existed everywhere we weren't, and again, scale and rate both matter. > Even when humanity was at its lowest creating the genetic bottleneck we were nomadic because we ate the prior area empty. The current consensus is a lot more complex than humans being "purely nomadic" because they "ate the prior area empty." Evidence of early permanent settlement appears much earlier than the advent of agriculture ~12,000 years ago. Ohalo II in Israel is 23,000 years old. There's likely many other sites as old and older, but our archaeology is not advanced enough to know more. > Now we've progressed to sedentary lifestyles being possible long term and even soil management ... What?? We're only now rediscovering soil management practices which were used hundreds/thousands of years ago by people native to areas we've all but destroyed. If we'd listened to them instead of dehumanizing and murdering them things could be different, but we can still at least not whitewash them out of history. Globally speaking, top soil is in a variety of concurrent crises. It's in the worst shape it's ever been.

creer 2y ago

I think this is a very serious problem. There are still ambitious people, but ambition is now ipso facto evil (whether in business, tech, science, finance, law). That's the politically correct meme. Automatic. And hard to reverse as nieces and nephew have reported constant "save the planet" themes in school work. With "shrink the economy" being the only solution ever suggested. When whichever cause may be yours (climate, housing, faster cat photos) might actually benefit from ambition, scale, technology focused progress, better ways to even think about anything and everything.

wkat4242 2y ago
The problem is not growing the economy per se. The problem is the economy has always grown by making profit of externalising negative impacts. Be it environmental, humanistic. We have to learn to grow but to do it fair. Fair for the environment and for the people (meaning not having the profits end up with the 0.01% while the workers toil for minimum wage). Only then can we really grow as humanity. The problem is what we call "ambition" is just greed. And that keeps us in this circle of destruction.
- creer 2y ago
  This, horribly, may be a current Silicon Valley view. That's the problem. By contrast the example I gave elsewhere in this discussion is "France ages ago noticed a problematic reliance on fossil fuels and decided to actually solve that problem (for power and heating). That was a super ambitious program of building an entire, country-size industry capable of designing, building, fueling, running and reprocessing grid-scale nuclear reactors. It even worked. Growth WHILE solving problems. But yeah, in France as elsewhere, that effort was and is tied to political will and electoral moods. And so now it's in jeopardy." That was a giant program with participation of many private companies - not even one private one dominating costs or profits that I noticed. The newly created companies forming the project started for some, and ended up for others owned by France through many different channels: national research labs, national electric utility, development banks, government agencies, etc, etc. No doubt some private companies made excellent money from that project - but that is not its most prominent feature by far. It was an ambitious engineering and organizational effort. So yes "ambitious" is a good thing.

keybored 2y ago

Reflexive? Take a look in the mirror. The condemnation is based on arguments that you can try to refute; or you can be reflexively enthusiastic, it’s up to you.

lesuorac 2y ago

Eh, there's a lot of enthusiasm for all those battery threads. I think there's really two factors going on. 1) Everything has trade-offs and a lot of the economic growth comes with a trade-off they don't like. The top comment in this thread isn't even "screw economics", it's "I wish they built them where the wind power was". What does the N+1 data center even get us as a society while a rocket to the moon is literal science fiction. 2) Some of the "economic growth" is really just stagnation at a cheaper price. Firing ~10% of your workforce because AI-tooling (allegedly) lets you produce the same amount with less people isn't growth.