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Maybe it's not so much growth vs degrowth as short-term vs long-term? A country like China that's pursuing a very aggressive short-term growth policy is obvious

Maybe it's not so much growth vs degrowth as short-term vs long-term? A country like China that's pursuing a very aggressive short-term growth policy is obviously endangering some aspects of their future with pollution, corruption, etc. I don't have a problem with pursuing growth, so much as focusing on the next few years (or the next election) to the exclusion of anything else.

jacques_chester 14y ago
Is long term growth qualitatively different from the integral of short term growth over the same period?
- smanek 14y ago
  I think so. On a several decades/century scale it's worthwhile to funnel at least a few percent of GDP into basic science research[1]. But, in any given quarter/year, it's almost certainly a net loss. The trick being that every few decades, you'll get nuclear power, the transistor, etc[2]. Or, as a 'local' example: non-trivial number theory had basically no benefit for centuries but humanity kept 'investing' resources into it - which a short term optimizer wouldn't. Then, cryptography came along and it suddenly 'paid' for the entire field a dozen times over. [1]: Research is sort of like early stage VC - but with funds that pay out over 70 years instead of ~7. [2]: I would love to write about many more examples in much more depth, but will omit for the sake of brevity. I roughly feel like the newtonian mechanics was directly responsible for the industrial revolution, relativistic physics for the nuclear age, quantum mechanics for the computer age (with similar analogues in the biological sciences).
  - jacques_chester 14y ago
    The example Carl Sagan gives is Maxwell's equations. They seemed pretty abstract at the time, but well ... Radio. Television. Fibre optics. Satellite communications. That said -- these didn't happen all at once. And every technological upheaval, no matter how large it has been in itself, has still appeared in the larger context to be only an incremental improvement.
- DRMacIver 14y ago
  No, but you can make decisions now which affect the rate of short term growth later. Or to continue the calculus analogy, you divide your spending on growth between spending that increases the first derivative and second derivative of value. The former is current short term growth, but the latter may lead to more growth in the long term.
shelf 14y ago
China's short-term growth objectives are hard to criticise given that a good ~10% of its population remain below the poverty line. Its economic modernisation has already reduced this figure by several hundred million head. Capitalism feeds. This 'degrowth' ideology seems to be moreso redirecting growth towards things that are more real, necessary and sustainable. Growth is fairly natural and should be expected in any healthy and free economy - not just in our modern 'advanced' juggernauts.

jacques_chester 14y ago

Is long term growth qualitatively different from the integral of short term growth over the same period?

smanek 14y ago
I think so. On a several decades/century scale it's worthwhile to funnel at least a few percent of GDP into basic science research[1]. But, in any given quarter/year, it's almost certainly a net loss. The trick being that every few decades, you'll get nuclear power, the transistor, etc[2]. Or, as a 'local' example: non-trivial number theory had basically no benefit for centuries but humanity kept 'investing' resources into it - which a short term optimizer wouldn't. Then, cryptography came along and it suddenly 'paid' for the entire field a dozen times over. [1]: Research is sort of like early stage VC - but with funds that pay out over 70 years instead of ~7. [2]: I would love to write about many more examples in much more depth, but will omit for the sake of brevity. I roughly feel like the newtonian mechanics was directly responsible for the industrial revolution, relativistic physics for the nuclear age, quantum mechanics for the computer age (with similar analogues in the biological sciences).
- jacques_chester 14y ago
  The example Carl Sagan gives is Maxwell's equations. They seemed pretty abstract at the time, but well ... Radio. Television. Fibre optics. Satellite communications. That said -- these didn't happen all at once. And every technological upheaval, no matter how large it has been in itself, has still appeared in the larger context to be only an incremental improvement.
DRMacIver 14y ago
No, but you can make decisions now which affect the rate of short term growth later. Or to continue the calculus analogy, you divide your spending on growth between spending that increases the first derivative and second derivative of value. The former is current short term growth, but the latter may lead to more growth in the long term.

shelf 14y ago

China's short-term growth objectives are hard to criticise given that a good ~10% of its population remain below the poverty line. Its economic modernisation has already reduced this figure by several hundred million head. Capitalism feeds. This 'degrowth' ideology seems to be moreso redirecting growth towards things that are more real, necessary and sustainable. Growth is fairly natural and should be expected in any healthy and free economy - not just in our modern 'advanced' juggernauts.