5 ms·
A Steady-State Economy
- khafra 18y agoMore-or-less endless progress is something I took for granted most of my life. In the last few years, that's started to appear less sound an axiom. It's good to see a thoughtful exploration of an alternative that doesn't necessarily involve a large die-off and a reversion to pre-technological hunter/gatherer tribes--something closer to "the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani bricklayer would consider prosperity."
- tjic 18y agoYou're confusing the last 12 months with a 4,000 + year longterm trend. Human lifespans, human wealth, and human knowledge have been growing exponentially for a long time. Check out a graph of American income over the last century - the Great Depression is just a blip on the inexorable growth. By failing to have any long term perspective you're just slamming to the rails, taking the most recent headlines for some sort of reasoned conclusion on the future of growth.
- khafra 18y agoI made a subjective statement, leaving out the research and reasoning that changed my opinion, on purpose. I don't think this is the right forum to discuss the limits on terrestrial resources; I've participated in those threads on reddit and they're interminable, and they never seem to prompt a single genuine bayesian update.
- frig 18y agoDid you really just say human lifespans have been growing exponentially?