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In case you weren't aware of this already, our economies are imploding behind the scenes, and completely unsustainable. > In the immediate, S goes up - the "wi

In case you weren't aware of this already, our economies are imploding behind the scenes, and completely unsustainable. > In the immediate, S goes up - the "wise little worker ant" effect, if you will. But soon after, companies that create consumption goods reduce production - because nobody needs big stocks of consumption goods. Again, people will - and should - buy things they need. They may also buy some things they want, if they can afford them. If people stop buying Company X's products, then it will decrease capacity, and possibly go bankrupt, etc. There's nothing wrong with that. You may decide to start producing and selling buckets of feces, but even though selling three hundred million of them at 50 dollars each would have a positive effect on the economy, it doesn't mean buying one would make any sense for anyone. Our economies can't keep "growing" exponentially for all eternity, and that's alright. Nothing has been fixed since 2008, and the Status Quo's attempts at whipping up another housing bubble and getting us spending-automatons to spendspendspend are increasingly ineffective.

danmaz74 14y ago
Ok - if you subscribe to the "happy degrowth" theory, that changes everything. But that has nothing to do with fiat money or gold standards; on the contrary, I would argue that fiat (ie, government controlled) money would make it much easier to make a transition to that new way of life. But the transition to a happy degrowth FOR SURE can't happen with simple market mechanisms. At least you need to limit the working hours. At worst you need a completely controlled economy. Technological innovation + free market + degrowth = massive and unsustainable unemployment, that's for sure.
- white_devil 14y ago
  An economy that depends on endless, exponential growth not to implode is clearly not sustainable, regardless of what snarky terms you might come up with to ostensibly describe my position. My position is that of common sense.

danmaz74 14y ago

Ok - if you subscribe to the "happy degrowth" theory, that changes everything. But that has nothing to do with fiat money or gold standards; on the contrary, I would argue that fiat (ie, government controlled) money would make it much easier to make a transition to that new way of life. But the transition to a happy degrowth FOR SURE can't happen with simple market mechanisms. At least you need to limit the working hours. At worst you need a completely controlled economy. Technological innovation + free market + degrowth = massive and unsustainable unemployment, that's for sure.

white_devil 14y ago
An economy that depends on endless, exponential growth not to implode is clearly not sustainable, regardless of what snarky terms you might come up with to ostensibly describe my position. My position is that of common sense.