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This is a rather incoherent rant. Growth = Bad. What's bad is if growth is achieved by irrevocable destruction of the environment, or deterioration of the huma
by cromwellian 13y ago
This is a rather incoherent rant. Growth = Bad.
What's bad is if growth is achieved by irrevocable destruction of the environment, or deterioration of the human condition. It's not growth itself that is the problem, for there are many kinds of growth.
Growth in physical inputs? Energy use? Labor? Outputs? Value (GDP)? Some of these counter-balance the other.
If efficiency goes up (productivity), there is less need for labor, but it could also mean less physical inputs required, less energy, etc, so good for the environment. Also, the increased surplus means that labor can enjoy more fruits of its produce (in theory).
And growth in value is another thing entirely, because it is a human value assigned by our minds, not an objective physical quantity. Just take virtual/digital goods, someone can make one awesome piece of software, or a game, that the whole of humanity values tremendously high, but which has O(1) marginal costs to produce for each person, and which took relatively few inputs. If I suddenly uploaded the entirety of humanity into the Matrix, all of a sudden, value can continue to increase, without continued use of environmental resources beyond the energy needed to run it. Today, if I make a piano, I have to cut down trees and use tons of energy, so for everyone on the planet to own a piano would be very bad. But if I make a virtual piano, everyone on the planet can have one at relatively low cost, and then the question simply falls to how good the simulation can be.
I'd analogize Capitalism to evolution in an ecosystem. The entities within the system can grow, change form, multiply, and die. If they grow too much too fast, they can deplete their resources too quickly to sustain their population. They must have wild swings between mass die-offs and mass growth, or they might have a relatively stable pattern with low volatility, but while growth is slowed, they still have competition, they have not "switched off" evolution.
I don't think growth is bad if it comes from increasing efficiency, or an increase in value because of completely new inventions. Perhaps same physical inputs that could produce a device in 1950, produces something in 2010 that I value a lot more. It is the organization of matter, it's pattern, the information content of it, that can grow with infinite variation and which we can continue to demand.
- dnautics 13y agoI don't think the article makes the claim you think it does. Growth is not the same as growthism.
- asperous 13y agoWhat do you mean?
- dnautics 13y agoFrom the article: "That is the great mistake growthism makes. But growth is not an end. It is a means. A means to, at best, expanding eudaimonia; the capacity to live meaningfully well. And a means, at least, to expanding human freedom." clearly he doesn't think growth is bad. What i believe he thinks is bad is forcing growth. To try to force it as an end.
- cromwellian 13y agoyou're defending the author for wishy washy terminology. This is no different than someone who writes a screed against socialism, or affirmative action, and then pivots around and says "not all of it is bad" Who is going to determine what growth is good and which is bad. Is growth in food output bad? Growth in HackerNews readership? Growth in tablet or smartphone usage? Growth in the number of people on the internet? You can't just rail against growth and then hand-wave an exit from the argument. Specifics are needed.
- dnautics 13y agoI think you're mistaken. The author is very careful in his use of the term growthism versus growth. He doesn't at any point explicitly define what growthism is, but that's because the whole point of the essay is to introduce the concept to a new audience, so most of the essay is given over to (an admittedly diffuse) description of what, exactly it is. your point that the essay seems ranting, is valid, and definitely a weak point.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- cromwellian 13y agoOh, you mean the strawman that "growth must be accomplished at all costs" without even defining what growth is? What human action does not produce costs and benefits? If growth must be accomplished at all costs, why do we have any regulation or social safety net at all? Clearly, there are some costs we are not willing to pay. Yes, some people don't believe in any regulation because it hurts economic growth. But call what we have in the West 'growthism' making straw. You think the Chinese who are suffocating in super-smog storms in Harbin right now aren't in favor of regulation? People on the Right make the same mistake. They take any regulation or social programs and call it "socialism". I think these "isms" are bad for studying the problem. We have a complex, mixed economy and boiling it down to bumper sticker isms isn't going to help understand what our problems are.
- kaa2102 13y agoIt seems like economic growth is the only variable being optimized in an uncertain world with many other important objectives and constraints. We could seek to maximize the median income of citizens, happiness, life expectancy, or many other factors. Yet, the goal of Government, Industry, and Academia is to maximize economic growth while mostly ignoring the human beings that should be served by the economy.
- hcarvalhoalves 13y ago> What's bad is if growth is achieved by irrevocable destruction of the environment, or deterioration of the human condition. It's not growth itself that is the problem, for there are many kinds of growth. Non sequitur. The notion of economic growth is tied to environmental and human labor exploitation, at fundamental levels. A large portion of any nation's GDP comes from mining, pumping oil, cutting forests for crops, and activities that produce a lot of waste, on which the rest of the economy relies on. Another large portion comes from the financial sector, which profits on the disparity of income by providing credit. These activities are only profitable because the environmental and social costs are externalized. Without that, other endeavors wouldn't even make sense cost-wise, making economic growth grind to a halt. > I'd analogize Capitalism to evolution in an ecosystem. I realize many people think like that, and it's a fallacy. Capitalism is not some sort of natural law, it's entirely arbitrary human invention, and in practice it's nothing like this pure, theoretical meritocracy that allows the best solutions to strive. Quite the contrary: it fails to address many concrete, contemporary problems, like ever increasing economic disparity, social welfare, research funding and environmental destruction. And don't come tell me it's because we don't have enough capitalism, that markets are not free enough... this is the same argument used to explain why communism failed (it wasn't pure enough). If we keep looking at it as some theoretical ideal, we will never tackle it's shortcomings in practice.
- ahomescu1 13y ago> Capitalism is not some sort of natural law Capitalism is based on trade, which IS a natural law. It seems pretty natural to me that people want to trade what they have for other things they need (for example, a musician trades their music for food&shelter).
- dragonwriter 13y ago> Capitalism is based on trade, which IS a natural law. All economic systems are "based on trade", since they are all mechanisms of arranging trade. That doesn't make capitalism at all special among the universe of all actual (or possible) economic systems.
- mlangdon 13y agoComplicated argumentation != incoherent. I was astonished by the level of subtlety here. I honestly couldn't tell where the author would fall politically for half the article, but I still wanted to read it. And I didn't feel cheated at the end. I read your incoherent as "too long, couldn't read."