A world without growth?
Posted by deleted 9 years, 3 months ago to Economics
This is a bizarre article and is so deliberately perhaps. It would seem to stem from the base assumption that the Industrial Revolution is unsustainable and that there is some "natural state" where human beings stop improving the world and just... blank out. I am not sure if I am upset about the article, or just confused as to how the author could find it in himself to present the anti-industrial perspective as a necessary fate. The quote that comes to mind is one of Peikoff's (about axioms): "[H]e blanks out the fact that he has accepted it by uttering that sentence, that the only way to reject it is to shut one’s mouth, expound no theories and die." The thought that improving life somehow fatalistically produces its antithesis is quite contrary to every fundamental tenet of Objectivism and to common sense Aristotelianism as well. After all, A is A. And knowledge is contextual. We will not, having discovered science and industry, negate it - we can only modify the definition as new information becomes available. I am no economist, but I think it stands to argument that growth is necessary even for a static population to improve its lot. Thoughts?
The author is an idiot or a propagandist.
My bet is propagandist.
This article reeks of false assumptions preached as scientific fact.
Reading the NYT is a waste of time. Just my opinion, broskjold ;^)
He pretends to be an ally of free markets and he is a shill for the statists.
imo ;^)
Thanks, Blackswan!
"Yes, it would be swell if the Greens could prevent the 'grow-to-the-sky' future of energy consumption, world population, pollution and Everything Else...
What they're missing is that the same people demanding those changes would also and at the same time, fight against anyone, anywhere, suffering a job loss or any economic hardship as a result of those policies!
I could try to imagine a 'future' where companies and individuals figure out how to be safe and happy without targeting 5-50% annual growth rates for their salaries or shipments.
Could anyone imagine a course like that in B-School?
Me, neither.
The key elements of such a discussion are in the post I marked as 'best of.' Thanks!"
I am cantankerous today ;^)
( I can hear the chorus singing "What do you mean, today?")
I don't expect anything logical or economically feasible or 'wise' to come from their keyboards...
Likewise Bloomberg on financial 'ideas,' too...
Totally dogmatic and information-free in just about everything they say.
But often amusing... Sort of like Krugman if he had half a brain and less mouth.
That being said, there are many assertions that need to be set straight:
- No growth is not novel: is actually the default state of humankind (Australian abos are a good example). Think about it – there were very few nexus of development in the world. People from those locations conquered the rest of the world. Everywhere that they did not conquer remained Paleo-Neolithic (Central Africa, S. Am, Siberia, etc). If you leave us alone and do not introduce competition via warfare (the river valleys) or trade (Minoan empire, early Peru) then humans tend to remain at a steady state of no-growth.
- There have been Many declines in human tech. Farming was actually invented about 17K years ago, but then the Younger Dryas (mini-ice age) occurred and humans went back to a Mesolithic technology, because it was better suited to the cold weather. The Minoan age had Flush Toilets! and running hot and cold water. If Thera had not gone boom, we might have been on the Moon 1-2 thousand years ago. There was a proliferation of commerce and technology in the 3k-2K BC range. This fell in the 2M BC collapse. Again, we have the invention of the alphabet and differential gears at around 600 BC, but these are lost again. Then, finally we get recent enough for most people to call it ‘history’ – the Roman period, and subsequent collapse into the Middle Ages. At any of these points if you measure from the height of one civilization to the depth of the next period of collapse, you will find a decrease in per capita income, technology, and often population. So, yes, the Middle Ages were not as good as the Roman period. This is hardly unprecedented in the history of humankind.
So while I think that the author is using a straw horse well, he is also taking aim at the Achilles’ heel of lack of knowledge of the wavy growth pattern of human history.
Jan
Jan
There have been societies that didn't grow, but they were stagnant and generally died out without accomplishing anything. That's not how humans should live.
first of all the world as we know it is NOT getting warmer, it is cooling. one should never listen to any politician because when ever one opens his/her mouth they are lying. as for consumption declining which i think it is, is because of economic conditions and war. we are involved in a world war at the moment and it is having a negative effect on the economy unless of course you are selling guns and ammo. i hope this guy lives 100 years in good health so he can see he was absolutely wrong
The first is the anti-human and anti-life goals of the Eco-nuts.
The second is to prioritize current technologies against hydro-carbons instead of halting human population growth and technological progress to reduce carbon.
In the second scenario, the author neglects to include the possibilities of technological progress and invention, and also accepts human caused climate change as proven and real. He's then trying to be 'a reasonable and sane' client change controller similar to progressive's 'reasonable and sane' gun controllers.
.
his insight however into the real diehard greenies is spot on. They are clearly the degrowthers and are the ones who are denying reality and somehow think all there trappings of civilization will remain once the engine that made them possible is removed. This author is just beginning to see the light and is trying to justify in his mind that all the mental effort he has put into global warming was a waste. Sorry buddy but A=A
1. Once we provide for people's basic needs, they start demanding more aesthetic things. For example, they don't want three phones but want to pay three times more for a really cool looking one. Businesses now need to figure out what people want rather than just find ways to get people more.
2. There are other sources of energy. If there weren't the world's ability to provide an affluent life for billions of people would end soon.
The article is a great example of applying the industrial mindset to the post-industrial world.
spending our inheritors' money -- plus the gov't isn't doing
the COLA thing this year. . reminds me of a certain DOE
chief who "volunteered" to eliminate merit raises one year.
Hazel O'Leary if memory serves. . and she also did the
Hillary thing with classified info -- let it go;;; it doesn't
really matter. . Dummy. . so success is horizontal for us,
right now. . but Thomas Malthus was WRONG. -- j
.
Now, I suspect that there is an exponential growth in world population that would make a no growth proposition very unsustainable.
Governments have tried to prime the growth pump through printing money and promoting credit, but the piper must be paid for unsustainable growth. It gets paid for by depressions and wars.
If we have the equivalent of the zombie apocalypse (more like a currency collapse than actual zombies !), there will be roving hordes again of people ( who were used to the now nonexistent government handouts) trying to take from those who have planned and saved.
Human nature when reduced to unthinking emotion isnt a lot different from animal nature really.