Importantly even if the goal is more environmental sustainability it isn't the enemy. Apply growth in productivity and less land is needed for production and more can be preserved. NYC has more value from Central Park than say the area as a gold mine now.
The automation job losses are themselves a sign of it - keeping the same number of employees and adding even more capacity would be wasteful.
To go without growth is to surrender entirely and doom oneself to decline. If everyone is working towards something and not experiencing growth by definition something is wrong - that level of effort should lead to improvement over time even if they are just a chain of masters, journeymen, and apprentices.
The cycles are a result of phantom growth from phantom values - even if the production is real returns may diminish more than expected.
Growth is the consequence of population growth and technological progress and the process of specialization (comparative advantages). All three are in pretty much full force, so it's not just growth because greed.
(sorry for double posting :| )
A cycle is predictable, a chaotic system is not.
Sure it's chaotic and it probably has scale-free (self-similar or fractional-dimensional) properties at certain regimes, but on the large scale it's pretty well approximated by dynamic systems. (See the micro founded macro models used by central banks.)
Of course, we're getting better at modeling both micro and macro behavior of economies. (The caveat is that the economy also evolves so old models usually get less and less accurate, so job security for econometricians.)
Also if we're globally maxed out, I think an economy is 'temporal zero sum', if that makes sense: you grow now by borrowing but pay back in the next recession?
Totally not an economist though.
Do resource zero-sum, free markets still reliably experience growth from the perspective of someone who doesn't view price as a good measurement of value?
If so that would potentially be useful because it could allow more progressive leaning and more libertarian leaning people to find some common ground.
- Do you believe wealth and income should be distributed equitably around the world?
- Do you want to live on more than USD 17.3k per annum?
If you answered "yes" to both of these questions, then congratulations! You're in favor of economic growth. The average global income per capita is USD 17.3k per annum. If that number goes up, we call that "growth". That is the definition of growth.
Of course you can get into population control, but if the alternative to growth is China-style population control -- necessarily more severe than just handing out birth control -- then bring on the economic crises, I say.
By itself this is meaningless. What does it buy where you are? Most places that’s more than enough to live comfortably.
Anyway, money is only useful to decide who starves.
Growth doesn’t matter if it doesn’t reach the people.
The original comment point is that there is that growth is needed (but not sufficient) if one wants both conditions he pointed out to happen - which is most people.
“Comfortably” is certainly a matter of opinion. But that 17.3k is a purchasing-power parity average, targeted at HN’s largely rich-country leadership. The nominal average income per person in the world is 11.4k.
http://m.statisticstimes.com/economy/countries-by-gdp-capita...
So we have taken the usual cost of living adjustments into account, and the question is, do you want to live on the equivalent of 17.3k per capita US relative to the cost of living in most of the US — somewhere like, say, Pittsburgh?
It might make more sense to think in terms of a carbon budget if we are thinking about sustainability.
The problem, of course, is when we talk about things that cannot be produced, like land.
No, that's also growth. A lower "cost" of living requires some reconfiguration of "stuff" in the world so that it provides more utility, i.e., more "value", than it does currently, which we understand to be an increase because it is not currently providing that amount of utility -- i.e., providing for living. That would mean that the total amount of "value" has grown, even if we refer to it using smaller amounts of currency.
I think some people interpret "growth" to mean growth in physical things, like energy consumption or the amount of railroads, but growth also includes psychological variables like satisfaction and physiological variables like health. The world absolutely needs growth. You can't get around that by rewording the question.
This argument refers to developed nations, not Somalia. You could achieve 1,000% growth by stopping war crimes.
Once you restrict you analysis to functioning countries, for example OEDC, you are probably looking at $40k+
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_countries_by_GDP_...
The more precisely you want to model the distribution, the more you can come up with all sorts of little technicalities. For example, if the rest of the world catches up to the developed countries without significant efficiency gains in many technologies, the environment is extremely screwed. We could go back and forth for days.
The question as posed was: does the world need to grow? The answer is a resounding yes.
A developed economy should be stable, not collapse in on itself, if there is a period of no growth. It is disingenuous to try and prove your point by averaging out your income and economic issues with starving kids in Somalia!
Environment is already screwed. It's impossible to counterbalance consumption damage with increase in efficiency because you obviously can't have 300% efficiency.
Electric motor and generator are >90% efficient, most relevant technologies are ~50% and having diminishing returns.
Despite all good intentions, the hedonic treadmill is real.
You may like the work of Kate Raworth at Oxford though.
The big applied questions is how to manage the cyclicality - that arises in any dynamic system anyhow.
When we looked at the most empty spot we could find with the best camera ever built, we saw more universe than we could even have imagined.
Earth, ok, that's somewhat finite. Yet we're literally barely scratching its surface.
This is maybe a similar point, but it also seems to me that the without growth we would need to come up with some alternative to 401ks in order to allow people to build wealth.
The goal of Supermarket(SM) is to provide products to customers and a stable occupation for those working in the system, not to maximize profit. SM will only sell to subscribed members.
Whenever someone buys something, they pay only the cost of the product, and the purchase is recorded. At the end of each month, SM has to balance its finances: costs have to be equalized with income. We will charge our members an additional % over whatever they bought for this month, just as much as it's needed to balance the books. The more customers we have and the more volume we moved, the less % everyone has to pay.
This way, instead of customers paying a predetermined % margin for each product, they pay as little as it's needed to keep things going. They don't pay for anyone's profit.
https://www.moneycrashers.com/food-coop-costs-benefits-drawb...
- Coop (that's the name) has https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coop_(Switzerland)
- Migros https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migros
I wonder if a government could make this work at the national level, in multiple industries.
If we're missing any one of the five, we have insecurity and chaos usually ensues.
That environment appears to be the soup du jour that allows lobbyist and others to do their bidding and force/sneak in their agendas.
I think it was mentioned, but cycling thru calamity (the business cycle) with F,W,E,E and S until they hit their metrics is becoming a predictable sh!t show.
The real equalization problem involves everyone.
Or ask the hundreds of millions or more who are no longer poor thanks to capitalism.
Edit: typo
There has been quite a history of interventionist policies.
Growth is the consequence of population growth and technological progress and the process of specialization (comparative advantages). All three are in pretty much full force, so it's not just growth because greed.