Ask HN: Is the world going to shit? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?

84 pointsre6tor128 comments

About a year ago I stumbled upon the degrowth concept and subsequently picked up the book "Degrowth: Less is More" by Jason Hickel. For those unfamiliar with the term: "an infinite expansion of the economy is fundamentally contradictory to finite planetary boundaries".[1]

There's been some of HN posts mentioning degrowth in the past but they were heavily criticized[2][3]. I get some degrowthist literature might seem too apocalyptic, but they make some good points:

- Criticism of "decoupling": there's no way of our GDP keeps growing indefinitely while reducing our ecological footprint. In fact, despite all the advancements made in renewables during the past decades global CO2 emissions are at an all-time high.

- Very few people know how to build/grow anything end to end. Consumerism appears to be the only way to live in the West right now (with it, a shared feeling of powerlessness).

At the same time, I stumble upon articles from time to time that are indirectly aligned with the same ideas although from an entirely different perspective. These couple of HN posts come to mind:

- "The super-rich 'preppers' planning to save themselves" [4]

- "I, Pencil (1958)" [5]

- "CO2 emissions are being 'outsourced' by rich countries to rising economies"[6] (The Guardian, not HN)

I gotta admit, this has me pretty worried. However I also have hope (and with hope, it comes action). Questions that I'd like to get input on from the HN community:

1. Am I overly paranoid for believing this? (degrowth seems like our only way out)

2. Is believing technology will save us from climate collapse really that, a belief? Believing this would mean society should keep doing its thing for a tiny tiny chance of getting a free "get out of jail" card (i.e. decoupling is not a fable after all).

3. On the other hand, if we know it's a belief: why aren't our so-called leaders doing anything real about it (albeit at the cost of GDP), are they just trying to prevent widespread panic? I see how this might sound a bit "conspiranoic" but i can't just find better words for it...

4. Regardless of the answer to the question above on #2, why aren't people actively building resilient hyperlocal communities and actively ignore what brought us here in the first place? I.e. globalization and widespread consumerism

4.1. Low-tech, no-tech initiatives seem pretty plausible to me (provided we leave aside our current individualistic values as a society)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrowth

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32416815

[3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20058894

[4]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32711413

[5]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13016980

[6]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jan/19/co2-emissions-outsourced-rich-nations-rising-economies

View on HN

Per capita emissions in the US and other western nations are declining even when you account for production shifted to other countries

https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/no-the-us-didnt-outsource-...

I don't truly see the "no one knows how to do anything end to end". This is somewhat true - but I don't know if 500 years ago the same person necessarily knew how to work with bronze and to raise cattle and to preserve foods for the winter. Perhaps it seems easier since there was less things, but there was also a lot less ability to move around and learn about things so I'm not so sure.

Ultimately it seems like the absolute worst case scenario is that a shock causes a partial collapse of western society to the point where people are very poor and not able to use technology we take for granted, but this is pretty close to what an honest degrowther sees as the best case scenario. If you want to experience life as it existed before modern technology there are plenty of places in the world that moreorless still live as they did hundreds of years ago - and it would only be romanticizing them so say they dont have their own very severe issues that are objectively worse than what we have.

One glaring omission from that article is any mention of per-capita emissions. The author keeps asserting that US-based measures to combat climate change are ineffective because China pollutes more, but the US (and all Western countries) have a far larger per-capita footprint than China. Policies to reduce this footprint could have a huge effect on emissions globally, even though the US isn't the total biggest emitter in the world.

Yeah the same author has a reply to that since the per-capita emissions point is brought up a lot: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/why-per-capita-emissions-i...

I am a firm believer that the world has always being going to shit.

It's called change and accepting that has made life much more bearable.

While change is increasingly happening faster, the changes are (mostly) smaller. We're in one of the longest periods of “peace time“ and threat of war/death continue to decrease (while not evenly distributed that's not a reason to lose hope).

I wouldn't call the changes "smaller". Climate change is an existential threat. Possibly the greatest one we've ever faced, certainly the greatest since WWII and so far we're definitely NOT rising to the occasion.

To quote the Instapundit: "I'll believe it's a crisis when the people telling me it's a crisis start acting like it's a crisis."

There seems a pile of circumstantial evidence that the rotating series of crises may merely be a device for controlling the masses through fear.

"There seems a pile of circumstantial evidence that the rotating series of crises may merely be a device for controlling the masses through fear."

And who is doing the controlling? Wouldn't it be easier to control people if they are happy and content, given that in human history revolutions were almost always a product of suffering and unhappiness?

Isn't it much more likely that the many crises we perceive are a product of imperfect human perception and the enormous development of mass media instead of an enormous conspiracy theory?

> Wouldn't it be easier to control people if they are happy and content, given that in human history revolutions were almost always a product of suffering and unhappiness?

It's easier to rule happy people. If you want to control them, you can lull them into inaction with vices, then control them with fear. We're all individuals; divide and conquer.

Sorry, but the difference between "rule" and "control" seems more like a play on words and less like a coherent argument. Also, "divide et impera" might be reasonable if you are in the business of ancient roman foreign policy but I would need to be convinced that it holds true for the inner workings of modern democracies. I don't have the feeling that the people around me are particularly afraid all the time and if they are, it leads to them wanting change instead of being paralyzed.

The connection between - media producers make money by grabbing attention - grabbing attention is easier if you create threats and crises --> the media tends to overblow things

seems so much more straightforward.

> Sorry, but the difference between "rule" and "control" seems more like a play on words and less like a coherent argument. 'Rule' is a neutral word. I meant it in the way that a ruler generally tries to do good for their subjects because on some level they have to. 'Control' is negative and implies no concern for subjects because the subjects have no recourse.

> Also, "divide et impera" might be reasonable if you are in the business of ancient roman foreign policy but I would need to be convinced that it holds true for the inner workings of modern democracies.

If you've been awake in the past 3 years you will have seen obvious government overreach. You can justify it if you want to, but it's clearly gone way beyond public health concerns.

> I don't have the feeling that the people around me are particularly afraid all the time and if they are, it leads to them wanting change instead of being paralysed.

I'll assume you're American. What percentage of Americans do you think use psychiatric medication or drugs (including alcohol) on a regular basis?

I think most "crisis" are developed for election marketing and grifting.

Horrible situation such'n'such is an existential threat! Vote for me or give me money to save all of humanity!

The other side of it lately has been creating crisis that divide and conquer society. Most of the "crisis" in the past several years have been terribly polarized. Keeping people divided stops them from focusing on the real issues that politicians can't/won't tackle, and it prevents them from uniting against politicians/corporations/etc.

>I think most "crisis" are developed for election marketing and grifting. Horrible situation such'n'such is an existential threat! Vote for me or give me money to save all of humanity!

I think that's much more reasonable. I wouldn't agree with you that it's "most" but sure, that's certainly happening to some amount.

>Keeping people divided stops them from focusing on the real issues that politicians can't/won't tackle, and it prevents them from uniting against politicians/corporations/etc.

This part however, I don't buy. That's a conspiracy theory. Who exactly is carrying out this nefarious plan? And how do they manage to have that much influence to be able to do that in most countries?

What is that bar for you?

What issues led you to this opinion that they’re overblown?

> "What is that bar for you?"

See first sentence of my post. Those demanding sacrifices might start with themselves.

Climate change might be the greatest challenge we've ever faced, but it's hardly an "existential threat" (ie. something that threatens our existence). Even under the worst IPCC forecasts, there won't be enough land lost (eg. by flooding or desertification) to wipe out humanity. Don't get me wrong, billions dying or displaced would be a humanitarian disaster of epic proportions, but isn't something that threatens our existence.

Exactly, it does always irk me when people call it an existential threat to humanity. That's not to say it isn't a huge problem. But it won't wipe us out. Some areas will also become more habitable (eg Siberia)

The mass migration of people across borders as a result of climate change might cause wars that are such a threat though. But still I don't consider climate change itself as such.

I said an existential threat, not an existential threat to humanity. For the majority of us, and for our nation, it is indeed an existential threat.

Regardless, the pedantry is unwarranted.

There is a risk that plants can't adapt fast enough to climate change and die off, causing a domino effect. Phytoplankton, for example, produce 50% of the earth's oxygen. So if they go, well, we might be along for the ride.

Possibly, but even if 90% or even 99% of humanity dies it still isn't an existential threat.

If 100k humans survive that's more than enough to carry on humans and civilization as a whole.

This take always rubs me the wrong way because it conveniently ignores the fact that letting 90% of humanity die is wrong and should be avoided given that 1% of humanity is more or less to blame for this mess.

Nobody said it was ok, they just said it's technically not an existential threat if humanity persists.

If one is going to use a word that means a specific thing then get annoyed because that word didn't conform to what they wanted it to mean, I mean, can we do anything about it? They should have used a different word. Calamitous or monumental are good words for what you're describing.

The word fits. Our existence as we know it is at risk.

Our existence for the majority of us is at risk.

Our existence as a nation is at risk.

I didn't say "and existential threat for the human race". Even if I had, the pedantry is unwarranted.

Letting 90% of humanity die is wrong and should be avoided, whether or not 1% of humanity is to blame.

In workplace health and safety there is a term "life altering". This is used for the high impact but not deadly accidents, that are still very valuable to reduce the risk of. Like having an arm torn off, or going blind. I think we should adopt similar terminology when it comes to risks to humanity as a whole. "Civilization-changing perhaps"? And try to attach some meaningful examples of this. Fixating only on total anhilation of the entire species is not so useful when trying to design policies.

This period of peace time is, admittedly, because world war 3 will end human life on earth and it’s making leaders slightly more shy than usual

It doesn’t even have to be a world war. It will only take 1 nation to make the choice

We’re one mistake from extinction

Note that the "nuclear winter" will not be as initially imagined. It will be bad, very bad, but not extinction level bad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Criticism_and_d...

WW3 ending humanity might be a wrong assumption.

God forbid we might be entering the "big proxy war" between all mayor powers. (If India and china start supplying the ukraine front etc)

To contextualize with OP: yes the world is always changing, but the next decade might become extremely uncomfortable.

I think it will be organic. I’ve severely curtailed my discretionary spending. The restaurants suck now, bad service and low quality food for a high price. Bars are barely open during adult hours, many being closed at 8 or 9pm. Theaters, concerts, and sporting events seem to run on a skeleton crew of people that are clueless.

It’s time to walk the walk. Plenty of people have a doomer mindset about the future. Prepare now. Commit yourself to an ascetic lifestyle and you won’t be disappointed.

But I doubt many will voluntarily live this way. It’s just like everybody upset about the climate, but none of them have installed solar and geothermal on their home.

> I think it will be organic. I’ve severely curtailed my discretionary spending. The restaurants suck now, bad service and low quality food for a high price. Bars are barely open during adult hours, many being closed at 8 or 9pm. Theaters, concerts, and sporting events seem to run on a skeleton crew of people that are clueless.

Given that we're in an economic downturn/recession, it's really hard to use what you said as evidence for degrowth, which implies some sort of long term phenomena rather than a 1-2 year thing.

> It’s just like everybody upset about the climate, but none of them have installed solar and geothermal on their home.

Average cost of a residential geothermal system: $15k to $38k[1]

Average cost of solar panel roof: $11k to $14k after tax credits[2]

Also your roof shingles should be 10 years old or less before installation[3] (my roof shingles are definitely that old), so for a lot of people they'd have to replace their roof first, so tack on another $5.5k to $11k on top of that for many homes[4].

Total cost to meet your criteria: $26k to $62k.

I'd love for everyone to have solar panels and geothermal heat pumps, but I get why it hasn't happened very much yet. We need a lot more incentives (or major public/private infrastructure projects) to convert these more quickly.

(I realize there ads all over the internet for companies claiming they'll install solar panels for "free", but the BBB warns that those are often scams or can be more expensive for you in the long run[5]).

[1]: https://modernize.com/hvac/heating-repair-installation/heat-...

[2]: https://www.consumeraffairs.com/solar-energy/how-much-do-sol...

[3]: https://www.owenscorning.com/en-us/roofing/tools/solar-panel...

[4]: https://www.forbes.com/home-improvement/roofing/roof-replace...

[5]: https://www.bbb.org/article/scams/27595-bbb-scam-alert-free-...

To which I'll add that renters can't install those things even if they have the money, and people seem to be renting for more of their life than they used to.

There's no shortage of articles about people being priced out of ever owning a home. If true, they also won't be able to install solar panels or other environmentally beneficial home improvement technologies, which is bad for everyone. I've never heard of a landlord of a small proprty doing it, but surely some of them do.

Right. Since renters usually pay the electric bill, what incentive is there for landlords to help tenants save on utilities?

Considering how rough renters are on property there is never an incentive to make things nicer than they have to be. High density housing is never going to be a good candidate for solar anyway. Not enough surface area.

Low density rented housing doesn't get things like solar either. In houses, even double glazing and windows that don't leak can't be counted on in my experience. I don't think I've ever lived anywhere as an adult that didn't have some things broken that I'd fix if I was allowed to (and would be fairly cheap to fix).

Some renters are rough on property, but many renters are not and look after the property the best they can, considering they are generally forbidden from doing any proper improvements or maintenance.

After all, many renters don't want to keep moving (and are not renting by choice), especially if they have children in school or a job nearby, so they have reason to look after the property they are in for as long as they can stay.

Which is exactly my point. It’s not cheap or easy to put your money where your mouth is. Talk is cheap. In the end, is $60k too much to ask to save the planet? People should stop being pretenders. If they really care about the climate, do something about it. If they think the world sucks and is going down the drain, do something about it.

We're in a period of really bad leadership of the major world powers. It's like the runup to WWI, which was probably peak stupid.

Technically, things are looking pretty good. Energy is a problem only in the near term. Solar, wind, and batteries are so cheap that massive deployment is happening for purely economic reasons. Population is leveling off. Computing is in good shape.

To add a counter to this, I'd say technically things are looking pretty bad. The population is expected to grow by 2 billion people in the next 30 years, so I wouldn't call that leveling off. With the degradation of, and simultaneous need for more arable land, food supplies could become an issue, especially if we see more things like the Russia-Ukraine war take place. We'll have fished out most of the ocean in that same period of time. We're also running out of fresh water in areas we need it as we drain aquifers and winter snow pack declines.

Arable land under threat -https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00139...

Fish stock collapse -https://news.stanford.edu/news/2006/november8/ocean-110806.h...

Lack of fresh water -https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170412-is-the-world-run...

There are many other things, such as the continued reliance on fossil fuels and still increasing demand for crude, coupled with a lack of new oil exploration.

This is a very dangerous narrative, for some reason popular nowadays — the scarcity mindset, the story of “limited resources”.

If you go back 5000 years ago you’ll see there’s only so many people the planet can feed.

The actual fact is that people _create_ resources when they cooperate (this is why now our planet can afford so many people that ancient would never imagine possible).

It’s not about the technology but about good vs evil beliefs.

Which lead to actions.

Please spread good constructive beliefs, not scary destructive ones.

Farming produces more food than needed, so you can feed others. Technology just makes farming more efficient, so a smaller percent of the population needs to farm. As long as there's still potential for more farming, population growth means more farmers producing food. If you exhaust the planet's resources for farming, or climate change reduces it, more people won't mean more resources anymore.

Why do you think farming is a linear game?

What makes you think it’s impossible to get food from other sources that we didn’t invent yet and would probably not even call “farming”?

Indeed, it reminds me of lab grown meat, or lab growth anything for that matter. Didn't Star Trek have a machine that could make any food possible just by putting molecules together? That's not farming and yet it could feed people.

I think it's easier for the concept of farming to evolve as technology advances, than the production of food not being called farming anymore. Food made in labs could be considered farming, yeast cultures like the ones in Asimov's Foundation could too.

As the sibling comment mentions, only things like Star Trek's replicator could be considered beyond farming, as you're using the same pool of resources used to other activities besides feeding. In this case, farming and mining would be interchangeable.

>> I think it's easier for the concept of farming to evolve as technology advances, than the production of food not being called farming anymore

Why are you so sure that your current speculations would have any sense 200 years from now when some agricultural breakthrough happens. The one we can't even dream about today.

And this is the pattern that has been happening all the time through humankind history.

I'm just speculating that mass production of food will still be considered farming in the future, but you're right, I can't know.

I bet even the "consumption" or "feeding" itself might undergo some unexpected changes

> Please spread good constructive beliefs, not scary destructive ones.

What is the objective truth is "scary"? Can I spread it then?

You found out the objective truth? Please share, the rest of us are eager to know.

2 + 2 = 4

You're welcome.

I disagree.

2 + 2 = 11

also

2 + 2 = 10

Go build a bridge with that math, and we'll see if it objectively lasts...

I love explaining jokes, so I'm glad I thought to look back at this comment.

My statements are sound enough to build bridges on. It's all the same math, just in ternary and quaternary. My point is that there is no such thing as an objective interpretation, because all methods of communication are open to biases. Even math expressions.

https://brilliant.org/wiki/number-base/

I agree that there is no such thing as objective interpretation. The interpretation is always biased by the interpreter. But truth comes before interpretation, not after. Truth exists independently of the observer's bias.

A bridge is either sound or unsound, engineering-wise. It is irrelevant whether any person judges the bridge to be sound or unsound--the soundness is tested by reality, and reality is mapped 1-to-1 to truth. Reality is truth.

Your math statements are true in the context of the ternary and quaternary systems. However, if you led the project to engineer and build the bridge under one of those systems, i feel confident that the bridge would fail. Because your ' true statements' would meet the reality of an engineering and implementation world that does not use those systems. Your argument that they are true would be completely irrelevant in the practical domain of modern construction. Your statements are not sound enough to build a bridge upon because the building project lives in reality instead of possibility.

One cannot argue for subjective truth because the nature of truth lies in its objectivity. Anyone who argues for subjective truth is in fact arguing for the non-existence of truth, which is foolishness.

You're preaching to the choir, but only your favorite book, not the whole text. There is no nature of truth. Tell me what it is now, without using the word "truth", "objective", or "reality" - I can wait.

If you were to frame the statement as "One cannot argue for the subjective nature of truth, because by doing so they are positing the objectiveness of subjectivity", then I'm 100% with you. But to demonstrate that objectivity in a way that can escape the confines of your own mind? Good luck - it's a fool's errand. The most we can do is approximate reality, but that will never reveal the objective truth - just it's fuzzier-around-the-edges cousin "reasonable certainty". Enter the hard sciences.

Also, "quaternary" and "ternary" systems are no different than any other mathematical system. All the same rules apply. The only difference is when you cycle place values, and the expression of certain irrational values, which actually improves with quaternary and ternary over decimal, as they're both factors of 12 and can divide more easily than 10.

It's a waste of time to argue with people who believe there's only subjective truth. The whole of the world and existence reminds one constantly of objective truths--material or otherwise. These people are arguing ideology while ignoring fundamental ways that they (in reality) make decisions.

> there's no way of our GDP keeps growing indefinitely while reducing our ecological footprint.

Yes there is. We are vastly ineffecient with our use of energy. Fusion power, better use of solar, wind, geothermal power, better energy storage. The amount of solar hitting the Earth every day is several orders of magnitude larger than what is needed to run society at our current level. There is no shortage of energy, only our ability to make use of it.

Obviously nothing grows indefinitely. Eventually the sun will go supernova and consume the solar system. For an amount of energy needed to sustain human life comfortably, there is more than enough.

The degrowthers would have us go back to living in grass huts and dying in droves from diseases we have long since eradicated. It is not a way forward. It is species suicide.

True that.

> there's no way of our GDP keeps growing indefinitely while reducing our ecological footprint.

This is at its core not a truth, but really an unsound belief system that could have been phrased the same about water quality, acid rain, leaded gasoline or the ozone hole. Yet these have all been tackled by humanity as a whole already, because we saw a pretty bad impact on our livelyhood quickly.

No doubt, CO2 is really the greatest challenge of all times, compared to nearly any global problem before. But it‘s far from insurmountable, and definitely not directly coupled to growth.

All it would take is a (literal) moonshot effort: Taking the same funds as the Apollo Program (in 2022 adjusted dollars) would be enough for a full transition.

Before this decade is over. Not because it‘s easy, but because it is hard.

Unfortunately, the US seems to have run out of massively visionary presidents since 1968.

The indefinite growth theory is discussed in this chance meeting of an economist and a physicist.

"Alright, the Earth has only one mechanism for releasing heat to space, and that’s via (infrared) radiation. We understand the phenomenon perfectly well, and can predict the surface temperature of the planet as a function of how much energy the human race produces. The upshot is that at a 2.3% growth rate, we would reach boiling temperature in about 400 years. And this statement is independent of technology. Even if we don’t have a name for the energy source yet, as long as it obeys thermodynamics, we cook ourselves with perpetual energy increase."

https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist...

Not all methods of using energy require releasing heat to space. Solar energy uses heat and light that comes in from space and converts some portion of it to useful work, reducing the amount of heat that needs to be released to space.

That also ignores the fact that technology gets more efficient. A laptop today uses 50W and is thousands of times more powerful than a roomful of computers 50 years ago that used thousands of watts. It’s doing much more and releasing a fraction of the heat.

Same with wind energy: wind is ultimately created by solar energy heating the atmosphere, so wind turbines are simply removing some energy from the atmosphere and converting it to useful work.

Its still exponential growth so it will eventually mean all possible useful wind and solar is used up. Then what?

If we truly used up all solar and wind power on the planet (which is a mind-bogglingly large amount of energy) there is still nuclear fission which is also a very large amount. Then if we invent fusion, that's basically infinite energy for free. And on top of all that, Earth is not the only planet, and the Sun has energy that does not only hit the Earth, so we can be construct a Dyson sphere.

Energy from our human scale today is basically infinite when we count all the sources available to us.

Solar and wind were brought out up because if any other energy source (like fusion) was used, then waste heat would be generated that would eventually (at exponential growth scales) boil the planet. And we could only, even the best case scenarios, ever only use a fraction of the available wind and solar that exists. Biological life is also solar powered so there's only so much you can take before that's an issue.

Energy problems is just one of ways in which our societies can get into a decline. There's also loss of arable land (industrial farming is slowly but surely destroying the soil across the world), destruction of biodiversification, leading to freak incidents (one pest/disease wiping out lots of crops, forests, farm animals, or humans for that matter), depletion of minerals in the Earth (who knows if even right now there's even enough lithium available for widespread deployment of electric cars etc.

It's technically possible now to synthesise carbohydrates, fats, and proteins directly from the air: in effect, doing artificial photosynthesis at something like 200 times the efficiency of natural photosynthesis, without using land.

With cheap enough energy and more practice (descending the engineering learning curve) producing food this way may be profitable in 30 or 40 years. We can re-wild all arable land.

There are at least dozens and possibly hundreds of alternatives to lithium chemistry for batteries, that are nearly competitive with it. Some of them are better than lithium in some applications. Watch for CATL's sodium batteries.

But say it's worst case, none of the alternatives turn out to be better cheaper, and more environmentally benign: no problem. There most definitely is enough mineable lithium. There's a temporary shortage of lithium refining factories.

If we had to, we could get by with water, rock, iron, sodium, potassium, calcium, phosphates, carbon, aluminum, and trace amounts of other things. The minerals we need a lot of, we have a lot of.

Regarding technology as a savior—it isn’t, but it can help.

Steve Jobs described the computer as “a bicycle for the mind”. Bicycle technology allows a human to move faster than a cheetah (https://www.travelwriter.nl/english-blog-faster-than-a-cheet...). Computers help people think and compute faster than an organic brain. However, the human must *choose* to use the technology. That’s a social choice. Human problems are social problems. I do believe we have adequate technology to bring the world into an age of prosperity. But it will only happen if we choose, as a society, to do it.

For a variety of reasons, I don’t think giving up technology to pursue a low tech / no tech society would be helpful. Often, low tech solutions actually make things worse when applied at scale with as many people as we have.

I do. But when that makes me sad I think of the following bit from The Chronicles of Riddick:

Imam: "Have you heard anything I've said?"

Riddick: "You said it's all circling the drain, the whole universe. Right?"

Imam: "That's right."

Riddick: "Had to end sometime."

I just came from the beach where there were many smiling and happy families....so I'm gonna say no.

It snowed yesterday here... so I'm gonna say yes.

I love snow. So I’ll say no

What does building end to end even mean? If i go to china and ask a factory work if they know how to produce the semiconductor in the iPhone they’re assembling will they know? If I go to any major city and ask someone to grow me wheat or corn can they do it successfully? Different people specialize in different things. Maybe a fullstack developer is what you're looking for lmao. This isn’t the medieval times the world and the tools we use are complex we’re not making swords anymore even back then then moat blacksmiths didn’t mine for minerals.

> an infinite expansion of the economy is fundamentally contradictory to finite planetary boundaries

This is a stupid premise. People illiterate in both physics and economics seem to think that economic growth is bound by the laws of thermodynamics.

This is easily proven false by contradiction:

Let's say you have a few 2x4s and nails, by rearranging them into a chair you've created economic value. No extra raw materials were required to get from the planks of wood to the chair but value was created anyway. Find a better use for the wood and nails than a chair and we have economic growth.

> No extra raw materials were required to get from the planks of wood to the chair but value was created anyway.

The labor required to build the chair is one additional ingredient. The transformation of wood and nails to chair does not happen spontaneously.

The labor is a small fixed cost. Depending on what is done with the labor the leverage is potentially infinite (eg. many internet business that earn a million or more per year for every employee they have hired).

Growth can happen by getting the same labor to do something more valuable (maybe building houses instead of chairs?)

Labour is people, which need food and water.

I don't see the point of your statement. Economic growth can happen even if the population remains constant (or even shrinks but that would be a headwind to overall economic growth and at that point it might be more instructive to look at gdp per capita).

Sure, but with a declining population in most modernized societies the kind of growth expected by our current economic model simply isn't forthcoming.

You are excluding human labor, which requires energy, which brings us back to thermodynamics.

Your claim is that growth is bound by the law of thermodynamics because of human labor?

Is your claim that growth in human population is required for economic growth?

Ok, I'll do another proof by contradiction using the chair analogy:

The carpenter uses the materials that would have been used to build 100 chairs to build a boat. That boat is then used to transport goods up and down a river. The economic value of that boat is greater than the 100 chairs but the carpenter has not done more work and they have not used more materials.

If all the human carpenters switch from creating chairs to creating boats you can get economic growth without using more materials or labor.

It seems rather disingenous to list all the raw materials for making a chair and then claim that because no extra materials were needed (because you listed them all) that infinite growth is possible. Okay, setting aside the question of where you got the planks and nails - you've made the chair. Now what? That's not "growth", that's a chair. You can make it once. Maybe you can recycle it into something more valuable - modern art, say. Great! How many times can you pull that trick? Eventually you'll reach the economically optimum configuration for those planks of wood. Then what? Eventually, if you want to sustain infinite growth, you're gonna need to make a second chair.

Are you trying to critique the use of simplified models for analyzing systems in general?

> Now what? That's not "growth", that's a chair

If somebody finds use from the chair that was growth, if it sits unused it was waste. Something of value was created from a bunch of useless pieces of wood and metal.

> How many times can you pull that trick? Eventually you'll reach the economically optimum configuration for those planks of wood.

Really? There is an economic optimum for the most valuable configuration of materials? This also ignores that while growth is occurring other things are being created which will impact the supposed equilibrium state that exists for wood and nails that will change what the most valuable configuration of those materials will be.

Anyway, let's go away from wood and nails. What about ink and paper. Or just words? Or just thoughts? What is the economic value of the observation the F = ma? Newton probably created infinite economic value by putting the observation that F=ma to paper.

Sure we can find a better use for the wood and nails. But the point is that the wood and nails are finite.

I don't think you have demonstrated "an infinite expansion of the economy is fundamentally not contradictory to finite planetary boundaries", you've just shown that SOME growth is possible without using resources.

In fact, you mention yourself the reason why growth is somehow in contradiction with the finite planetary boundaries: you say that if the carpenters do 1 boat instead of 100 chairs, they will create growth because the value of the boat is bigger than the value of the 100 chairs. So, you acknowledge that growth is led by "the more valuable thing to do, the more profitable". The problem is that, by construction, exploiting resources are way more profitable than not. For creating a boat, it's way easier to chop trees to get new 2x4s than to disassemble chairs (if it was the case, recycling would be the go-to process, and it is clearly not the case in reality. on top of that, some fabrication processes are not recyclable).

So, yeah, technically, we still can have some local growth after all resources are consumed (by just disassembling chairs to create boats), but in practice, this local growth is compensated by the negative growth of losing the big gain of consuming the resource.

A less constructed example showing this even more strongly:

I used to buy distilled water from my grocery store. The water had to be shipped to the store, that took gas. Not green, not efficient compared to: Now the same store has a reverse osmosis machine, available because of new technology, that uses regular city water and filters it. It's half the price. No gas is used to transport the water to the store, it flows through a pipe to get to the store. This increases GDP, the same amount of water (at least) is bought, but lots of peole have some extra money left over. GDP increased, pollution decreased substantially.

BUT. The discussion does go on from there. The people with extra dollars might spend that on something polluting - maybe even as polluting as trucking water around - but they might well not.

Even so, as with the original example, only better, this is an example of economic growth that actually decreases consumption, taken by itself. (Now comes the argument about knock-on effects such as what the freed bucks get spent on, and the named law (word) saying that when you make a good more efficiently, demand for it increases.)

If you're a Marxist you can substitute "freed labor is spent doing" for "freed bucks is spent on" above, I suppose.

You're technically correct, in the way that infinite growth is possible if we only limit ourselves to efficience gains, i.e. getting more value out of the same set of contrained resources. However, in practice, many things that people want cannot be obtained this way. Sure, a nicer chair or improved iPhone are good, but people also want summer houses and exotic vacations and a car for every family member and these things are massively resource-dependant.

Our technology and all that was accelerated/amplified thereby exceeded our socio-cultural development as a species by a lot.

We won’t learn without catastrophe, and it’s anyone’s guess what will be learned from that.

The book, Enlightenment Now, by Steven Pinker makes the opposite argument that over time, life is getting better. It tracks various aspects of human life throughout history with research, statistics, and graphs that tell a different story.

Do you know about the "The Turkey Fallacy" ?

"the story of a turkey who is fed by the farmer every morning for 1,000 days. Eventually the turkey comes to expect that every visit from the farmer means more good food. After all, that’s all that has ever happened so the turkey figures that’s all that can and will ever happen. But then Day 1,001 arrives. It’s two days before Thanksgiving and when the farmer shows up, he is not bearing food, but an ax. The turkey learns very quickly that its expectations were catastrophically off the mark. And now Mr. Turkey is dinner."

That doesn't really line up with Pinker's argument does it? He's not saying things have been fine and so will be in the future. He's saying that the further back you go the worse things were.

The line I always use about running a marathon is that you always feel worse each mile but it's not a continuous down hill slope - sometimes things stay the same for a bit and sometimes they even get better before getting worse gain.

Pinker is arguing for a reverse marathon view. Sure sometimes one year is worse then the one before it - or a decade or a century. The trend though is towards improvements in the human condition.

luckily we control our own destiny unlike said turkey. Pretty paternalistic to compare people to pets. Quality of life has improved because of our actions, not the hand of some farmer.

This is the same line of thinking as the famous "what happened to all the horses" thought which conveniently ignores the fact that horses only existed to serve as tools for people and were therefore replaced when a more useful tool was found.

Do we really control our own destiny? If so, why in so many places are we creating such terrible conditions for our future?

First I'd say that things have consistently been getting better for the last 400 years, and I don't really see that changing in the near future.

> why in so many places are we creating such terrible conditions for our future?

Because many people have bad discount rates so they sacrifice future welfare for current welfare. Externalities are also extremely difficult to get people to internalize.

1. No. People are getting dumber at (IIRC) about 0.6 IQ points per 10 years. Obviously this is going to make society and technology worse. It's like every month that something breaks around the house and I can't find somebody who knows how it works. Tech support used to be tolerable but now it's useless.

2. I don't know what you mean by "collapse", but yes it's a belief. "Tech will save us" is one of the (IIRC) 3 textbook responses to the climate change narrative.

3. IDK it looks like Western Europe is de-industrializing, we'll see how much this winter but I'm hearing about large industries shutting down in response to fuel prices. They're definitely not trying to prevent panic, just trying to maintain hypernormalization.

4. They are and you can go outside and you can find them. You don't hear about it on the internet because the internet is run by multinational corporations selling you products made many thousands of miles from where you live.

4.1 Technology is a force multiplier - people with more technology are better at conquering their rivals. I think this is mentioned in Industrial Society and it's future.

People are naturally averse at recognising issues which require them to take actions that might impact, however slightly, the lifestyle that they have grown used to. They will prefer to dig their head in the sand and keep driving towards much bigger problems rather than take moderately inconvenient action now.

This is a behavioural/psychological flaw that prevents necessary action from being taken.

I have two daughters, and when I look at history, I am pretty glad they are born in the last couple of years and not 100 or 50 years ago.

> there's no way of our GDP keeps growing indefinitely while reducing our ecological footprint.

Not necessarily. For exmaple, if I recite a poem to you for a dollar and you sing to me a song for a dollar, GDP increases without changing the ecological footprint.

And even if the ecological footprint per capita is growing, we might be able to reduce the overall ecological footprint in a few decades, when earth's population is declining. It depends on the ratio between the two tendencies.

I am not sure if that will really be the case, but it is a possibility.

>Not necessarily. For exmaple, if I recite a poem to you for a dollar and you sing to me a song for a dollar, GDP increases without changing the ecological footprint.

And what if we raise our prices, so I recite a bad poem for $1M and you sing a terrible, off-key song to me for the same price? Isn't that effectively massively raising the GDP without doing any useful work at all?

Yep. But usefulness is besides the point. The question was whether GDP can rise without changing the ecological footprint.

The iPhone 12 is smaller than the iPhone 11. Does anybody think that it is worse for that reason?

If you buy a Ford Lightning instead of a gasoline truck and fuel it with solar power, you might use 50 tons or so less gasoline. Is that worse?

We're a community mostly built on software. A new game may provide massive entertainment on a very minimal footprint.

Sure the population cannot grow indefinitely, but it is predicted to stabilize soon.

The economy can grow indefinitely. Dollars are just bits in a computer, and so is a large fraction of our economy.

Isn't iPhone 12 like 3x the price of iPhone 4? That in itself is the signal of some sort of decline - the same (more or less) goods get gradually more expensive/less accessible.

GDP doesn’t need to grow indefinitely. It measures industrial output, but not wealth or prosperity. Here are economists whose perspectives you may find offer a way out of the trap it feels like we’re in:

Mariana Mazzucato (https://marianamazzucato.com) talks about the spectrum of models capitalism can take in this interview: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-prof-g-show-with-s....

“Betterness” by Umair Haque talks about the need for metrics that augment GDP by serving as indicators of wealth: https://store.hbr.org/product/betterness-economics-for-human... (also available on Amazon, iBooks, etc.).

The David Graeber Institute (https://davidgraeber.org/books/bullshit-jobs/) has done a lot of work to explore how we allocate labor to tasks. The book “Bullshit Jobs” is a worthwhile overview of the Institute’s research.

Edit: “Enlightenment Now” by Stephen Pinker (not an economist) is another look at progress. While Pinker acknowledges it’s possible to be born during a local minima, the book charts how things continue to improve for people across many metrics. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenment_Now

A good summary on Hickel: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/against-hickelism

"Very few people know how to build/grow anything end to end. Consumerism appears to be the only way to live in the West right now (with it, a shared feeling of powerlessness)." I recommend you read the Unabomber manifesto. It's much the same sentiment. And I don't mean it in a reductio ad hitlerum type of way. I've read the thing and hey, the motivational part of it is reasonable. It's not wrong. It makes sense. However, the conclusion I draw is that we need to acquiesce to the fact that complex, (seemingly?) fragile systems built on increasing specialization make us uncomfortable, and do them anyway; in practice, they work much better.

"degrowth seems like our only way out" Degrowth is not a way out. We know very well how humanity functions in the low-growth conditions; when the pie is fixed or growing only slowly, whatever it is, one's only way to improve one's lot is at the expense of someone else. That doesn't tend towards communitarian utopia - that tends towards things like feudalism - the way to improve your lot is to get more land, and you will never give up the land you have voluntarily because there's no growth, so there's nothing better to be had in exchange. So the only way to get more productive assets is to take them from someone.

"Is believing technology will save us from climate collapse really that, a belief? Believing this would mean society should keep doing its thing for a tiny tiny chance of getting a free "get out of jail" card (i.e. decoupling is not a fable after all)." Is believing in "climate collapse" really that, a belief? "The largest impact of climate change is that it could wipe off up to 18% of GDP off the worldwide economy by 2050 if global temperatures rise by 3.2°C, the Swiss Re Institute warns." IFCC numbers are even lower although the ones I could find claim they might be an understatement. World GDP has recently been growing by 2.5-3.3% a year. So, if it went down 18% from current values, we'd be all the way back to the apocalyptic hellscape of about 2015.

I'm not sure I understand the "Degrowth" premise. It appears to equate economic expansion with resource consumption or population growth. Economic expansion can lead to resource consumption when consuming that resource is what's valued. If everybody valued less-consumptive products and services where they are currently value more-consumptive products and services, then the resulting increase in variety of good and services would be an expansion to the economy, would it not?

Every person requires a set number of resources per day in order to survive. This number hasn't changed for centuries and in industrial societies it can be equated with the consumption of energy (food and electricity). Degrowth philosophies require either fewer people or more efficient utilization of existing resources. Degrowth does not say anything about economic activity, it is fundamentally a higher level perspective about limits of bounded dynamical systems like Earth's biosphere.

Economic growth in %gdp is transforming and moving exponentially more stuff and people around.

You need energy to do that.

The decoupling we saw in the last years is the same decoupling France saw after the Mesmer plan, and probably caused by renewables. There is basically no decoupling between energy and GDP.

Services are just second hand production basically.

The world has been going to shit for the past 2,500 years. The ancient Greeks were the first ones to notice it. That seems like a long time ago to us because we're human and have short lifespans but in the larger scheme of things it was only a moment ago. Thing is, civilization as we know it may completely collapse in the next moment - but that could be another 2,500 years from now!

These are great references. Thanks for putting this together and I agree with your assessment. Logically it is impossible to have infinite growth on a finite planet. Destructive human activity in the past tended to be isolated but the rise of industrial society and machinery has made local human activity a global problem (industrial societies produce a lot of CO2 and there is no way around this).

On top of this there is also the problem of an economic model that incentivizes ransacking natural resources in order to turn it into profits. That's probably the main reason there is a lot of pushback to degrowth philosophies because it requires a fundamentally new way of measuring economic activity and value. No economic models properly account for biospheric destruction and resource depletion from human economic activity so almost all existing economic thinking is completely useless for addressing the current crisis.

All the pie in sky solutions to the current crisis assume we solve the problem of limited energy resources and then use this newly abundant source of energy to terraform the planet and fix the problems created by industrial activity. I'm calling it pie in the sky because I have seen no real concerted effort to actually make this happen. The timelines for fusion reactors make no sense and will not be ready in time to address the impending ecological disasters. Almost every other technical solution is equally nonsensical, e.g. AGI.

Right now the US doesn't actually have any upward movement in GDP, so who knows... the journey might have already begun.

"Fruit flies and yeast in a bottle are embarked upon suicidal endeavors. They can’t help it. They don’t know any better, lacking the cognitive equipment to 'know' anything at all.

"Human beings, we are told, are different.... But history teaches us that all too often, human beings simply refuse to apply [what they know] and, like the mindless fruit flies, march blindly into oblivion. [Recent examples follow.] [0]"

[0] https://www.permaculturenews.org/2010/09/20/fruit-flies-in-a...

It's not that we're doing nothing. But we're doing too little too late. Human lives a century from now will be much more limited because of this failure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism

1798 book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Essay_on_the_Principle_of_P...

"Degrowth" is unlikely to ever happen. It just isn't popular. And people against things like combating climate change tend to use degrowthers as a useful tool to win arguments.

"Deprofiting" would be much more likely to have a chance.

Seems like to me that profit has only accelerated in the last 2 years. Not sure how we have any control over that...... because people are voting with their purchases and purchases are extremely high.

As the Fed tanks the economy we're probably going to face a choice between outright fascism and some form of socialism. Neoliberalism is running out of runway.

Don't be afraid of the degrowth, but of what makes more than necessary, essential. Not enough is being done regarding what is causing the climate change, and we are affecting most areas in a very complex and interconnected system. And that will cause instability and maybe reaching conditions that we or what we depend on are not prepared to deal with.

And even if the problem was seen and alerted on since last century, little significant advances were done to stop it. Degrowth, decarbonization of economy, carbon capture, changes on we deal with energy, transport and more are required changes to try to avoid the worst consequences, and time is running out.

Regarding technical solutions, inventions and so on, I try to not solve with just technology what is an organizational or administrative problem. Not dealing with the core problem will eventually kick back in a bad way.

It seems to me that each generation reaches a stage where it dawns on them that they are living in a unique time, unparalleled in history, a truly momentous occasion. Now, I was in diapers when the first Earth Day occurred, so I have a bit of a longer perspective on this. During that time, a number of intelligent, well-thought-out projections were made by people with impeccable credentials -- all based on global consumption and growth patterns which were evident to all. This article [0] collected many of the predictions. Here is an example:

'Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years [from 1970] unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”' (ibid)

I love science and I do agree mankind (specifically commercial activity since the Industrial Revolution) has caused climate change. I'm happy that government regulations have (for instance) cleaned the toxic NO2 smog many of our cities suffered with 50 years ago. But my view is that it's "a bridge too far" to succumb to the temptation to imagine that we have "now" arrived at a critical inflection point which creates a moment of destiny for mankind.

In fact, people are taking action and pushing back. Only last year, a costly, multi-year project to construct a water desalination plant in California was rejected based on its potential impact to marine life. [1] So, my overall point is that the posted premise is flawed due to the fact that there is no such thing as "infinite expansion of the economy". Political regimes come and go and with them some progress toward smarter growth is made here, some protections get tossed out there. It's a tug-of-war, not a steam-roll by the pro-growthers. And importantly: over-stating the case that "now is the time!" when we must radically alter the order of things to prevent catastrophe has, in my opinion, only created a harmful sense of fatigue on the ears of many reasonable people who live long enough to notice that the predicted dire consequences were, to put it benevolently, prematurely announced.

[0] https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/18-spectacularly-wrong-apocal...

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-regulator-reject...

If you really want to scare yourself, read:

Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change, by William R. Catton

I wonder how virtual economies fit into paradigm of infinite economical expansion.

They don't because a virtual infinite economy is essentially a game like minecraft. It has nothing to do with reality other than being a toy simulation with no physically relevant constraints.

But the entire financial sector is sort of virtual economy where people gamble wealth with nearly zero connection to physical world.

It's not entirely the case because there are still some commodities that are connected to actual productivity in the real world but by and large you're correct, it's mostly a game with monopoly money and mostly destructive consequences. It's again another reason we are collectively in this current mess. People have been chasing fake tokens in an economic game without paying any attention to real world consequences of their actions.

But my question still stands. Can we have infinitely growing economy if we make the real world part of it increasingly small?

We managed to reduce food production from something like 90% of the economy to 5%, industry to 15%.

Maybe at some point all of non-virtual part will be like 1% of our total economy?

It's theoretically possible, the question is who would want to live in that world? What you're asking is more of a sci-fi question that anything pertinent to our current set of problems. Profit motives need to be re-oriented to account for biospheric damage. Right now it doesn't matter what you're doing as long as it is legal and making profits by extracting natural resources as quickly as possible in order to convert those resources into consumer gadgets and weapons. This is not a viable model for a sustainable global civilization.

By most measures the biosphere is close to ecological collapse and the markets have not taken any notice of this fact because quarterly profits do not require a livable and ecologically stable planet. As long as this quarter's profits are the same or higher than last quarter's it doesn't matter how much damage was done to the biosphere to achieve those profits. Most large scale organizations are effectively accelerating ecological collapse because they operate by an economic model that is completely at odds with the reality of biological existence on a finite planet. Instead of being concerned about AGI, recessions, and infinite markets people should really be concerned about unsustainable business models at odds with the physical constraints and dynamics of the planet. There is no economics without a sustainable ecology and more people need to wake up and notice this fact.

> Profit motives need to be re-oriented to account for biospheric damage.

I completely agree with that. I think markets should be informed of the total cost of their activity through taxation of resources (like energy, metals and such) and damaging activity (like manufactureing of plastic bottles and other things that become the problem at their end of life or CO2 emissions).

No. Every century had its challenges and circuses.

Yes

Wouldn't you know, the very next time I check HN there's another post starkly backing up the thesis: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33313253

(1) I'd encourage you to look at Jason Hickel's sources/bibliography closely before taking him too seriously. When he has numbers, they're from very biased sources that make too many assumptions from a place of extreme technological/economic conservatism.

This isn't necessarily done consciously - the scientists who often make these predictions, like all scientists, have a very high standards for what facts are. While this is good for creating sound science, it's bad for predicting the direction of tech/econ development because this method essentially always fails because it's overly rearward looking, using a mix of linear progress lines to predict what ends up being an exponential process.

See this chart for an example of this happening with solar deployment:https://www.visualcapitalist.com/experts-bad-forecasting-sol...

(2) On decoupling, it looks like advanced economies are doing this, but the problem is the rest are still going through the CO2 expansionary phase.

https://ourworldindata.org/co2-gdp-decoupling

(3) My main issue with Hickel's work is that his proposal (and other degrowthers) is actually less likely to lead to carbon reductions than the green growth scenario. Namely, you're never going to convince those countries to slow growth enough, so your time is best spent figuring out better green growth or things like geoengineering.

(4) It seems like the degrowthers are more shouting into the void because they actually also have anti-capitalist sentiments (in addition to there environmental ones) which aren't going well. I really recommend Leigh Phillips' book: "Austerity Ecology & the Collapse-Porn Addicts: A Defence Of Growth, Progress, Industry And Stuff" for a defense of green growth from the Left.

https://www.amazon.com/Austerity-Ecology-Collapse-Porn-Addic...

(5) On preppers, crazy news, etc. I think we're going through a very real systemic inflection point similar to how the Industrial Revolution in Europe led to capitalism and liberalization of governments. The same types of forces are at play, putting pressure on our whole social structure and even to the global ecology itself.

Add to this, the collapse of meaning-making structures like family, community, religion, etc. and you have a machine that converts external stress into personal stress - even if you're personally doing fine. Like all those rich preppers.

(6) Long story short: Hang in there! We are probably going to go through some crazy shit in the coming years because of recession, political upheaval, wars, etc., but remember that even throughout all of humanity's worst times, most of us survived and in the moment mostly lived decent lives.

We may need to temper our expectations and be okay with a little rough living, but we are human fucking beings god dammit! and we were built to resilient in the face of crazy odds, and we made it this far!!!

Maintain your optimism and dreams personally. Focus on what you can actually control and who/what matters most to you. Life is too short for constant worry, and if it should pass that our world does end, take solace in that, no matter what we do, we're all dead in the end. So enjoy this life while you've got it.

Good luck stranger and godspeed!

Decoupling is only decoupling GDP from CO2. GDP is still coupled with energy use.

Yea, generally energy use is fine as long as externalities are accounted for.

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