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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

Provide education, jobs and contraceptives to those with high reproduction rates —pop growth will slow thus putting less pressure on the environment (see China vs India). Less encroachment on nature, less sequestered carbon released. Help to modernize poor countries' energy grids and electrify the hinterlands.

Get people in rich countries to give up cheap disposable stuff and give up energy consuming entertainment (international travel, etc) and get them to live frugally, obviously including the superwealthy.

Don’t celebrate becoming rich. Don’t celebrate consumerism. Put down tiktok, put down instagram. Practice secular (or religious) asceticism and be comfortable with that.

Oh, wait, people don't want to actually do what will work.

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The first paragraph is all you need. Instances of consumerism that are a problem can be dampened through tax or other means, but it's a moot point because environmental encroachment scales with demand. If demand is stagnant (because the population is, and has already been lifted out of poverty enough to demand things), then there's no question of sustainability for basically anything, except certain finite resources. No one's going to care about the impact of travel if there 3-4 billion people instead of 8 billion.

Even if we got the world pop to 1960s levels we cannot indefinitely consume and defile the environment. We need to exercise restraint despite our capacity or ability to do things.

People don't have an infinite capacity for consumption. That's why 1st world countries use immigration policy to boost the GDP (a reflection of consumption).

Between gains in efficiency, renewables, etc the "need for restraint" has a ton of legroom if the population simply does not grow. The rise in emissions from the last couple of decades is largely owing to growing demand from China and other countries with an emerging middle class. Vaclav Smil makes this clear in a few of his books (e.g. How The World Really Works), you don't need to rely on conjecture if you just look at the numbers. Since it would be inhumane to demand that the 3rd world not make use of fossil fuels to improve their quality of life (including for instance ammonia for fertilizer), we can expect demand to continue growing.

There's no reason to believe that, assuming a stable population, we would be relegated to conditions of asceticism in order to keep the planet habitable.

It's all you "need" from one perspective, but if the topic is "the future our grandchildren deserve" than a criticism of consumerism that seeks to eradicate it is relevant(IMO) and isn't equivalent to minimizing it with "tax and other means".

Why is it relevant? Are you ascribing to consumerism by nature the prospect of an undesirable future?

I'm ascribing a desirable future to be beyond consumerism, so I'm critiquing an article called "the future our grandchildren deserve" that is based in consumerism.

Can you describe "beyond consumerism" in tangible terms or is this a completely ambiguous fantasy?

<< Get people in rich countries to give up cheap disposable stuff and give up energy consuming entertainment (international travel, etc) and get them to live frugally, obviously including the superwealthy.

You may be onto something. It is fine to pay lip service to this ideal in an abstract, but as Covid pandemic has shown, politicians will drop the facade of masks at the drop of a hat if they are personally inconvenienced ( CA comes to mind, but it is not an isolated incident ).

At the end of the day, I want the rules to be applied equally, but they are not ( and likely never will be ).

Come to think of it, and it is going to sound truly awful, why do we devote so much energy to other countries instead of focusing on what is happening in US? Wouldn't it be a time better spent to make US ( the land I and Gates live in ) a better place?

<< Don’t celebrate consumerism.

I am not sure you appreciate how much US economy relies on this.

<< Put down tiktok, put down instagram.

No argument from me.

<< Practice secular (or religious) asceticism and be comfortable with that.

Eh. I think the question that comes to mind is why. I am not trying to be combative, but why do you think it is reasonable to impose your vision upon others.

Endless growth is not attainable on this Earth. Japan hit the inflection point some decades ago. They are doing alright. They still innovate. In some respects it's stagnant, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It does mean that offspring will not perpetually think "they will (potentially) earn more than their parents" and that's okay.

We need to accelerate this in places that are still growing, slow them down but also modernize them.

Asceticism may not be necessary, but it is a target. Like many targets it's one one may miss, but in going for it it reduces footprint.

When I google asceticism I see a picture of a monk with rib bones sticking out, not too dissimilar from a mummy.

It is an excellent thing, then, that we are not simply stuck on this Earth.

For practical purposes we are. At least for the foreseeable future. Yes, we can support a handful of people on a space station for a few months, but that's no long-term solution.

Unless you mean we could simply run like Logan, which, while indeed a possible solution, is not a particularly attractive solution.

<<Unless you mean we could simply run like Logan, which, while indeed a possible solution, is not a particularly attractive solution.

I will admit that I think Bill Burr put the issue of overpopulation in mainstream consciousness and I can't deny that I worry that the solutions ( or forced by circumstances -- war comes to mind ) proposed are unlikely to be pleasant for the globe as a whole.

Still, in parent's defense, I am not seeing that stance in my interpretation of that post.

Is there some interesting connection between Bill Burr and Logan's Run that I'm not familiar with?

Not directly. It made me think of it, because of the premise of the movie ( utopian society based on killing off undesirable society members ).

Bill Burr's running joke is that there is too many people in the world and if he was a dictator, he would be quietly depopulating the earth by sinking cruise ships ( and help economy by building more cruise ships ), because people who use cruise ships are likely low value individuals ( paraphrasing for brevity ).

The connection is there, but it is not apparent ( and not that many people these days are familiar with Logan's Run ).

Oh yea, why criticize consumerism when we can just destroy planets and leave them behind to look for more resources to consume?

That is interesting. How do you figure?

It depends on what you mean by this. But I think more growth is possible. The problem is negative externality.

Why isn’t endless growth attainable?

It’s like saying “we can’t keep writing poems forever.” Sure we can.

Realistically, many poems will be forgotten.

During my lifetime, we’ve probably forgotten/lost more poems than were written in all of history before my birth.

But we can keep making them, just as we can keeping building parents and software and flux capacitors and warp drives.

Why is there an inevitable limit, I truely don’t understand.

There are zero-sum portions of the economy (land, non-renewable resources), and expanding-sum portions. However, the laws of supply and demand dictate that as the marginal cost of producing a good approach zero, the cost goes down. This is why poetry is pretty much worthless in terms of money, despite providing value to many.

The issue here is that "growth" is ambiguous, and right now is mostly defined as "GDP" or some other measure of money. Unfortunately, the nature of money is that zero-sum portions of the economy can get more expensive, but expanding-sum portions have a fundamental price limit. Therefore, if you define growth as "money", you can't have endless growth.

Of course, you can have endless improvements to quality of life that don't involve constrained resources, it just won't increase GDP.

What are the “zero-sum” goods?

Land isn’t zero-sum. If an acre of land loses value, that doesn’t mean other acres must cumulatively raise by the same amount. Likewise, rises in value don’t need to be offset by losses elsewhere.

Sorry if that’s nitpicky, but you’re placing a lot of importance on the “zero-sum” portions of the economy.

The international currency market is zero-sum. If the dollar loses value, it must lose value against another currency, and that currency must rise.

Do you think currency will eventually restrain growth, despite being (mostly) created by fiat?

> Land isn’t zero-sum

Yes it is. There’s only a finite amount of land in the world, and the fact that you own some means someone else can’t.

> Do you think currency will eventually restrain growth, despite being (mostly) created by fiat?

There’s no “game” in life where the end goal is having currency in the economy. In the end currency is a means to an end (even if we may forget that). Land is one part of that end, and there’s only a finite amount.

Land is a means to an end as well. It has lots of uses, but nobody is satisfied with just land.

And frankly I’d rather have lots of currency than lots of land.

Why doesn’t the zero-sum nature of currency markets prevent growth?

I'm satisfied with just land. If someone gave me land for free, I might choose to keep it!. If someone gave me money, I'd almost certainly choose to spend it at some point because money only has value for what you can exchange it.

> Provide [...] contraceptives to those with high reproduction rates

This we should not do. First, Malthusians have always been wrong and I claim will continue to be wrong. Second, contraception encourages declining birth rates and low birth rates are destructive to societies. Third, contraception is intrinsically immoral because it frustrates and perverts the function of the sexual faculties (it's the analogue of bulimia). Fourth, contraception has the psychological effect of divorcing the intrinsic function of sexual intercourse from pleasure which results in a hedonistic view of sex, the objectification of people, and exploitative attitudes, among others. Not exactly a winning recipe for a healthy society. I would also emphasize the distinction between promotion and permissiveness; I am arguing against promotion only and a culture that normalizes its use as opposed to one that merely tolerates it.

> (see China vs India)

China is below replacement (1.70). India is at replacement (2.18). Fertility rates are low everywhere except Africa. I think Africa has had enough of philanthropic "interventions".

> Practice secular (or religious) asceticism and be comfortable with that.

You don't need to be ascetic. You just need to avoid prodigality and the consumerist vice of excessive acquisitiveness. Where clothing is concerned, prefer high quality, classic styles that last, even when they cost more upfront. Don't live beyond your means. Don't buy stuff you don't need or doesn't contribute real value to your life. Don't buy impulsively (unless you want to fill your garage with garbage). All these are just common sense.

> Fourth, contraception has the psychological effect of divorcing the intrinsic function of sexual intercourse from pleasure which results in a hedonistic view of sex

There is so much more to sex than procreation or pure hedonistic desire.

What about infertile couples? Should they just not have sex because there is no hope of procreation? Gay couples?

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