Hacker News Reader

Comment by moritzwarhier | Hacker News Reader

It is very sad that people believe in this. Why is growth needed to prevent a regressive dystopian society?

The weird thing is, material needs of humans don't have to rise exponentially. And I don't think that people in rich countries today are exponentially happier than say 50 years ago, because of their increased material consumption.

Neither do I think that it should be needed to allow limitless accumulation of wealth...

But well, that all might sound like radical ideas already, for whatever reason.

So merry Christmas, fellow HNers, may you enjoy growth and prosperity

View on HN

>It is very sad that people believe in this. Why is growth needed to prevent a regressive dystopian society?

How are we deciding what gets made and for whom? Does democracy get to decide if you deserve a new car? Does a bureaucracy get to decide?

Lets cover an economic concept quickly, given options, people will trend towards rational self interest. If two people agree to a deal voluntarily, they must each believe that trade increases their subjective well being.

In a market system, people can aquire goods and services in proportion to the value they create for others. It isnt decided from way on high, it is the product of a complex social system and the choices we make in it. Since we can assume that people will trend towards their rational self interest, the economy will grow simply as a byproduct of the individuals involved having their needs met.

To have degrowth, I have to question what measures are required to so disrupt the natural order of markets. Now, there are ways, you could use the law to restrict peoples options both legally and economically, but that is dystopian and regressive. Any governing body given the power to decide what goods and services others are entitled to, are violating those individuals human rights to things like free association and autonomy, and are guarenteed to be captured by entrenched interests.

If you just think people are too wasteful and careless, I agree, but I think you need to dig a bit deeper at why people are acting this way. You cant effectively save dollars for the future, and the stock market is a casino; I think people waste because the concept of saving has been turned into a charade. I'll lose it gambling on an auto industry that looks ready for bankruptcy, or lose it when my short position gets blown out by a bailout, and itll be worthless when I need it if its in the bank, so ill buy a new $300 couch and plan to replace it in a couple years.

> To have degrowth, I have to question what measures are required to so disrupt the natural order of markets. Now, there are ways, you could use the law to restrict peoples options both legally and economically, but that is dystopian and regressive. Any governing body given the power to decide what goods and services others are entitled to, are violating those individuals human rights to things like free association and autonomy

Who owns natural resources? Is it a god-given freedom to pollute the environment and damage other people's lives?

Also:

> I think people waste because the concept of saving has been turned into a charade. I'll lose it gambling on an auto industry that looks ready for bankruptcy, or lose it when my short position gets blown out by a bailout, and itll be worthless when I need it if its in the bank, so ill buy a new $300 couch and plan to replace it in a couple years.

This doesn't sound as if you believe in a non-dystopian free market.

> Does democracy get to decide if you deserve a new car?

In a way, yes! What use is a car without car infrastructure? And also, apart from the indirect subsidies that make sure that we make more cars than anybody needs, and to perpetuate a need for more cars, there are direct subsidies to the industry, for buyers and makers of cars alike. Bad example. Car traffic is much more heavily subsidized than public transport, especially when you start to factor in the beloved "externalities".

> In a market system, people can aquire goods and services in proportion to the value they create for others. It isnt decided from way on high, it is the product of a complex social system and the choices we make in it

Who decides if you are allowed to make goods and services by exploiting natural resources and polluting the environment?

Honestly, "market failure" and "externalities" are well-known concepts to economists. We just collectively decide to close our eyes.

>Who owns natural resources?

Whoever legally owns them.

>Is it a god-given freedom to pollute the environment and damage other people's lives?

No, those people should be taken to court or private arbitration for violating whoevers property or rights were violated. If I have land I dont want it poisoned because there is an opportunity cost; people dont poison their own land, they poison others if they can get away with it, which is why most environmental catastrophes (flint, derailed chemical trains, pipeline bombings, nuclear war) occur as a result of government action, they have immense protection from legal accountability.

>This doesn't sound as if you believe in a non-dystopian free market.

What makes you say that? The free market exists anywhere there isnt something to stop it. If someone needs a cheap couch, I can at once see that 2 things are possible simultaneously, that the cheap couch is their best available option and should be available, and that their buying decisions might have been different if they had a better vehicle for saving their wealth. The non-dystopian future is the one where the cheap couch is available, but people also have a reasonable ability to save for something nicer that might last longer. Where the free market isnt, is in sanctions, central banking, bailouts, taxation, and government regulation, hopefully that clarifies things.

>In a way, yes! What use is a car without car infrastructure?...

There were cars and roads before there were taxes and subsidies to support them, if there is a market demand for cars and infastructure then it will be built. Simple equation, will I pay for a car and roads, call it an investment, so that I can get to work, and make even more money? Yes, that would be a good way to spend the money I have. See, you can hold a vote and remove those from public spending, but I still have an incentive to pay for these items, in fact id prefer it that way.

>Who decides if you are allowed to make goods and services by exploiting natural resources and polluting the environment?

Yes, great question, in fact the same one I framed to you. Are you going to vote to stop me from using my own legally and freely traded property to produce something? What if we vote to take your stuff, not everybodies, just yours. What if we vote that you are inconvenient to the rest of us? I imagine that will not end well for minority populations, is there anything we cant do if we vote for it?

>Honestly, "market failure" and "externalities" are well-known concepts to economists.

Could you unpack the term marlet failure? I dont think you quite understand what that term means; setting a price floor for lizard tails with the intention of exterminating them from your city would (has) lead to a market failure, there would (are) be more lizards than ever as breeders harvest their tales, and government wearhouses would (did) overflow with useless lizard tails.

Sorry, but your reply does not sound like you you want to engage in good faith argument.

Market failure: has many forms, but physical damage or physical resources not represented by fiscal value are one example.

Monopolies and naïve price policies are others.

I am very well aware that this term covers a wide range of situations, including your example. You seem to insist on constraining it to your private definition.

I feel you don't quite understand what that term encompasses.

> > Who owns natural resources?

> Whoever legally owns them.

That is a non-answer.

Frankly, I don't feel that you even try to understand what you are talking about.

If you'd like to educate yourself, here's an explanation how externalities relate to market failure:

https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/Series/Back...

> Neoclassical economists long ago recognized that the inefficiencies associated with technical externalities constitute a form of “market failure.” Private market–based decision making fails to yield efficient outcomes from a general welfare perspective

Happy Christmas.

>Who owns natural resources?

Whoever legally owns them, again. I buy a plot of land from someone else in a voluntary arrangement, its mine, because the ownership transferred from them to me with the agreement.

>Private market–based decision making fails to yield efficient outcomes from a general welfare perspective

I asked for an example. The IMF has no room to criticize private capital as having inefficient outcomes for the general welfare, considering how brutal the conditions are in countries that face restructuring, as opposed to the power of markets lifting a billion people out of poverty. Look at the time-price of goods, its very clear what affect government intervention has over your ability to aquire goods.

"Externalities are among the main reasons governments intervene in the economic sphere." - IMF

Absolutely true though, Ill give them that, government intervention is a function for externalizing the cost of buying votes with new spending plans.

> Absolutely true though, Ill give them that, government intervention is a function for externalizing the cost of buying votes with new spending plans.

Again, that is not a logical argument, it is not even politics, it is dishonest propaganda. An insult to even economists.

Merry Christmas

Its a joke. You dont respect the field of economics but cite the IMF, have you heard of restructuring? You dont seem to understand the basic premises of property rights, you cant provide an example of a market failure actually occuring in absence of government intervention (you probably could have googled a response thats worthy of arguement), you cant even define the line between "pollution" and inflicting that pollution on others without consent. You simultaneously treat economics like its a cult for greedy people, and something that can be rigidly calculable by the omniscient government.

There is nothing I can say that will convince you if you dont have a basic understanding of economics, but here, its christmas. Subjective value, marginal utility, time preference, supply and demand, greshams law, specialization, price signals, revealed preference; those are principles and laws in economics because they are true regardless of how anyone feels about them, and if you understand them then it becomes immediately obvious why the wealth of a market based society will always grow absent things like war. People like nice things, people will trade for those nice things, and according to subjective value theorem that trade increases the wealth of both parties, because they both had to value the thing they traded for more than the thing they traded away, or they wouldnt have traded at all. If you let people vote themselves ownership over someone elses nice things they will, if politicians realize this then they will promise to redistribute those nice things from their owner to those who voted for them. Whatever the economic system is, everyone is self interested, sometimes people value the psychic profit of good will more than the material wealth; for the vast majority of the world, that choice equates to starvation, its a privilege usually only relatively wealthy people engage in. The government levies taxes and extends fiduciary credit for the money you are required to pay taxes in, and if you dont pay up then they will lock you in a cage, that is extortion, they have not entered a voluntary agreement, instead they initiate violence against peaceful people to intimidate everyone else into compliance, thats immoral. When resources are freely traded they flow to the highest bidder, they are the highest bidder because they create the most value, we know they create the most value for because people are willingly trading their goods and services to aquire the product (this is in the ERE, which markets always trend towards, its not necessarily the case at every moment, it is always the case directionally); its about what the consumer wants, people, you, me, we can all say we dont like amazon, but the decisions people actually make, also known as revealed preference, tell a different story. When individuals are free to take in the price signals and perform economic calculation, you are leveraging the whole of society in all its discrete facets to find the most efficient outcome; when the government is responsible, they have qualitative deficiencies compared to their free market counterparts, namely they have nothing at stake (or much worse and far more often, their incentives are corrupt), and they lack the granular price signals that an individual or business would have.

The government is by its nature immoral and inefficient, and market based societies will always trend towards growth. There is more to say on what drives interest rates, marginal utility, economies and diseconomies of scale, but thats all the christmas spirit I have for the day.

Oh, heres a perfect example by the way. The government decides to subsidize corn production, where sugar would generally be in a product its now more economical to use high fructose corn syrup because the price signals are distorted. A market failure, caused by government, with the negative effects of poisoning the population and degrading the soil quality of american farmland.

Merry Christmas

There are way too many spherical cows in your comment, you should just have taken the merry Christmas from parent and enjoyed it.

Humans don't trade only because of their self interest. There is no natural order of the market. There are already rules in every society restricting freedom of individual, even in places we consider free. Most people savings aren't tied to the stock market.

>Humans don't trade only because of their self interest.

Rational self interest is an economic term, and yes they do, even if psychic profit is the only one they aquire, they still value that over whatever they traded away, otherwise they wouldnt have willingly traded.

>There is no natural order of the market.

So, if we dont coax the market along it will just be chaos? What do you mean? Companies develop a product people are willing to pay for, so they purchase resources and hire employees to create and sell it. Thats order, sometimes another company comes along and outcompetes them, thats still order.

>There are already rules in every society restricting freedom of individual, even in places we consider free

I am well aware, I wouldnt consider them free.

>Most people savings aren't tied to the stock market.

Most people dont have savings at all, most people cant save for a $500 emergency. Whats your point?

Are you one of these idealists who thinks that if only free markets existed we could maximize well being, and governments’ main function is to get in the way of that?

I wouldnt call it idealism to say that markets are the most efficient means for organizing resources, I would call it something thats been discovered over the course of centuries of economic study on the matter.

I dont think its anyones main function to be in the way, I think there is a lot of money to be made if you can restrict economic alternatives and funnel that business to yourself.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com