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Comment by pjmlp | Hacker News Reader

Of course, the MBAs pushing for growth missed on physics class that it is impossible for everyone to growth expontentially.

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Or biology class to learn that resources grow linearly (arithmetically) but populations grow geometrically (exponentially). So it is possible for everyone to grow exponentially, it's just not sustainable and generally leads to mass famine, disease or war.

Yet population growth is slowing while our access to resources is growing rapidly.

Human population growth is not exponential. That’s so obvious that it’s hard to take anything about this argument seriously.

Biology isn’t a good proxy for society-scale economic changes.

we had nearly 2 centuries of roughly exponential growth. ended in the 60s but not everyone got the memo

Is "roughly exponential growth" being used as a synonym for "growth"?

Exponential is used as a scare word. It's not just growth, it's exponential growth! Run and scream in fright! Because if you don't do what I say you must do, we are exponentially doomed. Dooooomed!

I've done enough computer science work to be afraid of exponential growth.

i can't speak for everyone, but in the above assertion am using 'roughly exponential' to mean that world population between say 1880 and 1960 followed a curve that is, roughly, exponential, in the technical sense. much of the discourse 50 years ago, e.g. the population bomb, was predicated on this observation.

Rough is doing heavy lifting there, so much so that I suggest it doesn't have any meaning except to say the population was growing. The growth from 1980 to 1960 certainly was not exponential: the percentage growth per year was all over the place, varying on the same time scale as the doubling time (or even faster).

https://ourworldindata.org/cdn-cgi/imagedelivery/qLq-8BTgXU8...

I suspect it's not a coincidence that the population bomb scare occurred right after the collapse of European colonialism, although teasing out the causation could be interesting.

Or a transition form exponential to sigmoid grow, if it's slow enough. I remember cases of exponential grow of bacteria in lakes that ends in a disaster, but an unchecked garden will get a lot of plants and tree grow but I think it will stabilize softly.

This is the malthusian argument, and in a vacuum it sounds right but didn’t account for decreasing family size with wealth and the ability of the economy to just barely eke out something like a percent or two of surplus.

In China, the one child policy, for better or worse, was instituted to ensure that gains from industrialization were not eaten up immediately, leaving no surplus for quality of life and reinvestment.

malthus had a point but it is not destiny and the real world reflects that. his was an avoidable trap

now if we can gain control over capitalism we can save the earth

we can save our children/grandchildren from a lot of pain an suffering. The earth will be here long after we are gone.

MBA think: This is my job. All good, as long as _we_ have it good.

There are zero communities larger than a few thousand people that do not think precisely like this

This is every affinity group on the planet including:

Extended families Religious groups Fraternal organzations Mutual aid groups Nation states

It’s also true of fungi, tree systems, bacterial colonies, insect groups…

> impossible for everyone to growth expontentially.

Where is the population growing exponentially?

What have MBAs to do with population?

Maybe they know about Malthus saying the same thing and being proven wrong?

We have had millennia of exponential growth. Slower in the past, and positive over the long term for a long time (since the bronze age collapse at a global level?).

Technological advance allows growth that is far higher than increases in resource usage. We often do the same thing on far lower resources than it used to take - sometimes far better.

The people at the layoffs side when growth doesn't meet the exponential quarter targets, or destroyed villages to build a few hotel chains that deplet water banks for their golf fields, haven't noticed it.

A real problem, but a different one. Bad decisions, bad government, bad distribution of resources. It does not alter the underlying trend which is better for the vast majority of people.

Only when that vast majority is synonymous with the upper class driving their Ferraris into work, or heli-taxis.

Almost everywhere in the world the standard of living of the average person is far higher than it was a hundred years ago, when it was far higher than it was 500 years ago, when it was far higher than it was a thousand years ago.

Thankfully, until it got messed up with MBA folks destroying society, and the planet, with late stage capitalism to meet those quarter targets.

Obviously it's an S curve yes, but we are so far from living in an Ian M. Banks Culture novel that we don't have to worry for probably a million years. Anti-growth people are ideologues with bad imagination and some pseudo-religious hate of humanity driving their political trend.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” - Upton Sinclair

MBA’s have a goal for growth.

That doesn’t mean it will happen.

Lots of companies fail or shrink.

Also, it’s not an MBA/capitalism thing. Every socialist leader throughout history promised more growth, they just thought it should be more equitable. Ever heard of Five Year Plans? They’re still going on in places around the world.

Having a goal for growth is a global phenomenon across all economic systems. If you feel like this is a problem, then it’s much larger than any one job type or even any one economic system.

Indeed, and when it doesn't happen, the others pay for their failure, while they get a bonus package.

The opposite of what you’re saying was considered ludicrous and conspiracy theory-like until not long ago on forums like this one or on Reddit. Just go to almost any post involving Hans Rosling (especially just pre-2016, post-GFC but pre-Trump) and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Oh, they know, and the smart ones cash out before it breaks down.

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