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> What's bad is if growth is achieved by irrevocable destruction of the environment, or deterioration of the human condition. It's not growth itself that is the problem, for there are many kinds of growth.

Non sequitur. The notion of economic growth is tied to environmental and human labor exploitation, at fundamental levels.

A large portion of any nation's GDP comes from mining, pumping oil, cutting forests for crops, and activities that produce a lot of waste, on which the rest of the economy relies on. Another large portion comes from the financial sector, which profits on the disparity of income by providing credit. These activities are only profitable because the environmental and social costs are externalized. Without that, other endeavors wouldn't even make sense cost-wise, making economic growth grind to a halt.

> I'd analogize Capitalism to evolution in an ecosystem.

I realize many people think like that, and it's a fallacy. Capitalism is not some sort of natural law, it's entirely arbitrary human invention, and in practice it's nothing like this pure, theoretical meritocracy that allows the best solutions to strive. Quite the contrary: it fails to address many concrete, contemporary problems, like ever increasing economic disparity, social welfare, research funding and environmental destruction. And don't come tell me it's because we don't have enough capitalism, that markets are not free enough... this is the same argument used to explain why communism failed (it wasn't pure enough). If we keep looking at it as some theoretical ideal, we will never tackle it's shortcomings in practice.

> Capitalism is not some sort of natural law

Capitalism is based on trade, which IS a natural law. It seems pretty natural to me that people want to trade what they have for other things they need (for example, a musician trades their music for food&shelter).

> Capitalism is based on trade, which IS a natural law.

All economic systems are "based on trade", since they are all mechanisms of arranging trade.

That doesn't make capitalism at all special among the universe of all actual (or possible) economic systems.

How so? Economic systems are mechanisms for arranging the distribution of surplus; that doesn't necessarily involve trade.

A better way to phrase this is that natural law (of rivalrous goods) is based on possession, not ownership. "Ownership" or property is a human invention.

When a lion possesses a carcass, the hyena's don't respect it's property rights, they respect it's possession (unless they can over take the possessor), but the lion cannot leave dozens of killed carcasses stored around for future use.

Our notions of capitalism are based on concepts of property rights which are human inventions. One could reasonably be expected to defend one's own immediate possessions, home, or farm, but the invention of property allows an individual to control a vast amount of possessions, backed up by the power of the state.

When free marketers say "capitalism is natural", I think what they're really saying, is that market forces are natural, and by that they mean, individuals have demands, and are willing to trade possessions for them, and do not need a state or other framework for this 'bottom up' system to work. But that's a gross simplification, by taking a huge mental leap from a barter economy on the small scale to a modern capitalist economy. The modern market of trade bears little resemblance to the small scale microcosm thought experiments.

Reality is, our modern system is based of hundreds of years of evolved civil institutions, common law, political structures. It's the reason why a 'free market' in some countries is a "failed state" of misery, and not a paradise.

>Non sequitur. The notion of economic growth is tied to environmental and human labor exploitation, at fundamental levels.

Umm, no, that's not a non-sequitur. Our measurements of economic growth are mathematically tied to gross domestic product, whose definition doesn't demand anything about what that product is. The fact is, GDP is a human concept, not based on objective physical quantities in the real world, but on human demands and how we value them.

>A large portion of any nation's GDP comes from mining, pumping oil, cutting forests for crops, and activities that produce a lot of waste, on which the rest of the economy relies on. Another large portion comes from the financial sector, which profits on the disparity of income by providing credit. These activities are only profitable because the environmental and social costs are externalized. Without that, other endeavors wouldn't even make sense cost-wise, making economic growth grind to a halt.

That's what the current mix is, but there is nothing fundamental in the definition of GDP that would prohibit a society from which the majority of value is not derived from steady-state or virtual goods once all basic requirements of civilization are taken care of.

Also, the implication that all profit in the system has come about externalities aren't accounted is unsupportable. I'd like to see your calculation on this, showing that the enormous profits gains in productivity over the entire industrial and green revolutions are cancelled out by these external costs.

>I realize many people think like that, and it's a fallacy. Capitalism is not some sort of natural law, it's entirely arbitrary human invention, and in practice it's nothing like this pure, theoretical meritocracy that allows the best solutions to strive. Quite the contrary: it fails to address many concrete, contemporary problems, like ever increasing economic disparity, social welfare, research funding and environmental destruction. And don't come tell me it's because we don't have enough capitalism, that markets are not free enough... this is the same argument used to explain why communism failed (it wasn't pure enough). If we keep looking at it as some theoretical ideal, we will never tackle it's shortcomings in practice.

You just proved my point. I said capitalism is like an ecosystem, you say it's a fallacy, but then go on to say it's not addressing disparity, welfare, environmental destruction, but nature ecosystems don't address these either. There's no social welfare for mothers of calves eaten by apex predators.

You're jumping over into strawman land, I said nothing about capitalism being pure enough, I'm a progressive pragmatist, not an anarcho-capitalist.

My point is, the issue isn't some abstract notion of "growth" or "debt". I'm all for carbon taxes, and government R&D, infrastructure, public health and education, and all that jazz. "Growthism" in this essay is just sloppy sloganeering just like "Corporatism". It gives populists something to rail against, but it's wishy washy terminology.

If the author wanted to say that GDP is a bad measure of the health of society, the planet, or an economy, he could have said it a lot better. As it stands, the rant preys more on the emotions of the audience it is directed to, much like a Rush Limbaugh sermon, it's not going to sway many people, because it offers few if any specifics.

> Also, the implication that all profit in the system has come about externalities aren't accounted is unsupportable. I'd like to see your calculation on this, showing that the enormous profits gains in productivity over the entire industrial and green revolutions are cancelled out by these external costs.

Just one report puts the top 100 companies in the primary sector at $7.3 trillion / year in externalized costs related to the environment [1]. Still, measuring these things in capital doesn't capture the problem, since you can't buy back environment and it has far reaching consequences. This doesn't account for social well being either.

[1] http://www.teebforbusiness.org/news/article/teeb-for-busines...

> You just proved my point. I said capitalism is like an ecosystem, you say it's a fallacy, but then go on to say it's not addressing disparity, welfare, environmental destruction, but nature ecosystems don't address these either. There's no social welfare for mothers of calves eaten by apex predators.

I see you're back at analogies. Social welfare for calves... what are you talking about anyway?

I'm talking about capitalism not providing the best solutions to concrete problems the society faces, despite being - in theory - a system that allows the best solutions to strive. In practice, we know it's parasitic, and the solutions that strive are the ones that move the economy itself forward, in detriment of society.

>Just one report puts the top 100 companies in the primary sector at $7.3 trillion / year in externalized costs related to the environment [1]. Still, measuring these things in capital doesn't capture the problem, since you can't buy back environment and it has far reaching consequences. This doesn't account for social well being either.

Well, if you want to account for externalities like that, then we need to account for positive externalities not captured by these corporations either, as GDP or profit figures do not adequately capture the difference between a $200 smartphone and a $200 feature phone.

>'m talking about capitalism not providing the best solutions to concrete problems the society faces, despite being - in theory - a system that allows the best solutions to strive. In practice, we know it's parasitic, and the solutions that strive are the ones that move the economy itself forward, in detriment of society.

Capitalism does not promise to solve global optimization problems which are not priced in or demanded, that's the whole point of having a democracy in order to set the constraints of the game, a negative external feedback system.

And best solution to what? If you have an optimization algorithm, you have to set up the constraints so that it optimizes for what you want. Market competition optimizes for the demands of individuals, not for the demands of society. If you want capitalists and entrepreneurs to do this, then the incentives have to encourage a gradient in that direction. If you want more fuel efficient cars, than tax carbon and pollution, the capitalists will quickly find that their profits are dropping as their cars get more expensive and will seek out alternatives. Tax an incandescent lightbulb, and the market will start competing on LEDs and CFLS.

You're making the same fallacy people make when talking about "survival of the fittest" in an ecosystem, they think natural selection is optimizing for a certain kind of creature, rather than just the creature that can reproduce the best in that ecosystem. Capitalism is undirected evolution, and if we want it to solve global problems, we need to guide it via political feedback in a mixed economy.

You started this thread by trying to criticize the analogy of capitalism to natural selection, but nothing you've said has debunked it. You've criticized capitalism for not solving global first or second order costs, but a market can't solve these problems if there's no price signals for them, in much the same way that species have naturally gone extinct in the past, because individual selection doesn't necessarily select for health of the group.

If there's one criticism of capitalism, it's that the 'best' product or service doesn't always win (assuming you can objectively define best). Sometimes superior marketing wins out, sometimes superior execution wins out, and sometimes underhanded tactics win out, especially if it involves political favors.

No one's denying that, but you're criticizing a strawman of a pure, perfect capitalist system. I am not, nor has anyone here, asserted such a perfect system,

My point is simple, capitalism, for all it's flaws, is a useful system to have to optimize productive capacities along the lines that we want (in contrast to top-down centralized control), and that we should have a mixed economy, where political decisions adjust costs to factor in externalities, and to ensure that the capitalists are working on optimizing the problems that we want solved as a society. It needs to be managed for costs, for transparency, for corruption, but there isn't any real alternative to the current mixed systems we already have, we just need to work on them to improve them.

That's it, nothing more. If you came to do battle with Ayn Rand, you're in the wrong thread.

> Well, if you want to account for externalities like that, then we need to account for positive externalities not captured by these corporations either, as GDP or profit figures do not adequately capture the difference between a $200 smartphone and a $200 feature phone.

Please...

The whole point is those companies in the primary sector, which are the backbone of the global economy, would be operating at a loss if they weren't offloading costs to future generations or this generation's poor - and in the other hand, economy as it stands today would be unsustainable if they were taxed proportionally.

It's not a game of numbers as you want to put, as if the uncaptured value between a phone and a shinier phone "balanced out" the problems behind it's means of production.

> Capitalism does not promise to solve global optimization problems which are not priced in or demanded, that's the whole point of having a democracy in order to set the constraints of the game, a negative external feedback system.

It has worked out great so far right? I don't think the US, which is a highly functional democracy, optimizes for those problems (environmental, social) rather than accumulation of wealth.

The problem is that a government's primary objective turns into maintaining economic growth, at all costs, even by use of force. This is the core of the criticism in the article.

>The whole point is those companies in the primary sector, which are the backbone of the global economy, would be operating at a loss if they weren't offloading costs to future generations or this generation's poor - and in the other hand, economy as it stands today would be unsustainable if they were taxed proportionally.

The study says that the majority of those costs are CO2 (38%) and water (25%). Can you prove that it is impossible to run those 100 companies any more efficiently, that sustainable energy and efficient use of water can never be made profitable?

Your original assertion was "The notion of economic growth is tied to environmental and human labor exploitation, at fundamental levels." You have fundamentally not proven that assertion with this evidence, that it is impossible to have economic growth in a sustainable way. What you have done is point out our current inefficiencies, not that the laws of physics preclude it.

>It has worked out great so far right? I don't think the US, which is a highly functional democracy, optimizes for those problems (environmental, social) rather than accumulation of wealth.

Right, because you have evidence of problems in the current system, it means it is irrevocably broken? To be replaced with what? What is your alternative than, Marxism? This sounds a lot like the rhetoric of the right who point to government failures and then make a logical leap that government can't be improved.

>The problem is that a government's primary objective turns into maintaining economic growth, at all costs, even by use of force. This is the core of the criticism in the article.

The government's primary objective is to stay in power. If it's primary purpose was purely economic growth, they'd be going crazy on Keynesian spending, as many eastern countries do to prop up growth. The US government hasn't done much at all in the last 6 years to prop who growth at any cost (unless you count grid lock and inaction as "at all costs"). And European nations wouldn't be implementing austerity policies if their goals were growth at any cost. This is a vast simplification of the motivations of the political. If you want to see "growth at any cost" look at Chinese domestic spending.

The Western electorate is far more sensitive to unemployment, inflation, or benefit cuts than it is to abstract notions of "growth". Throughout most of the "great recession", GDP growth has been positive, yet no one is happy, because voters don't vote based on quarterly GDP growth, and attempts to maximize that variable hurt others that politicians care about.

That's why the Federal Reserve is now doing nomimal unemployment targeting instead of only fighting inflation.

I mean, I fail to understand what your primary philosophy is. Growth is bad? We are doomed? We should give up our modern lifestyle because you think it is impossible to sustain it? That technology and politics can't save us?

It seems like economic growth is the only variable being optimized in an uncertain world with many other important objectives and constraints. We could seek to maximize the median income of citizens, happiness, life expectancy, or many other factors. Yet, the goal of Government, Industry, and Academia is to maximize economic growth while mostly ignoring the human beings that should be served by the economy.

I don't think the article makes the claim you think it does. Growth is not the same as growthism.

What do you mean?

From the article:

"That is the great mistake growthism makes. But growth is not an end. It is a means. A means to, at best, expanding eudaimonia; the capacity to live meaningfully well. And a means, at least, to expanding human freedom."

clearly he doesn't think growth is bad. What i believe he thinks is bad is forcing growth. To try to force it as an end.

you're defending the author for wishy washy terminology. This is no different than someone who writes a screed against socialism, or affirmative action, and then pivots around and says "not all of it is bad" Who is going to determine what growth is good and which is bad. Is growth in food output bad? Growth in HackerNews readership? Growth in tablet or smartphone usage? Growth in the number of people on the internet? You can't just rail against growth and then hand-wave an exit from the argument. Specifics are needed.

I think you're mistaken. The author is very careful in his use of the term growthism versus growth. He doesn't at any point explicitly define what growthism is, but that's because the whole point of the essay is to introduce the concept to a new audience, so most of the essay is given over to (an admittedly diffuse) description of what, exactly it is.

your point that the essay seems ranting, is valid, and definitely a weak point.

Oh, you mean the strawman that "growth must be accomplished at all costs" without even defining what growth is?

What human action does not produce costs and benefits? If growth must be accomplished at all costs, why do we have any regulation or social safety net at all? Clearly, there are some costs we are not willing to pay.

Yes, some people don't believe in any regulation because it hurts economic growth. But call what we have in the West 'growthism' making straw. You think the Chinese who are suffocating in super-smog storms in Harbin right now aren't in favor of regulation?

People on the Right make the same mistake. They take any regulation or social programs and call it "socialism".

I think these "isms" are bad for studying the problem. We have a complex, mixed economy and boiling it down to bumper sticker isms isn't going to help understand what our problems are.

China isn't lacking regulations or controls. The Chinese Government has dictatorship-like control over all aspects of the economy. They can literally do what they want, when they want. They're lacking enforcement, which is a very different problem from not having regulations on the books.

Companies bribe their way out of enforcement. That's why their cities are suffocating from air pollution. It's the way business is done in China.

It's the way business is done everywhere. My perception is that in the US the 'bribes' aren't paid at the bureaucratic level but at the campaign 'contribution' level. That way the 'regulation' is hobbled before the legislation is passed. And if big business somehow gets hung up in a regulatory/legal issue, a la the banking industry or the oil industry, they pay their fines and it's back to business as usual.

I've started a small business without bribing anyone. Well, I did have to pay a remittance to the IRS to get nonprofit status. Which, is still being processed.

> You think the Chinese who are suffocating in super-smog storms in Harbin right now aren't in favor of regulation?

China has massive regulation.

Of course, it may not be the regulation the people want, but that's an issue of system of government that is orthogonal to degree of regulation.

Complicated argumentation != incoherent. I was astonished by the level of subtlety here. I honestly couldn't tell where the author would fall politically for half the article, but I still wanted to read it. And I didn't feel cheated at the end. I read your incoherent as "too long, couldn't read."