[HN Gopher] Can growth continue? ___________________________________________________________________ Can growth continue? Author : feross Score : 99 points Date : 2022-05-27 16:18 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (rootsofprogress.org) (TXT) w3m dump (rootsofprogress.org) | _448 wrote: | > And economic growth is ultimately driven, not by material | resources, but by ideas. | | Ideas are an abstract thing. To realise an idea, one needs | material resources. | | The problem has nothing to do with either finite material | resources or ideas. The problem is what those material resources | get converted into. What we do is we transform one type of | material into another during any activity. How we can limit | ourselves to not transforming these useable material into | unuseable material is what is the challenge for growth. We should | only be promoting those ideas that have a better opportunity to | transform one usable material resource into another usable | resource without taking much time and without harming the | ecology. | jeffreyrogers wrote: | > In fact, the greatest threat to long-term economic growth might | be the slowdown in population growth... Without more brains to | push technology forward, progress might stall. | | Well you really only need a small number of very talented brains. | And continuing to grow the global population is probably not the | most efficient way of getting them. | alexose wrote: | You're so right. I _strongly_ dislike the argument put forward | by Bezos and others (paraphrased, "imagine how many Einsteins | we would have with a much larger world population"). Completely | ignoring the billions of human brains that are full of | scientific potential but forced to spend their efforts trying | to figure out how to survive. | | I find it almost aggressively misanthropic. That most people on | the planet are basically there to serve an (unchangeable) | percentage of those who have the luxury of thinking about | abstract concepts all day. | zmgsabst wrote: | Do you have any evidence to support your view? | | Things like the Pareto principle suggest our ability to do | science is greatly impacted by raising the total population | and creating more outliers who do extreme contributions. | alexose wrote: | To clarify, my view is that there are billions of people | who never engage with the scientific establishment because | they lack the means to do so. Among these are many people | who might have made tremendous discoveries if they had | grown up in a more privileged environment. | | I might point at the fact that tenure-track professors are | _25 times_ more likely to have a parent with a PhD than the | general population | (https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/6wjxc). Also, here's a | good, factual article illustrating my general point: | https://www.nature.com/articles/537466a | | Reading between the lines, I think your view is that the | valuable contributors (the extreme outliers) will find a | way to contribute regardless of background. I think that's | true, to some extent, but less common than we give it | credit for. I also think that ignores the majority of | scientists who are not outliers but make important | discoveries just as a matter of course. Discoveries that | may inform future breakthroughs. | | Anyway, the truth is certainly somewhere in the middle. By | growing the population of people who might make | contributions (one way or another), we will increase the | rate of contributions. I just think it's best from a moral, | social, and ecological perspective to make the most of the | minds we already have. | vishnugupta wrote: | China has made big progress in building mega | infrastructures while at the same time aggressively | pursuing population control strategies. They did so by | reallocation of people from farming to factories. | | It could be argued that building high speed rail isn't same | as doing science. But it does provide excellent raw | material for scientific research. I won't be surprised if | we start seeing scientific breakthroughs from China in next | few decades. | | We have hundreds of millions of people using most of their | cognitive bandwidth just to survive. Imagine what's | possible if even a fraction of those stop worrying about | their survival and start pursuing their curiosity. | gms7777 wrote: | In my experience, science is rarely driven by outliers. | Most scientists are very smart of course, but the majority | of scientific progress is shaped by slow, steady | incremental work that builds on top of itself, rather than | brilliant idea men. | otikik wrote: | It's simple. If you don't know when your next meal will be, | you can't spare a thought in solving cold fusion. | | In order to solve problems you don't need "more people". | You need "more people with good enough living conditions so | that they can work on solving problems". This doesn't | necessarily means increasing the total number of people. It | could go down. As long as enough people went from | dispossessed to good enough, that would be enough. | Archelaos wrote: | > Without more brains to push technology forward, progress might | stall. | | This is utter nonsense. Progress never stalls (except if we | happen to extinguish ourselves). It did not stall the last | 10,000+ years despite very low population numbers except in the | last 300 years. Of course, it might go a bit slower or faster | depending on demographics. | | But that is not important. We already have all the technology | that could make a decent life possible for everyone on this | planet. It's more a matter of applying what we already know. Of | course, better technology might help with that -- as could a | decrease in population. But if we do not get better in applying | our knowledge for the benefit of all, we are doomed. | Leader2light wrote: | kkfx wrote: | With confusing growth and evolution / progress? Can't we be | "richer" without "growth" in the inflationary broad sense? | | Surely _change_ is hard, inevitably have issues during the | change, but change can bring richness without growth, they are | conceptually distinct things, merged into one by the actual | model, not by nature. | frontman1988 wrote: | The solution to tackling declining population can be by | generating Genetically modified babies. This new race of humans | will be smarter and stronger than the current lot due to | eugenics. CRISPR will make it possible and it's already happening | in China. The west needs to look at it instead of ramping up | immigration and importing instability from third world countries. | bell-cot wrote: | That sounds pretty cool, if you're writing dystopian sci-fi. | | Back in the trenches, I'm thinking that people making "have a | baby, or not?" decisions will not find "But you could have a | SuperBaby!" to be a persuasive argument. Without plot armor, | who's magically making sure that SuperBaby doesn't have some | grim bugs, which might take a while to manifest? Any good | reason to think that SuperBaby will need fewer diaper changes | and less parental resources long-term? Will want to look after | his or her non-Super "parents" in their old age? Or that the | currently available version of SuperBaby won't be obsoleted by | v2.0 in a year or two - with upgrades to v2.0 being "less than | practical and satisfactory"? Really, it'd be smarter to wait | until v2.0 comes out...wait until v2.4 comes out...until | 3.0...wait...still waiting...still waiting... | wcoenen wrote: | It may be a bit misleading to say that CRISPR babies are | "already happening in China". Yes, there was a researcher who | genetically modified a few babies. (Specifically, to give them | HIV resistance.) But he received a prison sentence for his | actions. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Jiankui_affair | BenoitP wrote: | In a pond, water lilies multiply each day so as to double in | size. | | It takes 30 days to occupy half the pond. | | How much time is left until the pond is full? | | ---- | | In other words: when we'll reach the limits, we won't have a lot | of time to react. | pphysch wrote: | We don't have a steady 100%/day population growth rate, we have | a 1%/year and falling growth rate. | | Your analogy is off by several orders of magnitude, which leads | to qualitative differences. | time_to_smile wrote: | This isn't a great example because most species will experience | sigmoidal growth, not exponential growth, and consequently not | suffer catastrophic collapse. As they put pressure on the | carrying capacity of their environment, the environment pushes | back effectively and puts pressure on the populations. In most | systems some sort of stasis is reached (or you get some kind of | cyclical population trend). | | The trouble with humans is, because of ready access to fossil | fuels and non-renewable energy, we have been able to | artificially (or maybe more accurately phrased "unsustainably") | extend beyond the carrying capacity of our ecosystem. | | Indigenous populations of the Americas had populations in the | millions but never risked, at least in North America, systemic | collapse because they largely lived sustainably. | | Ironically it's precisely because Malthus was proven wrong that | we are in trouble. We have way, way higher energy demands than | can be reasonably sustained without relying on a non-renewable | source of energy. This completely disregards the additional | problem of climate change. This sets us up for a type of | collapse that is not usually a problem for most species, such | as your lily pads. | munk-a wrote: | Yup, and the crappy news for humanity is that if we're | expending unsustainable resources to artificially boost our | population capacity that factor is likely to "correct" with a | die off. | | In our modern world you'd like to think that as rational | beings we'd be conserving these unsustainable resources to | fund "important" things - but no, we usually just release | strategic oil reserves to try and game our political | system... and we decrease the resource intake to reap short | term gains. | nverno wrote: | If you consider nuclear a renewable source, we could easily | cover our current costs with it. | dane-pgp wrote: | Yes, with nuclear energy, we'll be able to provide for | humanity's needs until the global population is back down | below 7 billion, which, if things go well, could be reached | about 100 years from now, and, if things go badly, could be | reached about 100 minutes from now. | fleddr wrote: | Not a single word is wasted on the externalities of growth. What | it does to nature but also people. Just double down on producing, | consuming, working. | ambientenv wrote: | I watched The Great Simplification [1] last night, and it | provided some perspective on this question which, until now, I | had not fully considered in context. | | [1] https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/ | brodo wrote: | Most people on the post-growth side of the argument tend to argue | that outputs (green house gases, toxins) and not inputs are the | major constraining factor. He should really have addressed that. | time_to_smile wrote: | This makes a common error in the direction of a causal arrow: | | Technological progress is the _result_ of ready access to fossil | fuels. That is it is the result of our prosperity _not_ it 's | cause. | | The reason Malthus was wrong was _because_ ready access to | hydrocarbons made the Haber-Bosch process possible and easily | scalable. In a world without massive amount of hydrocarbons the | Haber-Bosch process is never discovered. We know this because | technological advancement trail energy discovery. | | I highly recommend reading through Smil's _Energy and | Civilization_ to get a better sense of this. | | We are like yeast brewing in a giant vat of malted barely, seeing | a what looks like an infinite amount of energy, expanding well | beyond the sustainable carrying capacity of the vat. Suddenly | some yeast scientists notice there is a concerning amount of | alcohol in the atmosphere. Yeast economist point out this is | nothing to worry about because we have solved every problem in | the past, so there's nothing to really worry about. | | I also can't stand the "look Malthus, Hubert and Jevons were all | wrong!!!", on the scale of a 200k year species, predicted the | ended within a few hundred years is pretty accurate. We just have | trouble thinking beyond the time scale of a few human | generations. | | Finally, whale oil is a terrible example of a transition fuel. We | stopped using it because we ran out of whales, but so far we've | never decreased usage of an energy source that was still | available to us [0]. This is no different than yeast that will | consume energy filled sugars until the poison themselves. But | hey, at least we get beer. | | 0. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy- | substitutio... | slothtrop wrote: | > Technological progress is the result of ready access to | fossil fuels. | | This doesn't account for nations with ready access to fossil | fuels who don't progress. | danny_codes wrote: | Climate change is a political problem, not a technology | problem. | | The technology to move beyond fossil fuels has existed since | the 1950s. No new inventions are required. If our leaders | decided today to migrate primary energy to nuclear power | climate change would be "solved" within 20 years. | yodsanklai wrote: | > If our leaders decided today to migrate primary energy to | nuclear power climate change would be "solved" within 20 | years. | | I think this is inaccurate for several reasons 1. it takes | human and financial resources to build a nuclear power | plants, which most countries don't have 2. using the current | technologies, uranium would quickly become a limiting factor | 3. developing new technologies take times. 4. electricity is | only a small part of the emissions of CO2 | | > Climate change is a political problem | | Yes, this comes from the perpetual growth ideology. | philipkglass wrote: | _This makes a common error in the direction of a causal arrow:_ | | _Technological progress is the result of ready access to | fossil fuels. That is it is the result of our prosperity not it | 's cause._ | | I have also read Smil's _Energy and Civilization_ and I have to | disagree on the causal arrow direction. | | Coal formed ~300 million years ago [1]. Anatomically modern | humans have existed for more than 200,000 years [2]. Complex | city-forming civilizations have existed for more than 5,000 | years [3]. | | Chapter 6 of _Energy and Civilization_ shows the dramatic shift | in recent centuries: consumption of coal and later other fossil | fuels underwent explosive growth only after the 18th century. | This even though coal and oil were known to people thousands of | years ago [4] [5]. Since people, fossil fuels, and civilization | have existed in conjunction for several thousands of years, but | usage of fossil fuels has become significant only in recent | centuries, I believe that technological development is the | proximate cause of fossil fuel usage. Once the early Industrial | Revolution got under way it formed a feedback loop where | technological exploitation of energy resources drove further | technological development and energy exploitation. The early, | inefficient Newcomen steam engine is a good example of this | loop in action: its first successful application was in pumping | water out of coal mines, to make more coal accessible [6]. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous | | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_modern_human | | [3] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_history#Rise_of_civiliza... | | [4] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coal_mining#Early_h... | | [5] https://connect.spe.org/blogs/donatien- | ishimwe/2014/09/18/hi... | | [6] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomen_atmospheric_engine#In... | civilized wrote: | > ...there's really no such thing as a natural resource. All | resources are artificial. They are a product of technology. And | economic growth is ultimately driven, not by material resources, | but by ideas. | | Hmm. Let's not forget that we have one planet, and if we fry it, | there may be no ideas that can bring it back. | kwindla wrote: | Related: "Must We Grow" -> | https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2022/06/09/must-we-grow-con... | human_person wrote: | So I disagree with his argument that infinite growth is possible. | But even taking that premiss as correct If you want more brain | power you don't need more people, you can simply treat the people | that already exist better. Think of how much brain power is lost | to poverty and inequality. People who dont have enough money to | survive, people who are in debt, spend so much mental energy just | trying to survive. Calculating how much they can afford, how they | can stretch their money. Its such a waste, when we could just | provide them with the necessities they need to live a dignified | life. And then we could see what they created. Sure some people | make it out, but percentage wise they are the exception that | proves the rule. Based on what we know about epidemiology, the | impact of pollution, the impact of prenatal and early childhood | stress. Just consider how those compound with years of poorly | funded education in neighborhoods made unstable by the transience | of poverty. Add in the school to prison pipeline (partially | fueled by a rise in police officers in schools in response to | school shootings) and (imo) inevitable substance abuse and think | about how many brain cells have been destroyed. I dont think I'd | be able to think deeply in those situations. If brains/ideas are | our most important resource we are wasting them. On an almost | unimaginable scale. | libraryofbabel wrote: | Yes. Stephen Jay Gould put this thought very well: "I am, | somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of | Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of | equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and | sweatshops." | dustingetz wrote: | future brainpower though and the value of helping poor people | is really far out (multiple generations); capitalism can't even | see past the quarter. people are still too self interested, | we'd all need to catch religion for it to work | bjornsing wrote: | I agree. | | But I've come to see that waste of brilliant brains less and | less as an unfortunate outcome in a non-ideal world, and more | and more as intended. | | The (western) world is full of mediocre yet privileged people | who (consciously or subconsciously) do whatever they can to | avoid competition. And this is the root of much evil in the | world. | | Or at least that's how I increasingly see it. | idoh wrote: | Can you elaborate on how avoiding competition is the root of | much evil? It is plausible if you mean it as avoiding by | stifling or suppressing it. | | On the other hand, I believe that competition, broadly | construed, is the root of evil (competition is for losers). | The more we can not compete with each other, but rather | support each other in our own personal endeavors, the better. | smaudet wrote: | Whenever the incumbent seeks to maintain their position by | means other than performance - I think the reference is to | e.g. large companies closing down, in an effort to keep | revenue streams (think vendor locking, kickbacks, back room | board deals, nepotism). | | There is certainly harm here, but I agree it's not all | about competition - if the incumbent shares their knowledge | and resources with others then, while revenue streams might | go down for, more people will benefit and as a whole | revenue streams will go up, or at least be distributed more | fairly. | | In a zero sum world, companies either avoiding competition | or sharing is a burden, in a non zero sum world it is not. | | I think ultimately the author is wrong - the idea that | ideas can endlessly reap, it ignores the physical world - | there are only so many available acres of land and goods at | any given time. He dismisses Peak Oil, etc as a | misunderstanding about the limits, but the reality is there | are many limits, each one with different consequences as it | is passed. Thinking the edge of the city is a block away | and then discovering you were wrong is not proof that there | is no edge to the city, but it does matter that you have to | take a car versus walk a block - the limits are still | there. | | Arguments about peak resources should focus on the average | income pressure a citizen is facing, an infinite number of | ideas does zip for you if your citizens are too poor or in | debt to be able to purchase the fruits of your ideas. | Unless you want to start giving away money at a steadily | increasing rate...and that has never worked out. | paulsutter wrote: | Competition is for losers. Elon Musk isn't competing with | anyone | stouset wrote: | As a counterpoint to this, I'll reference the (absolutely | incredible) Do the Math blog, by Tom Murphy at UCSD. | | https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/can-economic-growth-last/ | | https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist... | | A salient quote from the first article, that I find very | relevant: | | > We have developed an unshakable faith in technology to address | our problems. Its track record is most impressive... But we have | to be careful about faith, and periodically reexamine its | validity or possible limits. | Ensorceled wrote: | > We have developed an unshakable faith in technology to | address our problems. | | The concern I have, especially WRT climate change, is this: We | are not tackling climate change. | | Yes, we solved ozone shrinkage, looming food shortages, deadly | air pollution, acid rain (sorta), etc. all with technology. But | we ACTUALLY tackled those problems; we banned lead gasoline, | banned CFCs, starting scrubbing sulphur dioxide, improved crop | yields. | formerkrogemp wrote: | Again, the ozone layer isn't "solved." It's "recovering." Go | ask any reasonable person in Australia or New Zealand if the | ozone is 'solved.' | | We haven't fixed the problem[1], although I agree there is | some worthwhile pat-on-the-back for fixing the cause. The | ozone hole is still there decades later, and will be there | for decades more. | | In New Zealand, they are affected by the extra UV radiation, | and strong sunblock can be important. | | The effect by UV should give us more understanding and | sympathy for countries that will be drowned by climate | change, even though our government isn't doing jack shit. | | [1] NASA website says "Scientists have already seen the first | definitive proof of ozone recovery, observing a 20 percent | decrease in ozone depletion during the winter months from | 2005 to 2016." "Models predict that the Antarctic ozone layer | will mostly recover by 2040." Also see synthetic image of | 2021 hole: | https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2021/2021-antarctic- | ozo... | epistasis wrote: | The frustrating thing is that we have all the tools to solve | climate change, today. The only question is choosing to use | them. | | And since we know that these new tools have learning curves | that are becoming cheaper, we have prettt good estimates that | the switchover will be a cheaper energy solution than fossil | fuels, with greater energy independence for more countries, | leading to fewer wars! | | But current fossil fuel suppliers have fantastic political | control of the US, and they sow seeds of doubt and fear and | uncertainty in the population, and buy off politicians to | prevent market solutions from coming to the market. Much less | the great amount of industrial policy needed to scale what we | need to scale faster to meet the needs of climate change. | [deleted] | bryanlarsen wrote: | > We are not tackling climate change. | | That is absolutely not true. 2 examples in the US: the $7000 | EV tax rebate, 80GW of new renewable energy per year. And the | US is one of the worst developed nations, Europe and others | are doing a lot more. | | Current estimates are that we are on track for 2.5 degrees C | of climate change, which would have been 6 degrees if we did | nothing. | | We're doing something. Just not enough. | avgcorrection wrote: | Sounds about the same trend as in Europe on a smaller | scale: upper-middle folks get tax benefits associated with | their Tesla purchases. So they get to pat themselves on the | back for being able to maintain the same lifestyle as | before. | | Meanwhile the very eco-friendly single-use wooden utensils | that I last used was Made in China. | | Just putting smiley faces on the gas display when it starts | to drop low. | jotm wrote: | Everyone thinks they want something to be done. The simple | reason why few things are getting done is that it would | seriously affect people's lives. | | Right now, rising prices are a massive boon for the | environment. Less consumption, more investment in better | technology. | | But people are angry, and at this rate, will start raging. It | may be quite a turning point, if we're not mostly under | authoritarian governments by 2030 I'll be happy. | | As a collective, we simply do not want to solve climate | change. Unless it magically does not affect our lives, then | yeah, [whatever group, just not me] can go for it. | [deleted] | UncleOxidant wrote: | > Yes, we solved ... looming food shortages | | I think we're about to stress test this hypothesis via the | Ukraine war. | jeffreyrogers wrote: | I thought his posts on how many batteries we'd need to convert | to electric everything while maintaining living standards were | very interesting. | atlasunshrugged wrote: | Is it this one? https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/08/nation- | sized-battery/ | jeffreyrogers wrote: | Yep, that's what I was thinking of. (I think he has a | couple of other posts along the same lines). | atlasunshrugged wrote: | Interesting article, thanks! Yeah, the move to electrify | everything will have absolutely tremendous resource | impacts-- I have been doing quite a bit of critical | mineral policy work in the last ~6 months in the U.S. and | the mining co's I talk to are all saying that the world | needs to wake up and quick to just how many minerals need | to be pulled out of the ground and that it'll take a | whole of world collaboration to do it. Right now wealthy | countries seem to prefer to let extraction happen in the | developing world and processing in China because it's | dirty and environmentally fraught, but something will | break sooner or later because the demand is just | astronomical. Maybe new mixtures will catch on (e.g. more | high-end car manufacturers moving to LFP because of | issues with the cobalt supply chain despite lower | performance) but there's still going to be a lot of rocks | that need to be dug out of the ground (or from space but | no legacy mining co I've talked to believes that's | realistic). | epistasis wrote: | That post makes me distrust all the rest of his analysis. | This conclusion in particular: | | > Rather, the lesson is that we must work within serious | constraints to meet future demands. | | Within just a few years, his spherical cow estimates of needs | have been proven to not be very useful for scoping the | problem. And his proposed solution of nuclear has proven to | be infeasible and too expensive. | | So what pretends to be an unbiased assessment based on | physical principles is revealed to actually be a huge number | of assumptions that are not reflective of reality, or useful | for thinking about the future. | | This is the exact problem that the original post talks about. | We are too easily fooled by models that are simple, and | wrong, like what dothemath presents. | jeffreyrogers wrote: | If you've done a calculation like his I'm interested in | reading it. It is hard to evaluate your argument against | his since you've made no quantifiable claims. | epistasis wrote: | My point is the same as the original article. | Calculations like this, of single routes, are pointless | and mislead rather than inform. But it's an intellectual | honeypot, because it _seems_ interesting. | | The paths of possible technology are a huge high | dimensional space, but let's think of simplify it to a | map of geographic space. He's taking out a telescope, | pointing in a single direction, and sees a Cliff really | really far off, and says "well I guess there are physical | limits!" Which of course. But that's not interesting, | what's interesting are which path are out there, and to | explore that you have to point the telescope in lots of | directions, or even better yet, start exploring territory | by moving around. It might be that there's a hikable path | right next to the cliff that you didn't see because of | the narrow view of the telescope. | | And those alternate paths are what the original article | is all about. We didn't run out of food. Technology | changes, and we become far more efficient and productive. | And pretending that there's a physical limit somewhere | without bothering to peak around is a classic way that we | trick ourselves about the future. | stouset wrote: | > My point is the same as the original article. | Calculations like this, of single routes, are pointless | and mislead rather than inform. But it's an intellectual | honeypot, because it seems interesting. | | He doesn't calculate single narrow routes. In fact that's | almost entirely opposite the purpose of his articles, | which is to take a step back and look at things from a | very broad perspective: what's the scale of our energy | use, what's the scale needed to replace it with something | else, and what are some back-of-the-envelope calculations | we can do to get an intuitive grasp of the problem? | | It's essentially applying fermi estimation to the | problem, which I think most people would agree is far | from what you're accusing. | | > We didn't run out of food. | | This was never claimed? | | > Technology changes, and we become far more efficient | and productive. | | This is addressed, particularly in the second article | linked, which itself is a highly-summarized form of his | entire position. | | > And pretending that there's a physical limit somewhere | without bothering to peak around is a classic way that we | trick ourselves about the future. | | There's no pretending. There are real physical and | thermodynamic limits that physicists currently know no | way to circumvent, and that we have increasingly | convincing reasons to believe are fundamental. Pretending | these _don 't exist_ is a classic way that we trick | ourselves about the future. | stouset wrote: | > Within just a few years, his spherical cow estimates of | needs have been proven to not be very useful for scoping | the problem. And his proposed solution of nuclear has | proven to be infeasible and too expensive. | | Care to elaborate? | scythe wrote: | You're not alone. That article was the reason I stopped | considering him a reasonable source. | | >I'll use lead-acid batteries as a baseline. Why? Because | lead-acid batteries are the cheapest way to store | electricity today. | | That wasn't even true when the article was written. Pumped | hydro has always been cheaper than batteries, and unless | we've made some big improvements since I last checked the | news, it still is. | | >And lead is a common element, being the endpoint of the | alpha-decay chain of heavy elements like uranium and | thorium. | | What's really incredible is that a _physicist_ would make | this argument. Lead is _not_ common, and anyone with even a | superficial familiarity with the process of stellar | nucleosynthesis can easily explain why. A zinc nucleus | needs to capture around 150 neutrons to produce a lead | nucleus. All heavy elements are rare on a cosmic scale: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_ele | m... | | But the other glaring hole in the analysis is the _lack of | reference to prior work_. Japan had already developed a | grid energy storage system based on sodium-sulfur batteries | in the 1980s [1]. I would expect a serious analysis to | consider the _existing_ state of the art. | | These mistakes don't strike me as arising from a lack of | competence, but rather from a desire to inflate the | apparent strength of the conclusions. | | 1: https://ceramics.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111 | /j.1... | stouset wrote: | I believe you're ignoring the overall point of the | article, which is not that lead-acid batteries | specifically are unworkable. | | > Rather, the lesson is that we must work within serious | constraints to meet future demands. We can't just scale | up the current go-to solution for renewable energy | storage--we are yet again fresh out of silver bullet | solutions. More generally, large scale energy storage is | not a solved problem. We should be careful not to | trivialize the problem, which tends to reduce the | imperative to work like mad on establishing adequate | capabilities in time (requires decades of fore-thought | and planning). | | He further goes on to discuss gravitational storage | (e.g., hydroelectric dams and pumped storage), kinetic | storage (e.g., flywheels), spring storage (e.g., | compressed air), and chemical storage (e.g., batteries, | fuel cells). | | Again, the point is: | | > With the exception of the feeble gravitational storage | example, each of the ideas presented here are technically | challenging, expensive, and sometimes dangerous. | | And further, to contrast them to the miraculous gift that | fossil fuels have been: | | > A short digression to contrast the miraculous energy | density in fossil fuels: our 3 days of electricity | storage at 30 kWh/day requires just 12 gallons of | gasoline (1.6 cubic feet; 45 liters) burned in a 20% | efficient generator (it seems like the other 80% is | noise!). The Earth's battery--a one-time gift to us-- | turns out to be vastly superior to any of these other | "solutions" in terms of energy density and long-term | storage, measured in millions of years. It will be sorely | missed when it's gone. | | https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/09/got-storage-how-hard- | can-... | scythe wrote: | > I believe you're ignoring the overall point of the | article, which is not that lead-acid batteries | specifically are unworkable. | | Right, the point of the article is that storage is | unworkable, and lead-acid batteries are used therein as a | straw-man. You underestimate how much time I've spent | studying this, and how many times I've read that | absolutely infuriating article. | | >He further goes on to discuss gravitational storage | (e.g., hydroelectric dams and pumped storage), kinetic | storage (e.g., flywheels), spring storage (e.g., | compressed air), and chemical storage (e.g., batteries, | fuel cells). | | But he does _not_ discuss the most significant _existing_ | application of batteries for grid storage. So when he | says this: | | >We can't just scale up the current go-to solution for | renewable energy storage | | He hasn't even considered it! Granted, Na-S currently | lags way behind Li-anything in costs, but that's a | result, mostly, of innovation aimed at cars. | g_sch wrote: | Is pumped hydro really able to scale to a significant | level where it can provide enough energy storage for a | national (or even state/regional) grid? I was always | under the impression that pumped hydro was indeed | awesome, very cost-effective, etc. but could only be | developed in places with very specific geographies. After | all, you have to somehow place two reservoirs near each | other with a significant elevation difference. Isn't this | the limit that governs pumped hydro as a storage | technology? | scythe wrote: | >Isn't this the limit that governs pumped hydro as a | storage technology? | | I was nitpicking there, yes. Pumped hydro has an "asking | if we [could/should]?" problem: extensive use of pumped | hydro would be devastating to ecosystems. There are a | number of "clever" strategies, such as allowing the lower | reservoir to be the ocean: | | https://municipalwaterleader.com/implementing-oceanuss- | pumpe... | | but I did not intend for that sentence to be read as | advocating widespread uptake of pumped hydro. It's | convenient in certain places, and it can fill in gaps for | communities in need, but it comes with a big cost not | measured in dollars. And the use of saltwater makes this | problem much worse. | stouset wrote: | Tom Murphy covered this in the series as well. While | there are absolutely cases where pumped hydro is | extremely effective (e.g., Dinorwig Power Station), the | inherent problem is that it requires need very specific | geological features. Unsurprisingly, we've hit much of | the good low-hanging fruit, so future projects will be | less efficient in terms of capacity per dollar invested. | And also unsurprisingly, these features are not evenly | geographically spaced around the globe. | | https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/11/pump-up-the-storage/ | reactjavascript wrote: | The standards have to change, and they may be "less" by some | measures, but many people can still have a wonderful | existence. Maybe you have to eat more vegetables and less | cheeseburgers. Maybe you can't drive your Suburban seven days | a week to Starbucks. Maybe life will slow down and people | will enjoy a higher quality of life with family and friends. | atlasunshrugged wrote: | Maybe we upload our consciousness to computers and live in | a simulated world that takes far less energy than our | current one and is heaven for everybody. But I think the | bigger question is less for whom? Right now it seems like | it'll disproportionately affect the poor in the developing | world who are least able to transition and whose | populations are least responsible for climate impacts from | historical growth. I wouldn't mind personally driving less | (actually, haven't owned a car in a decade and walk most | places), but I think in the end the people who will be | punished are the poor who will have higher AC prices during | summers, gas prices to go to work, etc. | avgcorrection wrote: | > Now, that's a problem for another time. But note that in five | minutes we've gone from worrying about overpopulation to | underpopulation. That's because we've traded a scarcity mindset, | where growth is limited by resources, for an abundance mindset, | where it is limited only by our ingenuity. | | Just a motivational speech. | Gatsky wrote: | If you take it to the extreme, human growth will be limited by | physical laws. There was an interesting paper where they | calculated that growth would eventually slow to a crawl because | we saturate the region of the universe we can reasonably reach | without faster than light travel. | sremani wrote: | For continued growth we need to embrace Space both civilian and | military. Funding NASA to really get to Mars and a colony on Moon | in the long run give the best bang for the buck. | | Longevity would help but will also ossify the institutions. There | is a reason why the mindshare in the corridors of power view the | world as if it is 1991, they are too damn old and do not | acknowledge the new realities. | atlasunshrugged wrote: | Could you help me understand the argument for longevity helping | growth? I'm generally a fan (after all, I don't have a | deathwish) but it's not clear to me how longer lifespans would | lead to more productivity. I could theoretically see a scenario | where as we continue getting more specialized we spend | increasingly spend the first ~40+ years of our life in | education (although hopefully new methods can speed learning | rates) and then the next 40 years working and having longer | productive lives would be better, but do people contribute | significantly more in their last years than the rest of their | careers? | sfink wrote: | My guess is that increasing life expectancy would retard | (economic) growth, increasing the proportion of life that is | healthy without changing life expectancy would improve | growth, "longevity" can refer to one or both of those, and if | you do both at the same time it's hard to predict the | effects. | | It seems like we'd be better off if we could evolve out of | the need for growth, or at least the sort of growth that | depends on limited external resources. That's tough to do | because the most ravenous consumers tend to win out and be | selected for, so even if you have a movement of people who | are more efficient with resources (resources per unit of | well-being), they'll tend to be shunted aside by the | greediest segment of the population. More efficient bacteria | can win out, but only if the inefficient greedy subset is | made to be affected by the resource constraints. | | To address that, I'll make a modest proposal: find a valley | somewhere and get all of the people most driven by external | accumulation to move there. Make them compete with each | other, creating ever more ostentatious and expensive ways for | them to demonstrate their superiority. Create cultural | barriers to moving anywhere else, except for people who are | willing to let go of the rat race. Let nature run its course. | Speed it up by seeding the population with a gender imbalance | and cultural pressures to maintain or magnify that imbalance, | so that breeding opportunities are limited. This will produce | a lot of churn and waste in the process, so make sure there's | a sandy substrate to allow for good drainage. That last part | got a bit metaphorical, and would be even more so if I | referred to this valley's sand by one of its principal | components: silicon. | photochemsyn wrote: | Notably this article doesn't mention water, and doesn't discuss | land much other than a single line about Malthus and farmland. | Then there's this assertion: | | > "But the deeper reason is that there's really no such thing as | a natural resource. All resources are artificial. They are a | product of technology. And economic growth is ultimately driven, | not by material resources, but by ideas." | | Arable land - i.e. topsoil - is not a product of technology, it's | a product of geology and biology, namely the erosion of rocks and | the accumulation of biomass. Yes, one can indeed make an | artificial soil-like system (hydroponics), but this in turn | requires raw materials (typically clay pebbles, plastic pots, | plastic pipes, plus a complete nutrient mixture of simple | chemicals) which are in turn made from limited material | resources. | | Similarly, fresh water is a limited natural resource, and in the | absence of water, human populations do not grow. Just look at a | population density map of the United States - note how few people | live in the desert zones. Again, there are technological | approaches: desalinate ocean water, pump it to the desert, and | grow food hydroponically. This requires an investment of material | resources and energy. | | I get this feeling that economimsts who makes these claims about | infinite growth have simply never studied the conservation of | energy, or the conservation of mass. Every source I've looked at | puts the minimal land area for food production for one human at | about two hectares with traditional agriculture, and maybe half | that with modern industrial double cropping methods. US farmland | is about 166 million hectares, so that sort of fits, as the US | population is about 330 million; exports of food also appear to | match imports of food so that's a wash. | | So clearly there are limits on the growth of the human population | on a finite planet. If the question is, "can you have infinite | economic growth with a fixed human population", well, whatever | discipline makes claims like that is one entirely divorced from | physical reality. Inflation maybe? | munk-a wrote: | While the world has numerous issues that need to be solved - I | think we've, for the time being, been able to classify | exhaustion of materials as a problem we won't have to deal with | for a long time. | | The earth has a lot of matter in it - it is absurdly massive - | technological advances in replicating necessary raw resources | (and your topsoil one is particularly good to demonstrate this) | have pushed us from looking at an absolute limit to instead | viewing the perpetual creation of new components as a steadily | rising economic burden. | | One raw resource that is actually quickly depleting is river | sand for concrete - our current consumption trends are | extremely scary here and some governments (CoughIndiaCough) are | doing an absolutely terrible job at properly enforcing | externality costs on extraction leading to mass habitat | destruction. But, if we suddenly found ourselves without easy | access to rough river sand we do have alternative construction | materials including processed wood in various forms that can be | extremely resilient. | | I don't really like the wording of the article in defining all | resources as artificial - but the natural components driving | the economy are quite abundant. | marvin wrote: | > Similarly, fresh water is a limited natural resource, and in | the absence of water, human populations do not grow | | This isn't really true any longer. Desalinating seawater costs | about $1 per 1000 liters. You need a relatively prosperous | country to be able to afford that, of course, but an | industrialized economy with reasonable levels of corruption is | perfectly capable of desalinating enough water to make | civilization work. | | It's practically tautological that there's limits to population | size in a finite world, and that growth cannot be infinite in a | finite universe. But I think people often frame this question | the wrong way. It's a bit of a straw man. | | Economic growth is proportional to the amount of problems | solved that humans care about. And the cost of the solution, of | course, in terms of human effort. It isn't necessarily | proportional to the amount of physical resources consumed or | bound. It's a reasonable assumption that there's generally a | positive correlation, but the function and coefficients don't | have to be linear. That leaves a _lot_ of headroom. | | People should rather think about infinite (arbitrary!!) | economic growth in terms of what can be done to make the lives | of humans better, on average. Even in the Western world, we are | so far away from the hedonistic limits that it's ridiculous. | It's trivial to imagine a world with no illness, perfect | health, indefinite lifespan, very high freedom and low | repression, no seriously bothersome and mandatory chores for | anyone and so on. What can be done to get closer to such a | world? So much. | | The limit isn't defined by how polluting our cars can be, or | how much beef we're able to produce. Many of these arguments | collapse into the completely unimaginative. | photochemsyn wrote: | "Desalinating seawater costs about $1 per 1000 liters..." | | Ah... so if I'm in the middle of the Mojave Desert, and have | no water, but I do have a dollar in my pocket, someone will | deliver me 1000 liters of water, sourced from desalination of | Pacific Ocean water? How much energy will that take? | peterweyand0 wrote: | The author uses several analogies which are rather cutesy, but | doesn't address the main issue in a salient way. | | All consumption comes from some combination of raw resources and | the addition of technological input. In real prices, as the cost | of raw resources increases over time, this means that | technological innovation is _not_ making up for how much of those | resources are being consumed as compared to the population as a | whole. | | At it's most basic we can calculate the rate of change as the | amount of time it takes the average worker to buy a gallon of | water or food and shelter for a single person. These are | resources that aren't substitute-able, and are required for life. | Other costs are rather nebulous (how much does a college | education cost and what does this say about society now versus | how much technological innovation is necessary for the | continuation of the species)? | | So then the question then becomes, does the real rate of return | for any particular company or the stock market as a whole assume | that a potential future exists in which that real rate of return | is actually possible to exist? | | Let's assume, in a model as simplistic as possible, that there is | one stock (or market) that represents all of the world's | companies that has a real rate of return of 2.5 percent per annum | that is compounded once per year. As a sum total of world wide | growth this would seem rather modest. The worldwide initial | capital we'll assume is $100. | | So the growth rate is given by A = P(100 + r/n)^(nt) which would | be in our case (for an investment of 100 dollars) - | | 100x(1.025^10) = $128. | | So for the real capital stock of $100 to increase to a real | capital stock of $128 some combination of things must happen - | the amount of capital stock in terms of raw resources must | increase in real terms and the amount of technology must increase | in order to make the use of these inputs more efficiently. | | If technology remains constant then there must be an increase of | 28% over ten years of capital. If capital remains constant then | technology must make the current use of capital 28% more | efficient. | | Compound return over time is concerning in the long run, and hand | waving it away is either ignorant at best or disingenuous at | worst. | | And capitalism is still the best distribution system we have come | up with. Most of the world is working with a single overall | social model, because it has been so successful, and we don't | have a backup that's been shown to work in practice. My concern | isn't in favor of Das Kapital or Marxism - who owns the product | of labor and historicism over labor rights isn't as concerning as | compound interest over all. | | Most economists I've worked with don't seem to think that this is | a problem or that technology will magically free market a utopian | future of plenty for all. This is an article of faith. | havblue wrote: | While this article discusses the macro benefits of maintaining | population growth, the reasons for the birth dropoff in developed | countries is microeconomic. Kids are expensive to raise and it's | hard for two parents to have successful careers with kids. Even | after the one child policy ended, China's birthrate is still | declining. | pphysch wrote: | Growth is and will continue to hit the limits of the domain, | until the domain is expanded. | | The principles of Western capitalism that drove growth for | centuries are less and less reliable, so we need to adapt our | principles. | OtomotO wrote: | Sure, a malign tumor grows until the host dies. | | Same is true for our glorious, of course unavoidable, an | extremely resilient and fair economic system. | | There is only black and white, zero and one, locusts capitalism | and stalinistic communism... | | /s | atlasunshrugged wrote: | Didn't watch the video but the article was good. I think their | mindset is absolutely correct- we should be worrying less about | overpopulation than underpopulation and we should be pushing | forward trying to make technological progress instead of | embracing a degrowth mindset. While it does seem like big ideas | are harder to find, I think some incentive shifting (e.g. more | focus by corporates on long-term growth through productivity | increases and innovation and less on financial chicanery) along | with the innovation that comes sometimes with a single new | platform (remember all the "Uber for X" products that the iphone | enabled) that can help turn the tide. Plus, seems like many more | people are concerned with progress, from Cowen to | Progress.institute, so hopefully with more focus there will be | more results. | onlyrealcuzzo wrote: | It seems quite obvious to me there is a lot of growth left with | information being close to free now - and much of the adult | world still being VERY poorly educated. | | The current children that replace them will be much more | educated due to free information. | | I don't see how this doesn't create a huge jump in productivity | in the developing world (~50% of the population). | atlasunshrugged wrote: | Good point, I remember seeing a report a little while ago | about literacy rates even in the U.S. and they were | surprisingly bad (a quick lookup on Wikipedia shows | "According to the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of adults | in the United States have prose literacy below the 6th-grade | level") | | That said, I'm not sure it's a guarantee that kids will be | more educated and productive. I spent quite a bit of time in | Africa (Kenya and Cameroon for projects, Uganda for holiday) | last year and many people are relatively highly educated | (e.g. local university degree) but still cannot get work, | access to finance to start their own biz and be productive, | or as soon as they make some money their business will get | taxed (legally or illegally) to death. So other factors | beyond education holding folks back, and even if it was just | enabled from online learning, I think we'd see much more | takeup of MOOCs and the like. | | Edit: Grammar | captainbland wrote: | I think a big - maybe huge and insurmountable - barrier to | this is the sheer amount of junk attention sinks and outright | wrong information on exactly the same medium that the good, | free information is on. | stouset wrote: | I remember being naive and thinking the Internet would | solve the issue of spreading high-quality information far | and wide. What I (and I think many others) completely | neglected to realize was that it also made misinformation | exponentially easier to spread. | onlyrealcuzzo wrote: | Misinformation is not making people worse programmers or | worse engineers or worse doctors or worse lawyers at the | same rate (or higher) that good information is making | more people better. | | Misinformation is mostly affecting a relatively small | portion (~10%) of the population that is predisposed to | believe conspiracy. | | It's not like your BiL who thinks Lizard People are | running the world would've won the Nobel prize in Physics | if it weren't for that Facebook post by your aunt that | rotted his brain. | | Information as a whole is good (so far). | stickfigure wrote: | I think the misinformation risks are overstated. Qanon- | ers are a tiny part of the population. Even antivaxers | are a distinct minority. Good information wins out, even | if the process is not perfect. | esrauch wrote: | Are there more Qanon-ers or Coursera users though? Even | if the risks are overstated (which I'm not sure about) it | seems like the amount of quality learning happening | online rounds to zero. Even narrowly, I'm not sure that | more true information about vaccines is spread online | than false information, partly because I think it's | actually pretty low amount of true information being | spread. | | Ten years ago there was a lot of optimism that moocs | we're going to bring education to the masses, make | $40k/year tuition entirely obsolete, but that seems to | basically have entirely failed. | AlexandrB wrote: | This would be more comforting if Qanon-ers weren't | getting elected to congress. And a small number of anti- | vaxers is more than enough to undermine herd immunity. | | The anti-vaxxer case is quite illuminating actually | because anti-vax sentiment has seemingly only _increased_ | as the internet has become more popular. Good information | does not win out in all cases. | onlyrealcuzzo wrote: | > And a small number of anti-vaxers is more than enough | to undermine herd immunity. | | Why? The vaccine isn't very effective in preventing | transmission of Omicron (only ~40%). | | Anti-vaxxers are not the thing preventing Covid from | ending at this point. | | I mean - sure, with a different virus where the vaccine | is close to 100% effective at preventing transmission or | the R0 is not much higher than 1. | | But not with this virus. | | Why are anti-vaxxers getting elected to congress any | worse than people who believe in Lizard People getting | elected to congress? | slx26 wrote: | And yet, at the same time, growth can't continue forever | (unless you get into space colonization on artificial habitats | and are able to develop that faster than population grows and | other stuff we are not going to discuss now). | | What happens, as the article indeed points out, is that many | things keep breaking, and we keep fixing and repairing and | improving and more things fail and stop working and then again | we fix and replace them. And so on and so on. The main problem | is that people suffers in that process. The system self- | regulates, sure. Nature self-regulates all the time through | natural selection, evolutionary pressure and competition. That | doesn't make it right. We develop medicine because being human | is the opposite of accepting the randomness, competition and | cruelty of nature. We want to have control, we want people to | be happy, we don't want to be exposed to arbitrary tragedy, | unfairness, pain. | | As I always say, don't confuse the comfort of your boat with | the state of the sea. That you are comfortable riding the | current wave of pressure doesn't mean no one is suffering. This | doesn't mean we should never grow, but it means we should do it | responsibly. Saying growth is already responsible because the | world keeps self-regulating is just being blind to many of the | dynamics of the system. | | And ok, one may argue that finding an equilibrium is | impossible. That when there are resources available, we will | always start taking more and more, growing above our | possibilities, taking water until we hit the bottom, dumping | shit until it spills. Then pressure and competition kicks in, | people fall, people suffer, self-regulation is the way and all | is good again. I don't understand. | | (sorry for the rant, I understand you may also have concerns | about the rate of growth and welfare of people in the process, | but I wanted to share this take anyway) | slothtrop wrote: | As you say, growth, on Earth anyway, is projected to end. We | should be planning for it. Instead nations are deferring and | deferring by focusing on increased immigration. | jgon wrote: | Everytime I read one of these articles I get the feeling that I'm | reading a report from the village elders that people have never | been fuller or more prosperous now that we've consumed all our | seed corn. We just need to keep eating all the corn we can, and | let's not worry about winter because our priests (engineers) tell | us they'll probably find a way around it. I don't know, maybe its | the background environment that I've spent my whole life growing | up in, but every time I read this I'm always left asking what it | is that I don't know/can't see, especially when it comes to the | billionaire class. | | Do they have access to different reports that suggest global | warming won't be as devastating as the scientific consensus | broadly predicts? Is it nihilism/sociopathy, aka I'll be dead by | the time it gets bad and I can't feel any sort of connection/care | for my offspring, let alone my fellow humans? At the risk of | memeing, is there a project to build Elysium going on that us | plebs don't know about and that's what SpaceX/Blue Origin is all | about? I just find it hard to square what the current message is | wrt to global warming, a message that appears highly credible to | my lay understanding, with the behaviour of the people who have | the power to help nudge the direction our society is headed. Does | anyone else get this, or have thoughts on it? I am genuinely | asking here, because I can't resolve the contradiction and it | weighs on me. | sfink wrote: | The Elysium is already here, it's just less separate than you | imagine. The $100M and billionaire classes are quite good at | wresting a higher standard of living for themselves, and | naturally select for those who feel separate from and superior | to the unwashed masses. They're not thinking they'll be dead by | the time it matters, they are concerned about their offspring, | they just know that their offspring won't be the ones | suffering. | | Large disruptions always create opportunities for a limited | subset of people to do even _better_ at the cost of everyone | else doing much worse. The billionaire class is doing | everything in their control to be in that elite subset, and so | far they 've been quite successful at that and there really | isn't any reason in sight as to why their approach is going to | fail any time soon. | | Elysium is made out of people who live among us for as long as | it is advantageous to them to do so, who can pay reputation | consultants to keep the mobs with pitchforks away, who are | pouring their money and influence into promoting a culture that | makes everyone feel like the elite deserve their exalted | positions and that if you don't feel that way, you're at risk | of losing your chance of getting up there to be with them. And | making us feel like that chance is real, it's just a breakout | app away, and you'd better keep playing the game or you'll be | driven into medical bankruptcy and your kids will get shot at | school. | jgon wrote: | I kind of hear you, but honestly I have to question even | that? If it is less separate than I can imagine how does that | work in the face of catastrophic global warming? It was one | thing when elites could pull the strings in one nation, | knowing if things go real they go just hop on a private jet, | but global warming is just that, global. Everyone is going to | feel the consequences, and that's not even talking about | other resources such as food, raw materials, etc. You can't | just have a bunker in New Zealand, unless you also plan to | just live in the bunker for years and years? I guess what I | am trying to say is that Elysium is plausible because it's | literally "up there". Riding out the second half of this | century _on earth_ seems waaaaaay different to me. | Out_of_Characte wrote: | Global warming has a lot of mixed bias messaging. | | Scientists claim the earth is warming | | News organisations gain more traction on fear-based claims | regardless of motive | | Politicians need to express their utmost urgency on whatever | the above mentions | | And yet there's no actual consensus on a realistic action plan. | Like preventing a homocide before it happens. What point is | there in preventing something that might not actually prevent | anything but make it worse. To carry on like nothing's | happening is the most rational choice. Like the food shortage | that didn't happen. | | Best to wait and see what crisis is most real and most urgent | to prevent | candiddevmike wrote: | I think what's holding back growth is inequality and the 40 hour | work week. Imagine how much economic activity would be generated | by fixing those things. | AnimalMuppet wrote: | Be careful. Fixing inequality could be helpful. "Fixing" it may | be disastrous. | | Remember that political changes often don't do what the label | says. | avgcorrection wrote: | You're speaking in code. | | Something more concrete and non-code: Americans could start | by redistributing some of the money belonging to people who | earn 100K or more a year. | candiddevmike wrote: | Indeed, we need a New Deal, not a Final Solution. | fennecfoxen wrote: | Indeed! The economy might grow significantly if people worked | longer hours!! | | _what do you mean that 's not what you meant at all_ | javert wrote: | The idea that government management of the economy can do | better than private management and allocation of capital is | utterly preposterous. This has been proven many times over by | 20th century history, and is also immediately obvious if you've | ever been to the DMV. Or if you know anything about the inner | workings of a complex modern state apparatus, such as the US | federal government. You might as well be calling the sky red. | | (And I know that's what you're advocating from a different | comment you just made about the New Deal.) | | In a free market, the best allocators of resources are rewarded | with more resources to continue allocating; the worse | allocators are punished by losing their capacity to allocate. | This is called capitalism. | | Contrast that to a system where goverment eliminates | inequality: Government allocates resources, meaning the worst | people, people who are best at graft and pull, are rewarded. | This is a disaster. We can already see this happening in the | US. One egregious offender is the Dept. of Homeland Security | which is siphoning off more and more national resources and | growing like a cancer. The university system (which is in | reality Federally managed) is an egregious offender. The | medical system (which is Federally managed but run for profit | through graft) is an egregious offender. | | The latter system---the system of "government management," | where the government doesn't _let_ people receive unequal | rewards for unequal success---is a path straight to the butcher | 's block. | smolder wrote: | Government management of the economy _can_ do better than | private management. Private management _can_ do better than | government management. The idea that either thing has been | disproven is what is preposterous. These mechanisms don 't | predict success or failure by themselves. | javert wrote: | The free economy self-regulates. That's why it works. What | I mean is, people won't buy your good or service if it | sucks, or a better one is available. Companies that are | mismanaged lose out to their competitors and go out of | business. Any weakness or rot is self-contained. | | The government doesn't have a mechanism to self-regulate. | Democracy was supposed to regulate the government, and | probably can in small societies, or perhaps if formulated | the correct way. American democracy definitely doesn't | regulate government, and it doesn't self-regulate, so it's | a system that's out of control. | | You see the same mechanisms (plus others) in many societies | in the 20th century. I don't see any evidence or reason to | think the government can manage the economy. And a big part | of the causal explanation is what I've stated above. | Another is that the government isn't omniscient; it doesn't | have enough information. Market solutions don't need to be | omniscient and price serves to carry information. | | As an aside, fun fact: Did you know that in the US, price | controls are used by a government committee to set the | price of the _fundamental_ good, which is the US dollar? | That does a lot to disrupt price as a signal of | information. People think in the US we don 't have | government price fixing, and they are wrong. (I use the US | as a pet example but I guess the above is basically true | everywhere.) | GeneralMayhem wrote: | The idea that private management and allocation of capital | can do better than government management of the economy is | utterly preposterous. This has been proven many times over by | 21st century history, and is also immediately obvious if | you've ever been to the airport. Or if you know anything | about the inner workings of a complex modern commercial | apparatus, such as any investment bank, or Enron. | | My local DMV provides dramatically better customer service | than most private companies I've interacted with lately. | Government entities are also required to at least pretend to | account for efficiency, whereas private companies have an | unknown - but known to be massive - amount of waste, | corruption, and outright fraud. | | In any case, nobody is seriously advocating for a full | socialist/government-planned economy. Looking at basic | workers' rights and throwing a fit about OMG SOCIALISM is | such a ludicrous level of libertarian delusion it borders on | self-parody. In reality, it is very well known - by | psychology, by statistics, and by empiricism - that societies | that don't allow the most powerful to make unchecked | decisions based on their current level of resources do better | than those who do. | | There are a few pretty obvious reasons why this is true. | First, "currently having resources" is not a good indicator | of skill in resource allocation. Second, there are problems | of misaligned value functions - what is "efficient" for one | actor may be extremely inefficient for society as a whole, | requiring action by a government (or some equivalently | collective entity) to properly account for externalities. | Third, mismatched negotiating power (because employees _must_ | agree to some employment or else starve) mean that even those | actually party to any given agreement might not be maximizing | their own resource allocation by doing so. And fourth (not | finally, but finally off the top of my head), there are | problems of diversification in the face of uncertainty - | resource-havers can take maximum-expected-value actions even | when they have low probability of payoff (e.g., risky | business ventures that will pay off 10x 20% of the time but | go bankrupt the other 80% of the time), because they can | afford to make those bets enough times to even out the | variance; non-resource-havers must settle for lower-expected- | value but lower-variance options, which limits their success | even with perfectly skillful allocation. | javert wrote: | I just wanted to say, I really don't appreciate the sarcasm | in the first couple of paragraphs. Anybody can take | someone's comment and negate each of the sentences. It's | only clever and cute if the new version is kind of self- | evidently true or somehow insightful. In this case, it's | not. | | You're also setting up a straw man with the comment about | workers' rights. A call for the government to "fix | inequality" with something like the New Deal is not a call | for workers' rights. It's implicitly a call for the | government to run much more of the economy than it already | does. There is no other way to achieve the stated objective | in the stated way. | | Playing the old "fit about socialism" card is not | impressive. I never used the word "socialism" because it's | a slippery word that leads to low quality discussion. It's | beside the point. Is _every_ argument against government | management magically defeated by the "OMG SOCIALISM" | sarcasm that left wing people always trot out like this? | | Also, probably needless to say, I disagree with your | analysis. | | edit: I will respond to the following: | | > In reality, it is very well known - by psychology, by | statistics, and by empiricism - that societies that don't | allow the most powerful to make unchecked decisions based | on their current level of resources do better than those | who do. | | That's simply not true that this is "very well known." And | you are conflating political power (which is what we call | "power") with economic power (which isn't what we normally | call "power"). The power of Bill Gates or Warren Buffet is | limited mostly to doing good or just losing their money. | That has nothing to do with the power weilded by, say, the | Dept. of Homeland Security, or the American medical | insurance industry (which gets its power through regulatory | graft backed by political power and ultimately force). | Forceful power, i.e. "power," is just not comparable to the | "power" one gets by voluntarily trading with others. | | It's silly to say your non sequitur is "well known" by | "psychology" or "statistics" (what do those have to do with | it, anyway) or "empiricism." That's nothing like my saying | that something is "well known" to history. 20th century | history is straightforward and direct (and relevant) in a | way that psychology and statistics are not. We have _tried_ | big government management many times and it always _fails_. | Look at the many communist countries that actually stayed | communist (i.e. China doesn 't count, but it's a shit show | anyway). Look at fascist-nationalist command economies like | the Nazis and today's Russians. Those societies and | economies evidently do not work. (I would add, look at the | outcome of the New Deal, but that is more nuanced.) There | is no way a psychology paper could have that kind of | evidentiary power. | idontpost wrote: | You really drank the fascist koolaid. | avgcorrection wrote: | > I just wanted to say, I really don't appreciate the | sarcasm in the first couple of paragraphs. Anybody can | take someone's comment and negate each of the sentences. | It's only clever and cute if the new version is kind of | self-evidently true or somehow insightful. In this case, | it's not. | | When you say it: just spitting facts, being no-nonsense. | | When someone else uses the same device to say the | opposite: vile sarcasm which is not on-point or even | funny since it is obviously false (you hold the opposite | opinion so of course it is: it is self-evident). | javert wrote: | A comment that negates each sentence of what it's | responding to is not using the "same device." It's being | sarcastic. | | Using the "same device" would be saying, "I think the | opposite is self-evident..." and then elaborating. | avgcorrection wrote: | I think the opposite is self-evident. The idea that | private management and allocation of capital can do | better than government management of the economy is | ridiculous. This has been proven many times over by post- | industrial history, and is also immediately obvious if | you've ever been to the airport. Or if you know anything | about the inner workings of a complex modern commercial | apparatus, such as any investment bank, or Enron. | | --- | | Sarcasm is when you repeat something without negating it, | but indicating that you really think the opposite | (negation). Saying "private sector management doesn't | work" and meaning it is not sarcasm. | atq2119 wrote: | I can understand that it feels unpleasant to be on the | receiving end of a response like that. But here's the | thing: the negation really _is_ self-evident as much as | the original was. Native trust in "the free market" or | private allocation of capital can be just as bad as | native trust in government allocation of the same. | javert wrote: | If someone thinks the negation of each sentence is self- | evident, a good response is "I think the opposite is | self-evident." No sarcasm necessary. | solatic wrote: | The free market is pretty phenomenal at ensuring that | technological growth will continue until we hit theoretical | limits. | | Shortages cause price increases. Price increases make it more | economical to pay up-front costs to develop technology whose per- | unit costs permit extracting a profit compared to competitors who | are not as technologically advanced, who die out and are replaced | by new competitors who buy the technology off-the-shelf and | reduce the price further in second-mover advantage, back down to | the now-lower per-unit cost. Eventually demand develops to the | point where there is a persistent shortage again and the cycle | repeats. | | The question is, what are the theoretical limits? | | Will we run out of oxygen? Unlikely, the CO2 we breathe out can | be recycled back into oxygen. Water? Also unlikely, for similar | reasons. Food? With hydroponics, we're no longer limited by the | amount of land we have, and it's renewable. Energy? The Sahara is | a vast, untapped source of solar electricity which we haven't | tapped because a) transmission lines are too expensive and b) | security is too expensive. When energy costs rise enough to make | those costs economical, the free market will get the underlying | infrastructure built, and then we're good to go. | | So yeah, growth will continue. | honkler wrote: | why didn't the great god progress save many of the past fallen | civilizations? were they running out of Oxygen? | solatic wrote: | Growth doesn't mean that nothing dies. Individual people die, | individual businesses go out of business, and yes, | civilizations are conquered. That doesn't mean that growth | isn't happening on a higher/macro level. | | If you want to pick a civilization whose gifts weren't | subsumed into a larger, still growing civilization, you'd | have to pick, what, Atlantis? A myth? OK then. | astine wrote: | Most past civilizations didn't fail due to a single resource | collapse. Also, most of them didn't have free-markets | oriented around innovation. | RobertoG wrote: | Markets are not oriented around innovation but around | profit. | | Innovation can eventually be produced, but it's an | accidental sub-product. Innovation it's not the metric that | markets are optimizing. | mordae wrote: | This. Go read Walkaway from Cory Doctorow for a nice | perspective on "growth". | slothtrop wrote: | Relevant question: why did they fall? | vkou wrote: | Because this time it's different, and we can safely expect | that yet-to-be-invented technologies will save us. | honkler wrote: | just one more app! | softcactus wrote: | Can it continue? Sure. Theoretically we could all be hooked up to | computers that slow our perception of reality and allow us to | create 2x the digital commodities we could normally in our | lifetime. This would technically count as "growth". But I think | the actual question is flawed to begin with. Why do we need | infinite growth? Do we really need 3% economic growth per year ad | infinitum? Why is that our metric for optimization? Why don't | choose something else to optimize on like human happiness or | fulfillment or freedom? | smaudet wrote: | Because the world is a ponzii scheme, where we don't pay people | for their time but for the going market rate. | | If you keep a stable population and pay people based upon life | expectations * skill, no one would need a retirement account. | | But those with pull want to sit on their hands and do nothing, | and throw around large sums of money, hence the ponzi scheme. | mgh2 wrote: | Because it is tied to population growth and productivity: | | The optimal number of children is 2.1, for offspring to replace | parents | | [1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/fertility-rate | | When there is no population growth, no inflation or economic | growth: | | [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSJis2K6B8Q | | You might think that worldwide and US has <2.1%, but technology | amplifies productivity, so it is not a 1-1 ratio | | [3] https://www.worldometers.info/world- | population/#:~:text=Popu.... | | [4] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united- | states/popu... | austinl wrote: | It's interesting to consider that the total global human | population could possibly peak within our lifetime (although more | likely around 2100). Global population growth rate has _already | peaked_ at 2.1% in 1968, and has since dropped to 1.1%. [1]. | | In the last 60 years, total fertility rate has dropped from 5 to | 2.5 [2], and most industrialized nations are hovering right | around replacement rate of 2.1 or actively shrinking (Japan, 1.4, | Germany, 1.6, South Korea, 0.81). Albeit during COVID, the 2020 | TFR in the United States was only 1.64, and has declined for the | last four years in a row [3]. | | With technology, I'd still expect the overall "size of the | economy" to grow, but it will be interesting to see how growth is | affected by substantial changes in demography that play out over | the next 100-200 years (if only I could stick around to watch!). | | [1] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow... | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate [3] | https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/05/us/us-birthrate-falls-cov... | vidarh wrote: | More than just the most developed industrialised countries too. | _India_ has just reached replacement and is set to start | declining in a few decades. And China ditched the one child | policy years ago and are now pushing for more in a bid to | prevent a crash landing after they dropped below years ago - | currently they 're maybe ~20 years from starting to see | population decline unless they soften immigration rules. | | It's going to take a _long_ time before this change sinks in | for people who are still used to worrying about overpopulation, | outside of the fringe groups panicking over "white | replacement". | BlargMcLarg wrote: | A lot of people aren't worried about overpopulation in a | vacuum. They are worried about overpopulation along with the | rise of personal consumption and potential competition (read: | perceived zero-sum games). The job market is already | ridiculously competitive. Rent and homes are already crazy, | partially due to so many people insisting on living alone and | many countries still not having adapted to an increasingly | more individualistic society. | | Telling them "it'll cool off in 20 years" is about the | equivalent of telling them "yeah the problems we have now | will continue another 20 years, deal with it". | vidarh wrote: | A lot of people - _most_ of the ones I end up arguing about | overpopulation with in fact - _are_ worried about it | because they think growth is still heading for the skies | and are arguing about it from a resource depletion and | environmental angle. | | I can't recall the last time I came across the arguments | you put forward, and I've hardly ever discussed this with | someone expressing worry about overpopulation who has | argued the problem is just that it's not flattening out | fast enough. In fact, I often face people who insist I'm | wrong when I point out projections show us heading for | population decline. | | I'm not suggesting people believing what you're saying | don't exist, but in my experience at least they're not the | ones yelling loudest about overpopulation. | | That said, with respect to people worrying about it not | flattening out fast enough, we'd face far worse problems if | it rates started declining faster. We're already seeing | pressure for higher pension ages to offset the coming | decline in a working age population in many countries. | Pressure for higher tax rates, longer hours, later pensions | will come in short order if the demographic shift happens | fast enough, and it will be massive unpopular. | mcone wrote: | > We are currently funded by donors including Patrick and John | Collison | | This message brought to you by individuals who have a vested | interest in seeing growth continue. | cm2012 wrote: | Everyone on earth has a vested interest in seeing growth | continue, whether they know that or not. | smaddox wrote: | Well, if our energy use continues to grow at the current rate, | we'll boil the oceans in about 450 years, so I would say no. | | https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/ | rnd33 wrote: | What a ridiculous article... everyone understands that | exponential growth cannot continue forever. The bigger and more | interesting question is what the life of an average human looks | like when growth inevitable slows down, and how fast we can get | there. | | Because the assumption that we will grow our energy use | indefinitely is flawed. Energy use has diminishing returns, | eventually we'll run out of useful work we want to perform. At | least in terms of material wealth and comfort. | | There's probably also major opportunities for energy savings | that extends this timeframe greatly. Incandescent -> LED lights | have reduced energy consumption by a factor of 10. Technology | improvements in just the last 5 years have halved the energy | consumption of air conditioners. | smaddox wrote: | > everyone understands that exponential growth cannot | continue forever | | Everyone understands? Why do you believe that? As far as I | can tell, most people, especially economists, think it can. | | If population continues to grow exponentially (it likely | won't), I see no reason to think our energy use would not | continue to grow exponentially. | | Efficiency improvements are linear, not exponential. They | cannot compensate for exponential growth in population. | Isamu wrote: | >there's really no such thing as a natural resource. All | resources are artificial. They are a product of technology. And | economic growth is ultimately driven, not by material resources, | but by ideas. | | I think this bears repeating. It is counterintuitive and maybe | even repulsive to some people. | [deleted] | WheelsAtLarge wrote: | The answer is yes for now. We can continue to grow. We are in the | process of creating a whole new virtual world which will expand | the economic possibilities. Even if natural resources become | scarce, we have a whole new virtual world explore and develop. | The real limit to growth is population. Population growth is | coming to halt in the next 50 years and that will dictate our | growth capabilities then. | snowwrestler wrote: | At the end, the author says: | | > In fact, the greatest threat to long-term economic growth might | be the slowdown in population growth. Without more brains to push | technology forward, progress might stall. | | It should be noted that the vast majority of human brains do not | today get the opportunity to work with ideas or push technology | forward. Many people don't even get enough to _eat or drink_. | | We have a loooong way to go on the basics of organizing human | society before we need to worry about the intellectual constraint | of total population size. | dgs_sgd wrote: | You don't have to wait until the entire world has this | opportunity before ringing the alarm. If population growth is | going down in the areas where the ideas _are_ worked on, namely | the developed world, which it is, we should still worry. | snowwrestler wrote: | No we shouldn't, because "the developed world" is not a fixed | thing. We can make the entire world developed. | TremendousJudge wrote: | But who'll work the sweatshops then? | munk-a wrote: | Nobody. Who ever said sweatshops were a necessary part of | a functioning economy? | ChuckNorris89 wrote: | If only we could have developed some machine that are | good at doing repetitive work. One can only dream. /S | | But yeah, I get your point. The fact that we still rely | on sweatshop imports proves there's something wrong with | our society. | dgs_sgd wrote: | I agree with you. But development doesn't happen overnight | and it's the people who control the ideas and technology | that have the power to develop the rest of the world. And | if that population growth is in decline at the same time | it's needed to push development forward, isn't that cause | for concern? | snowwrestler wrote: | It's not a cause for concern. The rate of population | growth in highly developed areas can be turned up or down | simply by admitting or denying immigrants. | SketchySeaBeast wrote: | Only if you assume that the developed world has some | special sauce that requires you being born here to work. | brokencode wrote: | That's one of many reasons why it's important to keep on | investing in underdeveloped countries. There's no reason why | people there couldn't contribute in the same ways that people | in more developed countries contribute. | | And immigration is a good way to help keep the population of | developed countries growing. There really isn't any reason | why we can't tap into the incredible human resources | available in the world if we try. | zmgsabst wrote: | There's two problems with that argument: | | 1. "People in developed nations don't breed due to stress, | but meh we can just replace them" is a monstrous way to | think. | | 2. You can't import people as replacements above a certain | rate, because it's the culture of the developed nation | which causes the success -- and without maintaining that | culture, the benefits cease. | a4isms wrote: | Citation needed for both of your claims, especially the | second. What do you mean "it's the culture?" There are | democracies everywhere, white people everywhere, | protestants everywhere, people speak English everywhere, | what is magically special about "the culture" that makes | America a powerhouse of innovation? | | How do you know it doesn't have a lot to do with having | two oceans to protect it, and bunch of things that | happened 400 years ago to federalize it and create what | amounts to a massive economic union? | | How do you know it isn't one of those things where a | little bit of growth magnifies over time if not disrupted | by war, just as what makes SF special is that a little | bit of growth started there, and the concentration of | intellectual and financial capital attracted more | intellectual and financial capital? | | Both of those explanations have nothing to do with a | hand-wavey claim of "the culture." | | And what do you mean that immigration is "a monstrous | suggestion?" It sounds an awful lot like you're equating | high rates of immigration with genocide. What on Earth is | "monstrous" about immigrants? And why is that monstrous, | but gentrification of SF by techies not monstrous? | | Really, this comes across as generic nativism. | BlargMcLarg wrote: | Pretty sure the "monstrous" part is trying to denounce | the idea of "humans are tools, if these peasants won't do | what I want, I'll make them compete with peasants from a | different country". | | I do think discouraging thinking of humans as resources | is a good thing, even if this has the potential side- | effect of making things more difficult for immigrants. | mrtranscendence wrote: | > Pretty sure the "monstrous" part is trying to denounce | the idea | | An idea which was not present in the comment originally | replied to, but OK. | BlargMcLarg wrote: | You could say the same for others interpreting it in the | most villainous way possible. Since original commenter | has yet to respond, maybe giving a different perspective | to their comment keeps it from being interpreted as a | vote for Aryanism. Until said elaboration. | a4isms wrote: | > I do think discouraging thinking of humans as resources | is a good thing | | I agree with that. There's a famous rant by a Canadian | comic/media personality where he quotes a government | slogan "People are our most precious resource" and points | out that Canada's approach to "resources" is to clearcut | timber and strip-mine minerals. | | But we're talking about having enough population to | maintain an economy of ideas. If we're talking about | "There aren't enough people willing to work as flesh- | robots in Amazon's warehouses, or if there are, they | refuse to work in those conditions so we need desperate | replacements from other countries" there's a whole | different conversation to have, and it isn't really about | declining populations, it's about things like living | wages, labour standards, unionization, and recognition | that the end-game is not competing with immigrants, it's | competing with automation. | munk-a wrote: | Who is the person you're quoting? I'd like to give it a | listen. | | Considering Canada's history with Uranium mining I'm | surprised that they didn't bring that into the fold as | well - it's a delicate subject since a large amount of | the costs of unsafe Uranium mining were born out by | indigenous peoples, but for how few actual mines there | were a lot of people have died from health complications. | BlargMcLarg wrote: | We already have enough population to maintain said | economy of ideas, it's more about maximizing the | population beyond the bare necessity. | | Companies have actively been trying to make intellectual | and/or creative work streamlined so they can reduce risk | factors and swap out the old cog for the new one. They | benefit from the increased competition so long as we | don't unite against the status quo, which is also why | automation is a potential disaster if we don't rethink | our ways. | | This is not to fight against skilled immigrants making an | effort to keep things at peace while carving out their | place, no. But we've seen this scenario unfold a few | times now with different things, and it turns out | companies tend to be the main benefactors at the cost of | everyone else already in the market, and quite a few | people entering the market. That cost should be | transferred to the richest people, not to the working | class with less and less breathing room to spare. Both | have to be tackled at the same time. | munk-a wrote: | That second point seems really shakey to me. As someone | who has immigrated into a new country I'd highlight that | the cost to do so is high enough (as a young person) that | I was very careful to choose a country that was in line | with my personal priorities. | | Can you explain what you specifically mean by culture if | it differs from an alignment of personal with social | priorities? | brokencode wrote: | 1. You think people in developed countries don't have | kids because they're too stressed? I'd think it more | stressful to live in extreme poverty as many do in other | parts of the world. I don't think you've done any | homework on this one. | | 2. This has been a popular theory among the far-right and | white nationalists lately. But I'd be interested to see | any evidence that immigration has a negative effect on | society, because it sounds fundamentally racist and wrong | to me. | a4isms wrote: | _If only there was a way to get more people into the | developed world without people in the developed world | creating new people twenty+ years at a time..._ | | The secret to America's success has always been immigration, | whether by violent colonialism, accepting of refugees from | persecution or war, or inviting talented people to become | citizens. | anamax wrote: | > The secret to America's success has always been | immigration, | | Actually, no. Every few decades, American has mostly shut- | down immigration for a few decades. The last opening was in | 1965. | [deleted] | cseleborg wrote: | Not just America. Europe, and other civilisations in the | past, always benefited from immigration. | zmgsabst wrote: | I think that's wrong: | | The fraction of humanity in poverty has dropped as our | population has grown -- because those larger, more capable | nations have more means to feed themselves and greater wealth | to care for the poor. | | A stall in population growth or a population decline runs a | serious risk that our standards of living regress and those | conditions worsen. | | We need to maintain our growth to impact the issues you care | about: | | More people -> More wealth -> Less hunger | BlargMcLarg wrote: | Poverty alone doesn't mean getting your brains to do brain | stuff. | | Most devs don't live in poverty, but most devs also aren't | doing innovative work. They spend their limited intellectual | stamina trying to make the boss richer, not modeling out a | cancer detection algorithm. | californical wrote: | But even working on a simple CRUD app can push an industry | forward. There is so much more incremental progress to be | made, which pushes the economy upwards, than just the "big | name" hot ideas (like cancer). | | There are still so many low hanging fruit that even simple | technology can improve | taneq wrote: | This is what so many techie people don't get. The end | user doesn't give a FUCK if you're 100% memory safe or | you use a RESTful API or your app is HIJINX(TM) COMPLIANT | or whatever. They want a button they can click which | fixes their problem. If you give them that, then they | win, so you win. | | 99% of the actual, serious, important problems right now | are really really simple and have really dumb simple | solutions. Not always the exactly optimal solution but | there's one there that will do 90% of what anyone cares | about, which we can do right now, but haven't yet. | BlargMcLarg wrote: | Yes, a lot of "simple CRUD apps" can push an industry | forward. A lot of simple stuff can also devolve into | downright predatory practices which, despite making | money, are anything but progress in the grander scheme of | things. There's also the argument tons of "simple CRUD | apps" exist because of a focus on the short term, rather | than the long term. Or they exist to fill a "perceived | hole" which is really just bureaucracy being bureaucracy. | | To name a different example, management has absolutely | exploded. It's arguable whether this explosion has freed | up brains more, or instead sucked up brain power. | Meanwhile, most management jobs do pay well, to the point | it's hard to consider a manager living in poverty. | Personally, I believe we could easily slash management in | half, permanently destroying those jobs and the | accompanied bureaucracy to free up the brains, but that | would result in those individuals having to compete for | different jobs, maybe even less desirable jobs which put | them back into poverty. | | Regardless, the point is poverty and freeing up brains | for innovation aren't necessarily correlated or even | causal. They can even be negatively correlated. Solving | poverty isn't the only requirement to free up brains, if | that is a societal goal. That's all. | taneq wrote: | Devil's advocate: You're begging the question that "making | the boss richer" doesn't also equal "doing innovative | work". | 300bps wrote: | _Most devs...spend their limited intellectual stamina | trying to make the boss richer_ | | I think it's great that devs have a choice. They can work | at a company and have a relatively steady paycheck with | benefits or they can make more and go off on their own and | assume more risk. | mattnewton wrote: | Presumably they make their boss richer by providing value | to someone paying their boss. Sure, some industries are | probably parasitic or primarily extractive but the whole | main idea of capitalism is than it can drive improvements | for consumers, and for the people of a lot of countries | this has largely panned out? | deltaonefour wrote: | This is optimistic. Consider the fact that the physical limits | on growth cannot be moved or surpassed no matter the amount of | brain power thrown at it. | | For example. The speed of light. How much brain power do you | need to surpass that speed? Many limits are actual limits and | if you think anything can be achieved just by surpassing it | with technology, then I think you're not looking at the problem | realistically. | | If you look at the amount of progress for the last 3 decades we | are literally in the same place. Still driving cars and riding | trains. The only area with massive progress is IT, but every | other technology (including IT itself) looks like it's hitting | some sort of hump in the curve. This is despite the increasing | normalization of IQ scores across the world. On average, A | person with 100 IQ today would have a higher IQ then the past. | | Something like fusion which is the biggest technology changer I | see on the horizon still requires targeted a huge amount of | government effort and resources to achieve. Such ventures are | less likely to arrive purely out of the commercial sphere. | RyEgswuCsn wrote: | My pessimistic and perhaps over-simplistic view is that growth | is largely enabled by modern-day's squeezing of every last drop | of people's disposable income. As the population becomes poorer | in general (due to lack of breakthroughs in fundamental science | and productivity, growing and aging population, widening | inequality, etc.), the growth may eventually slowdown. | jwagenet wrote: | I think the limiting factor is traditionally considered the | lack of new productive (physical) labor, not necessarily lack | of new brains. | erispoe wrote: | Automation shifts productive labor to intellectual labor. A | century ago value productive labor was probable 99%+ physical | labor, but it's probably now much less. | streetcat1 wrote: | The article is missing a crucial point. | | Not only do we need more brains, but we also need robust | knowledge transfers between generations (between current and new | brains). I.e. for new brains to be effective, they must start | from the point that the old brains stopped. | | As I see it the opposite process is at play. For example, cloud | computing decrease the need to understand hardware/os. Or, | outsourcing remove new brains from entering the knowledge | accumulation pipeline. | zmgsabst wrote: | > Or, outsourcing remove new brains from entering the knowledge | accumulation pipeline. | | This is why Boeing can't build planes anymore: | | They decided midcareer engineers were too expensive and their | crop of senior engineers are aging out -- so they no longer | have the expertise necessary, due to outsourcing and not | supporting their young employees. | aeternum wrote: | Another way to look at this is just as an optimization | problem. We found a good local optimum and it became too | costly to search further. | | In the early days of aerospace, the search space was mostly | unknown and there were tons of companies investing R&D in a | wide variety of designs. Huge amounts of human capital were | invested, and as in all things, some designs worked, some | didn't. Many companies went bankrupt. | | Eventually we find some good designs and the risk/reward of | searching the space further just doesn't make sense. Only | recently with improved tech and ML/AI + simulation has the | cost to search been reduced enough that it makes economic | sense to try again. | munk-a wrote: | I enjoy the freedom to have a closet full of extremely finely | tailored clothes (going by the 1800s standards) I'm practically | living the millionaire's dream from that era... but never in my | life have I learned how to operate a flying shuttle loom - some | information is specialized and doesn't need widespread knowing. | | When I went to uni (and I'm only 35 so I'm not talking about | the 80s) we learned about low level data structures, I took a | course in relational algebra, operating system design, assembly | language - these were necessary (imo) broadening exercises that | have enabled me to better understand how to make things work | performantly at a high level. Now a company may only need one | or two folks like me with a passion for algorithm design among | a dev team of fifty - but we don't all need formal training in | every little thing. | | Imparting the knowledge of how to learn, along with those | pieces of basic information we deem critical, can be enough. | formerkrogemp wrote: | Robust knowledge transfers between generations sounds nice, but | the older people are retiring in droves and younger people | aren't replacing them quickly enough. We just get a bunch of | newbloods that don't get the chance to learn from old hands who | will get paid less than them due to labor shortages. It is too | bad we treat people like shit in this country. Consider, if you | would the situation of nurses in America. We have record | nursing school enrollment, high rates of turnover, increasing | rates of violence against medical professionals, and levels of | burnout that should give everyone pause. | | Nurses and doctors are all facing mental health crises. | Violence against medical professionals is rising at rapid rates | even prior to the pandemic. Many health professionals don't | report assaults either because of their altruistic tendencies. | More than half of nurses are thinking or planning on quitting | their jobs. More than half of all doctors wouldn't recommend or | don't want their children to go into medicine. Here's a fun | little excercise for you. Google the nearest hospital near you | and see how many openings they have. Especially for security. | The hospital near me has never had a security officer. Now they | have five. Hospital workers are being taught de-escalation | techniques and taking self defense classes. Senior homes are | facing record shortages of labor. | | Who'd you rather have treating your loved ones? The nurses with | decades of practical experience, or the nursing school | graduates who will quit after 3 years of burn out and stress? | We're starting to treat nurses as badly as we do teachers. What | do we expect to happen? This is just one industry as well. A | few fun links for your perusal. | | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2022/04/19/new-survey... | | https://www.ajc.com/pulse/survey-shows-90-of-nurses-consider... | | https://www.benefitnews.com/news/nurses-are-planning-to-quit... | https://www.aacnnursing.org/News- | Information/News/View/Artic.... | nathanaldensr wrote: | In a system with finite energy and resources--the real world-- | infinite _anything_ is impossible. | benstrumental wrote: | The post focuses on countering the strawman-like argument that | resource shortages are the primary threat with overpopulation. | However, it is overwhelmingly clear that climate change is the | biggest threat related to overpopulation, unless we are able to | get carbon emissions per capita below 0 globally. | rr808 wrote: | Meh. Climate change is devastating for huge chunks of the | planet. But the population of the hottest parts could easily | move to cooler parts of the world, most of which are sparsely | populated. | benstrumental wrote: | >But the population of the hottest parts could easily move to | cooler parts of the world, most of which are sparsely | populated. | | I would not describe relocating billions of people hundreds | to thousands of miles north, often across country borders, as | easy. | | This article contains some stories of a few climate refugees | of today: | | https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/23/magazine/clim. | .. | rr808 wrote: | I cant see the article but yes it isn't easy to be a | refugee right now. However I'd think places like Siberia | would actually be much better with 100 million poor people | from India who could build cities from scratch (over | decades of course). | jbotz wrote: | And in a very real sense AGW _is_ a resource shortage | problem... the natural resource that 's being depleted here is | the natural carbon cycle that that kept CO2 levels fairly | stable and gave us temperatures at the near optimal levels they | were at during the time that civilization developed. We are | "depleting" this resource by overloading it with excess CO2 and | by destroying natural carbon sinks. | | Natural resources aren't limited to materials, natural | processes also qualify. So it is also with fresh water... we | won't "run out" of water, but we are exceeding the water- | recycling capacities of the biosphere and thus this absolutely | essential natural resource is becoming quite scarce in a lot of | places. Theoretically you can replace it with artificial | processes (desalination, treating contaminated water, etc) but | to do that on a scale that can replace that natural water cycle | is completely beyond our technology for now. | yodsanklai wrote: | Malthus was wrong isn't an argument. | | > But the deeper reason is that there's really no such thing as a | natural resource. All resources are artificial. They are a | product of technology. And economic growth is ultimately driven, | not by material resources, but by ideas. | | That sounds far-stretched. The climate isn't an artificial | resource, it's very natural and messing it up is going to | seriously hinder growth. The fossil fuels that drove our growth | for two centuries aren't artificial either, nor are they idea. | | The limits to growth is still valid today: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth There's no | scenario in which growth is perpetual. | | If people want to argue about perpetual growth, they should come | with numbers based on known estimates of the resource available | today. Otherwise, it's just faith and holds no scientific value. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-05-27 23:00 UTC)