The Impossibility of Growth

[Fake Boris]

No. The first response is that the OP is ludicrous. While compounding interest might be great money in bank accounts, the same concept cannot be applied to physical things. Any attempt to do so is ingenuous and ludicrous.

You're wrong.

The OP appears ludicrous because you assume that if it were true, the world would be dump already. The reason why the planet isn't already a dump isn't because the OP is ludicrous, but rather, because there has been so little growth since 3,000 BCE that we haven't been able to observe the phenomenon until very recently.

Now that there is a lot of growth, we have observable evidence, like:

1) Carbon damage
2) Contaminated waterways
3) Toxic clouds
4) Oceanic garbage patches that have been growing exponentially since the 1970s

If you bother to compute waste into the 'cubic meter', you'll see that the example is quite compelling.

[Fake Boris]

The basic fact is in order to feed everyone we're going to need to increase agricultural output per acre as there are very few virgin lands left to open up for agriculture. His low density suggestion does exactly the opposite of this, consuming what little open space is left for low density agriculture. That's bad for people, that's bad for wild life, and it's just plan dumb.

Look, I like the idea of a food forest but the fact is you're not going to be able to feed civilization using that sort of stuff. Yes, it is interesting, yes, it hardly uses any labor but, no, it's not economically efficient. It's great for someone in the ex-urbs with a couple acres who wants to have a hobby but no one is going to be making a living off of that sort of agriculture and instead they're vanity projects for people who make their living outside of agriculture.

We're already producing much more food than is needed.

Malnutrition is purely artificial.

[Fake Boris]

Cross-pollination happens (and is a risk) with all forms of agriculture. At least with GMOs, it's possible to engineer plants so that it can't happen. (Note: I'm not saying that prevention of cross-pollination has been done well so far, only that if you try to prevent it, you might succeed, whereas if you don't try, you won't succeed.)

Yes, GMOS might cause cancers and other diseases. So might... well... everything. That's a reason to study, not to ban. Sure, Monsanto has some pretty despicable tactics. That's a reason to sanction Monsanto, not to ban GMOs.

This I can agree with.

GMOs should be developed by democratic cooperatives only and should be tested for at least 20 years in a closed circuit before they make it to the market.

[Geronimo]

Remember folks this is the starting point of the whole discussion:

Let us imagine that in 3030BC the total possessions of the people of Egypt filled one cubic metre. Let us propose that these possessions grew by 4.5% a year. How big would that stash have been by the Battle of Actium in 30BC? This is the calculation performed by the investment banker Jeremy Grantham(1).

Go on, take a guess. Ten times the size of the pyramids? All the sand in the Sahara? The Atlantic ocean? The volume of the planet? A little more? It’s 2.5 billion billion solar systems(2). It does not take you long, pondering this outcome, to reach the paradoxical position that salvation lies in collapse.

1) First response: This must be false since there has been growth

obvious refutation: actually, there hasn't been much growth since 3,000 BCE. Almost all growth occurred from the 1850s. The economic trend since the industrial revolution is not sustainable for thousands of years.

All we know for sure about the sustainability of future growth is that it can't proceed via the technologies of the past or present. We would need a crystal ball to project whether growth will be sustained for thousands of years. We only know currently verified technologies limit current growth to a few decades before a malthusian crash. Here's hoping there will be some awesome new technologies.

2) Second response: Production is more efficient resource-wise therefore the cubic meter example doesn't apply. The value of goods is not related to dimensions.

refutation A: more production means more people
refutation B: more production increases resource consumption per capita
refutation C: waste is part of a product's real dimension

Most of the thread has been spent denying those last three points: A, B, C.

Which are bleeding obvious.

With respect to 2)

More production means more people is bleeding obvious?? To a highly educated genius such as yourself perhaps. The rest of us need more help. Where do the more people come from? What rules out negative feedback effects? What guarantees that the mechanisms that would explain the correlation in the past will continue to be relevant in the future? Why is it so trivial to find the reverse correlation in multiple modern settings?

More production increases resource consumption per capita is bleeding obvious?? Big deal. So long as the relationship is less than 1 to 1 consumption for a given resource can and usually will quickly plateau. If the relationship is less than 1 to 1, prices will fall until further resource extraction is not economical as extraction cost exceeds revenue. What's more, an enormous variety of resources will either rapidly saturate demand or will displace demand for another resource. If I somehow flood the market with fish from some sort of radically innovative efficient aquaculture, consumption of other foods will drop in response to an increase in fish consumption. This will vary from resource to resource.

Waste is part of a product's real dimension is bleeding obvious?? Not really. As the waste can be re purposed for other uses at which point it ceases to be waste.

[Lorizael]

This I can agree with.

GMOs should be developed by democratic cooperatives only and should be tested for at least 20 years in a closed circuit before they make it to the market.

I haven't seen any evidence to suggest that GMOs are--by themselves--dangerous enough to warrant that level of scrutiny. Their testing and development should be well regulated, but I don't have strong opinions about what that regulation should entail.

As far as them only being developed by democratic cooperatives, I'm not even sure what that means but I'm willing to bet it's simply not going to happen in a capitalistic society. If you want to argue that society shouldn't be capitalistic, go right ahead, but again, that's an argument separate from GMOs.

[Geronimo]

This I can agree with.

GMOs should be developed by democratic cooperatives only and should be tested for at least 20 years in a closed circuit before they make it to the market.

Humanity as a whole doesn't have the luxury of arbitrarily shelving a technology for 20 years before using it in the absence of a theoretical basis for expecting worse consequences from the use of the technology than from alternatives. This is especially true for GMOs as the global ecosystem literally has billions of years of organisms rapidly springing whacky genetic **** from out of left field on it, and is far more adapted to such insults than to the alternative technologies we use such as artificial tillage or agriculture in general which have no natural precedent.

[Felch]

I never said that the birth rate is the only way to increase population.

It is Felch who came with this strawman. He believed he could refute my claim that food surpluses generate population growth, by linking low food security with high birth rates.

It's his mistake, not mine.

You obviously haven't been following the discussion with him. I thoroughly detailed my point with him over the last two pages of this thread.

I didn't link anything to birth rates, I linked them to population growth. If you checked my sources, or even bothered to read what I wrote, you'd know that.

Thanks for being a loser.

[Fake Boris]

All we know for sure about the sustainability of future growth is that it can't proceed via the technologies of the past or present. We would need a crystal ball to project whether growth will be sustained for thousands of years. We only know currently verified technologies limit current growth to a few decades before a malthusian crash. Here's hoping there will be some awesome new technologies.




With respect to 2)

More production means more people is bleeding obvious?? To a highly educated genius such as yourself perhaps. The rest of us need more help. Where do the more people come from? What rules out negative feedback effects? What guarantees that the mechanisms that would explain the correlation in the past will continue to be relevant in the future? Why is it so trivial to find the reverse correlation in multiple modern settings?

More production increases resource consumption per capita is bleeding obvious?? Big deal. So long as the relationship is less than 1 to 1 consumption for a given resource can and usually will quickly plateau. If the relationship is less than 1 to 1, prices will fall until further resource extraction is not economical as extraction cost exceeds revenue. What's more, an enormous variety of resources will either rapidly saturate demand or will displace demand for another resource. If I somehow flood the market with fish from some sort of radically innovative efficient aquaculture, consumption of other foods will drop in response to an increase in fish consumption. This will vary from resource to resource.

Waste is part of a product's real dimension is bleeding obvious?? Not really. As the waste can be re purposed for other uses at which point it ceases to be waste.

I will answer your post as honestly as I can if you do the following first:

What do you think explains population growth that is not related to food surpluses?

[Felch]

This I can agree with.

GMOs should be developed by democratic cooperatives only and should be tested for at least 20 years in a closed circuit before they make it to the market.

This is why science should be left up to scientists, and absolutely nothing left up to philosophers.

[Sava]

Sava:

I'll do it if you tell me:

1) what is it that you doubt about my claims and why

I require all claims have supporting evidence.

Imagine your polar opposite saying the exact opposite thing. I would challenge that person just the same.

I'm a nobody. If your assertions cannot stand up to even my scrutiny, how do you hope to elicit any support?

[Fake Boris]

I didn't link anything to birth rates, I linked them to population growth. If you checked my sources, or even bothered to read what I wrote, you'd know that.

Thanks for being a loser.

OK, sure.

Obviously birth rates tend to be higher in poor countries. I made the assumption myself.

[Felch]

So it's your mistake not mine. Right?

[Fake Boris]

I require all claims have supporting evidence.

Imagine your polar opposite saying the exact opposite thing. I would challenge that person just the same.

I'm a nobody. If your assertions cannot stand up to even my scrutiny, how do you hope to elicit any support?

If you would like to know more about supply networks, try:

https://www.google.com

[Felch]

I require all claims have supporting evidence.

Imagine your polar opposite saying the exact opposite thing. I would challenge that person just the same.

I'm a nobody. If your assertions cannot stand up to even my scrutiny, how do you hope to elicit any support?

If you would like to know more about supply networks, try:

www.google.com

This reminds me of when I was arguing with MtG and he said that he didn't have to supply sources because he does that for a living and I couldn't afford to hire him.

Why do people bother saying dumb **** and then not backing it up with any evidence at all? Either support your claims with some evidence or shut the **** up.

[Sava]

If you would like to know more about supply networks, try:

www.google.com

It's not my job to write your term paper.