The Impossibility of Growth

[Fake Boris]

A guy living in a studio apartment in NYC is considered far, far wealthier than a peasant farmer in SE Asia, despite the fact that, in terms of physical stuff owned, they're pretty much equal (****in' water buffalo are BIG). And the value of their stuff is not remotely proportional to the number of protons in it. NYC guy's cheap Ikea bed cost considerably less than his fancy laptop--and the valuable movies and music stored on that laptop occupy a pitifully tiny space. Meanwhile, in the stock market down the street, people and computers are moving massive piles of value around--piles of value largely divorced from physical objects.

False. The guy in the studio generates more thrash.

Let me introduce you to a magnificent variable: time.

[Fake Boris]

Your thought experiments are inadmissible.

How do you explain the exponential growth of oceanic garbage patches?

[Sava]

The guy in the studio generates more thrash.

[Sava]

How do you explain the exponential growth of oceanic garbage patches?

Between the two of us, I have now posted more actual information.

[Fake Boris]

No, it has value because someone is willing to trade anything for it (currency, material resources, information) which is valued enough by the one selling it.

It always goes back to material resources. Both currency and information are pointless if they can't be traded for material resources.

[Fake Boris]

Between the two of us, I have now posted more actual information.

I have posted this information already - except not in a picture.

[Sava]

I have posted this information already - except not in a picture.

Sort of. You made an assertion without supporting it with data. There's a difference.

[Aeson]

It always goes back to material resources. Both currency and information are pointless if they can't be traded for material resources.

Immaterial goods and services have the value people give them, just as material resources have the value people give them. Whether something is material or not doesn't matter, so long as someone values it enough to trade something someone else values ... it demonstrably has value.

[Sava]

OB: For the sake of argument, let's say everything you say is true.

What's your plan of action? Do you even have a plan? Or just empty platitudes?

[Fake Boris]

I did. It's garbage. He seems to be stuck on a planet which has no sun to power it or something.

The reality is we have a very good renewable external energy source (the sun) that has directly or indirectly powered the vast majority of what we've done throughout human history. We have tools that can be powered directly or indirectly by the sun (biological processes). We have the ability to modify organisms.

Again, this is pointless. Even if 90% of everything we made were recycled, at 3% growth, we would have exhausted the first kilometer of the planet's surface in 500 years.

Do you really think that manufacturing objects from solar energy is even close to 90% efficiency?

GMO is the solution to the waste problem, not the problem you want to view it as.

Yes, if you assume that the pesticides don't go anywhere. Sure, if you assume that cross-pollination doesn't disrupt ecosystems. I wonder what would happen faster: depletion of resources, or you understanding this?

The reality is that decay happens quite fast, especially when you want to promote it. I have some reddish dust that used to be bent nails. Yah, I've bought a hundred kilos of nails or so the past 5 years. That doesn't mean I have a hundred kilos of nails now ... or that there is 100 kilos of steel now missing from the world.

Decay happens quite fast. This is good as long as there are few organic resources to decay. But according to you:

- some magical technology will make all objects organic
- We'll have the space to dispose of these so that they can be recycled.

It still doesn't get you out of the problem.

If we focus on producing things which are easily decayed ... especially things which provide valuable output when decayed (organic matter->methane, soil amendments for example) then we can continue to grow even in material wealth for a long time.

Assuming 3% growth and a very generous recycling rate of 90%, we would be hard capped at a few centuries.

Immaterial wealth has little little in the way of material limits. Services as well have little to no material waste. They can grow essentially indefinitely.

Plain wrong as usual.

Services economies are those that use up the most resources.

[Fake Boris]

OB: For the sake of argument, let's say everything you say is true.

What's your plan of action? Do you even have a plan? Or just empty platitudes?

The first step of the plan is to educate people to acknowledge the problem. Which I do - I'm involved in politics where I live.

In the past 30 years, a new form of political thinking has emerged which is called ecosocialism. You can look it up, there's a lot of literature going around.

[Fake Boris]

Immaterial goods and services have the value people give them, just as material resources have the value people give them. Whether something is material or not doesn't matter, so long as someone values it enough to trade something someone else values ... it demonstrably has value.

Do you understand biology?

[Fake Boris]

Aeson probably thinks we're made of spiritual matter.

[Sava]

The first step of the plan is to educate people to acknowledge the problem. Which I do - I'm involved in politics where I live.

In the past 30 years, a new form of political thinking has emerged which is called ecosocialism. You can look it up, there's a lot of literature going around.

So... "no".

Gotcha.

[Fake Boris]

Actually yes I have a pretty good idea of what can be done. I was just trying to let you do research on your own.

The most important step is a monetary reform that doesn't pose growth as a necessity.

Growth is the evil cult of the 20th century.