:

[tvbcof]

Look for a lot of stories in the upcoming news about 'investment' in Africa. The Asian story is so last decade.

"...at any moment there might be a special bulletin from the Ministry of Peace. The news from the African front was disquieting in the extreme. ..."

 - Orwell

What most have considered a cautionary tale, others have recognized as prophecy.

Some aspects of our present condition when compared Orwell's material are so striking that I have to wonder if the story has been used as something of an inspiration to certain segments of our leadership.

Whatever the case, comparing the book against reality (and especially as reality evolves) is one of the more chilling and awe-inspiring things I can think of off-hand.

[finway]

Sure it will. See FedWire News.

[minorman]

Post growth economy is a myth

Soon (years) technological progress will resume
and take ww economy further,
 prob. with even greater speed than China recently
-- even measured in sound currency (not fiat).

No, the myth is that exponential growth can continue:
 http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/

[notme]

Your link gimme this usefull info :

Error 403
We're sorry, but we could not fulfill your request for /do-the-math/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/ on this server.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Also i have not said about EXPONENTIAL growth,
but about rise of productability due to progress and innovation.

Works fine for me... also WTF is "productability"?

[adamstgBit]

Post growth economy is a myth

Soon (years) technological progress will resume
and take ww economy further,
 prob. with even greater speed than China recently
-- even measured in sound currency (not fiat).

I agree, with the current financial system, an economy that does not grow is doomed. And because the current financial system isn't going anywhere, economic growth is only going to go faster and faster, and we'll kill the F'in planet in the process...

Oh well... we tried!
 
i find interesting how you say "Soon (years) technological progress will resume"

your right we should wait for technological progress to allow us to grow in a sustainable manner .... ( never gana happen -_- )

i think the biggest technological challenge in the next 100 years, will be figuring out how to feed 1 trillion people.... could we maybe PRINT more MONEY? or right no more F'in trees! damn it

we are soooo fucked 



buy some bitcoins today, let it symbolize your anger toward the financial system that has played a key role in the destruction of ourselves

[miscreanity]

No, the myth is that exponential growth can continue:
 http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/

Phenomenal post! Thanks for sharing

we are soooo fucked 

Not at all! As Murphy suggested at the end of the discussion, future economies and growth will be unrecognizable.

It’s not growing GDP, growing energy use, interest on bank accounts, loans, fractional reserve money, investment. It’s a whole different ballgame, folks. Of that, I am convinced. Big changes await us. An unrecognizable economy.

The way Bitcoin is structured allows for development/growth (to use Murphy's terms) in a way so totally foreign to contemporary views that any lack of a deep understanding leads people to think it's a scam, when a decade from now we'll be laughing at how anyone could've even entertained that thought.

There's also a historical pattern in which slowing or stagnant growth builds pressure until a new direction for growth breaks out. Going the 'space cadet' route means it's likely that humanity will approach the limits possible on Earth, then expand outward from there - like the surface area of the light bulb to a body, activity from Earth will spread to other planets.

As long as we don't send ourselves into oblivion first

[notme]

Your link gimme this usefull info :

Error 403
We're sorry, but we could not fulfill your request for /do-the-math/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/ on this server.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Also i have not said about EXPONENTIAL growth,
but about rise of productability due to progress and innovation.

Works fine for me... also WTF is "productability"?

Sorry for my burnt English 

I mean http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workforce_productivity

Have you been able to access the article yet?

[realnowhereman]

The mistake in the "exponential economic growth is impossible" is assuming that growth of an economy is the same as growth in resource use.

For example; it used to be that gold plating on computer boards was 200nm thick.  Now it's more like 2nm.  For exactly the same resource use the economy can have grown by 100 times.

The resources needed to make a computer in the 1960s were enormous, just in terms of weight.  Now we regularly carry around miniature computers that can lap 1960s computers and yet weigh hardly anything.  The computer in my pocket, in fact, is more powerful than the desktop computer I owned 10 years ago and yet uses a tenth of the resources needed to build it.

Farmland is more productive per acre than it has ever been.  The power needed to light our houses is shrinking rapidly.  Our televisions are bigger and brighter, and yet weigh less and use less power.  There is no reason to suppose that this process won't continue, eventually resulting in the energy use per person dropping, but economic growth continuing.  As resources become scarce, the economic incentive to find cheaper alternatives increases.  We can already see this happening -- as the price of fossil fuels is increasing, the relative cost of solar panels is coming down (so much so that the US has enacted import restrictions on Chinese panels (morons) to protect their overpriced domestic producers) while at the same time huge efforts are being made to increase their efficiency.  Solar panels are just an example, fusion, biofuels, and recycling are all industries becoming more and more viable as energy demand goes up and fossil fuel supply goes down.

Population growth rates drop the richer the population becomes.  You can't simultaneously argue that energy use per capita will go up while claiming the population that is currently poor will remain poor.  As the third world gets richer, they will use more energy per capita but birth rates will go down (just as they have in the developed world).

The physicist was arguing with a bad economist.  Further, the physicist was bad too (invoking thermodynamics in a non-closed system like the Earth was pretty bad form; and is exactly the trick that the creationists try and pull); arguing that thermodynamics means we'll boil while completely ignoring the fact that the likely source of any future energy will be the Sun's rays -- which fall on the Earth regardless of whether we use them to power our electric coffee pots or not.  Finally, he limits his admittance of efficiency improvements to small refinements; that's not how it happens.  What actually happens is a technological leap (thermionic valves to transistors for example) that completely changes the game -- he admits that but then completely ignores the implications.

Growth can, counter-intuitively, equal less resource use.  It is the fact that resources become more expensive as the demand for them rises that is driving this more efficient use.  

[Fuzzy]

i think the biggest technological challenge in the next 100 years, will be figuring out how to feed 1 trillion people....

I respectfully disagree here :
IMHO the biggest challenge for future "powers that be" will be
" How to deal with huge crowds of bored people, that does not need to work
 for food and shelter ?!? "

I bet my bitcoins it'll be a food shortage problem, considering we're eroding and poisoning the very bottom of the food chain. You can desalinate water with sun power, but people don't live very long if all they have to eat is processed garbage.

[Fuzzy]

the US has enacted import restrictions on Chinese panels (morons) to protect their overpriced domestic producers)

Very interesting, can I get a source on that?

[notme]

For Ukigo: http://www.yrral.net/phys-vs-econ.txt

[realnowhereman]

the US has enacted import restrictions on Chinese panels (morons) to protect their overpriced domestic producers)

Very interesting, can I get a source on that?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/18/business/energy-environment/us-slaps-tariffs-on-chinese-solar-panels.html

[mav]

Very interesting discussion. Indeed continuous exponential growth is not possible. For any closed system you reach physical limits. We will pass to a post-growth economy soon enough.



BTW... The ECB left things unchanged.

On the exponential growth thing... I have often wondered but never reached any conclusions about whether you can have economic growth forever (exponential or not). My gut feeling is no, but I will pose some questions that cause me indecision:

Can you have continual growth in services?

The thing with services is, you don't just need more people to provide more service. You can also have growth in quality of service. In this sense, it would seem possible for eternal growth to not only be possible, but a part of the human condition to always improve.

I think we're not going to move from a growth-based economy to a 'stable' economy, but rather from a product-heavy economy to a service-heavy economy. This will better facilitate the 'endless growth' that seems so desirable.

But as I say, I'm still really undecided on this issue.

[notme]

I think we're not going to move from a growth-based economy to a 'stable' economy, but rather from a product-heavy economy to a service-heavy economy. This will better facilitate the 'endless growth' that seems so desirable.

So.... less fast cars, more hookers.

[mav]

Well, it certainly doesn't happen through charging $200 for a $20 manicure... That kind of growth happens through medical advances, through feeding more people with food that does not make them sick, and through giving workers tools to help them be more productive. None of those things happen without considerable investment in education and research. But it all still requires inputs in the form of natural resources, which have unavoidable energy costs. All of those activities require energy inputs. And seeking efficiency in energy and resource use is an important key to getting more economic growth from those same inputs, in whatever form that takes, but that is not what we are doing. And it is not something that we will do to the extent we need to unless there is no other alternative. The story of growth has been one of exploiting natural and human resources, and as long as it is cheaper to fill dumps and dig up coal that is what we will do.

But, despite this, it does seem like eternal growth is possible if you do the things you suggest such as investment in education, efficiency etc (which I forgot to implicitly state myself and agree with). Without increases in efficiency then growth will of course consume too many resources no matter where that growth happens. As you suggest, growth isn't just about consumption, it's also about reducing the consumption and changing to non-resource consumption, yet whenever growth is mentioned in an economic sense it's about 'doing more with more' not about 'doing the same with less', but they're both still forms of growth.

It depends if there is an assumption that to provide better service requires more energy. Right now, I think it does, but with the right attention, it's possible to provide better service with equal or less energy than before, which would facilitate eternal growth. As you say, we are certainly not heading this way by way of policy, but perhaps we'll figure it out ourselves before too long...

As for charging more for the same service ($200 for a $20 manicure), that's not really 'growth of the economy' that's just growth of the monetary system. There's a very distinct difference between the value of something and the cost of something. I'm talking about eternal growth in the value of an economy, regardless of the relative cost associated. I imagine people generally consider growth to be reflected in 'the awesomeness of sports cars' rather than 'the cost of sports cars' (substitute 'features' with 'awesomeness' and 'family car' for 'sports car' if it pleases you more)

It all depends how you define growth, which I have not yet seen a reasonable definition in this thread.

[tvbcof]

To clarify. 'Post Growth' does not mean that there is no economic growth. 'Post Growth' means that growth is not mandatory, It means that economies can be free to expand or contract according to what makes sense, without breaking...

To me it means increasing pressure for re-distribution of wealth.  This pressure is quite moderated in a growing system by letting some of the excess trickle down.  Absent that things could become quite ugly.

Gold and 'the one true crypto-currency' both fail miserably in such an environment.  Both for the masses, and most likely for those who managed to win (or be born with) all the chips since they are in constant danger of ending up on meat-hooks in the town square and it will come to pass on occasion (absent and unfortunate de-population event.)

Giving the majority an option to freely select a currency solution which happens to be working for them strikes me as a pretty good solution in that the 1% either has to make it work for everyone, or everyone selects a different solution and the 1% join the 99%.  I'm all about the freedom to choose.

[tvbcof]

To clarify. 'Post Growth' does not mean that there is no economic growth. 'Post Growth' means that growth is not mandatory, It means that economies can be free to expand or contract according to what makes sense, without breaking...

To me it means increasing pressure for re-distribution of wealth.  This pressure is quite moderated in a growing system by letting some of the excess trickle down.  Absent that things could become quite ugly.

Gold and 'the one true crypto-currency' both fail miserably in such an environment.  Both for the masses, and most likely for those who managed to win (or be born with) all the chips since they are in constant danger of ending up on meat-hooks in the town square and it will come to pass on occasion (absent and unfortunate de-population event.)

Giving the majority an option to freely select a currency solution which happens to be working for them strikes me as a pretty good solution in that the 1% either has to make it work for everyone, or everyone selects a different solution and the 1% join the 99%.  I'm all about the freedom to choose.

But we have redistribution of wealth now. It's called 'trickle up economics' and it's more of a torrent than a trickle. And it is exactly due to not having a choice of currency, as all currencies are part of the debt based money system. Through swaps all the big credit markets are connected... And all roads lead to Rome. Truly local community currencies have the ability to effectively decouple a local economy from the rest of that system to allow it to operate on its own terms.

But it does not follow that Post Growth leads to re-distribution of wealth. Although I think it makes income mobility more possible because it frees people from the rigid structures of a tiered, debt-based, mandatory growth economic system.

The mechanism leading to re-distribution (downward) would be the that the 'pressure' I talked about would build to the point that it is more difficult to retain and there would be explosive failures.  In a growing system everyone can 'have more.'  In a static or shrinking system this is not possible.  It may be that the 'haves' would be willing to 'have less' in the interest of self preservation, but history doesn't argue for this.  The haves are at least as prone to the old tragedy-of-the-(not-so)-commons as any other group.

I personally am totally down with the 'local community currency' idea.  Accounting has always been an issue with such things (as have laws) and this is one reason why crypto-accounting systems hold such a draw for me.

[miscreanity]

Gold and 'the one true crypto-currency' both fail miserably in such an environment.  Both for the masses, and most likely for those who managed to win (or be born with) all the chips since they are in constant danger of ending up on meat-hooks in the town square and it will come to pass on occasion (absent and unfortunate de-population event.)

With a stable supply and a stable environment, gold does phenomenally well as money. The same applies to crypto-currencies, especially static-supply variants like Bitcoin that can do well in both growth and post-growth economies. In a relatively static growth system, it would be very difficult for wealth disparities to arise, and any disruptions would spread quickly until they become normalized.

But it does not follow that Post Growth leads to re-distribution of wealth. Although I think it makes income mobility more possible because it frees people from the rigid structures of a tiered, debt-based, mandatory growth economic system.

Yes. Although redistribution may be more likely to occur in a market-force capacity because of that increased mobility.

For a while it looked like China might be the growth engine to help preserve the system, but now those hopes are fading. So now we can look to Sub Saharan Africa, but it will take a while to get that engine running... Even so, that is the last gasp. Africa is all the room we have left to turn this ship around.

Growth potential is still effectively unlimited.

[tvbcof]

Credit markets are a great example of trying to have your caek and eat it too. They are also a great example of tiered markets. Where everyone does not have the same opportunity to participate in the same markets. A few people have access to all markets and most people have access to only a few markets. It is not just that the very wealthy have more, it is that they have greater access to markets. So there is a huge problem when the yield curve flattens, it makes those markets more similar and the relative advantage moves to the hands of fewer and fewer people. There doesn't have to be much of a spread but to preserve the advantage for the top tier money there has to be some difference.

I've never been totally comfortable with my grasp of money markets and yield curves and such, in part because I've never played around with them.  But I understand what you are saying here and it makes a lot of sense.  And sucks.  Someone made the point that what we moving fairly rapidly into is a 1% vs. a .01% world, and whoever it was was probably right.  Throw some trinkets (new cars, big screen TV's, etc) at the 99% and they'll stay mostly content.  It doesn't even take that in most of the world outside of the West.  But in a non-growth environment I don't think that there will be enough excess to even allow for trinkets.  Bulltet-proof boot?  Ya, probably.  Cost of doing business.

For a while it looked like China might be the growth engine to help preserve the system, but now those hopes are fading. So now we can look to Sub Saharan Africa, but it will take a while to get that engine running... Even so, that is the last gasp. Africa is all the room we have left to turn this ship around.

I never figured that the Chinese would be happy to slave away making tennis shoes for me forever even if it were the key to unlimited status quo.  Even if the fruits of their labor were more evenly spread about the globe it never struck me as a likely perpetual motion machine to keep the globe in blissful abundance.

As for Africa, I am guessing that the competitive gang-rape can (and will) render her quite repulsive within a timeframe measured in years.

As I have said before, I believe that at some level it all gets back to very basic thermodynamics in the end.  Measuring energy input and distributing it over a population.  And again, I suspect that the results of us humans running out of energy will be a startling mirror of bacteria running out of nutrients in a petri dish.  Environmental contamination, warfare, and death for all but those individuals who have some sort of an advantage or an extraordinary level of luck.  I suspect we'll see this type of misery before we figure out nuclear fusion.

[Fuzzy]

Growth potential is still effectively unlimited.

Yeah, and we could potentially build a Dyson Sphere and engineer humanity as a race of midgets that can survive on 300 Calories a day...

go on...