[HN Gopher] Clinging Desperately to a Metaphor (2011)
___________________________________________________________________
Clinging Desperately to a Metaphor (2011)
Author : lcam84
Score : 154 points
Date : 2021-08-31 10:34 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ursulakleguin.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ursulakleguin.com)
| projectileboy wrote:
| Growth can manifest itself as a rising standard of living for
| everyone (albeit unequal). I'm pro-growth, but I do agree with
| the notion that if we want humans to survive for multiple
| millennia, we need to foster a much more holistic idea of growth
| (which includes waste, resource consumption, environmental
| damage, human well-being, etc).
| ryandrake wrote:
| > From 2000 to 2007 (the last period of economic growth before
| the current recession) the richest 10% of Americans received 100%
| (one hundred percent--all) the average growth of income. The
| other 90% received none.
|
| The economy has turned into this "heads I win, tails you lose"
| tool for the rich. 1. When The Economy(tm) is going up, already
| rich people (read, people with significant investments) get
| richer, but the average person doesn't really benefit, and the
| bottom ~50% get no benefit at all[1]. It's like reading that
| company-wide email celebrating your boss's boss's boss's
| promotion. Congratulations, but who cares? 2. When The
| Economy(tm) is going down, already rich people aren't really
| affected that much (maybe their vast portfolios go down some
| double-digit percentage, Boo-hoo), but the average person and the
| bottom 50% lose their jobs and experience misery. It's a gigantic
| casino, where jackpots only go to a few already at the top, and
| all the costs and losses are borne by the rest of the public.
|
| 1: Almost half of all Americans do not own any stock at all,
| including in mutual fund or retirement savings accounts.
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/266807/percentage-americans-own...
| mcguire wrote:
| In reply, one question: "Is your population growing?"
|
| If your population is growing and your economy isn't, somebody is
| having problems.
| lcam84 wrote:
| This would be true if we didn't account for the extreme
| inequality of the system.
|
| For instance the richest 1 percent more than double the
| emissions of the poorest half of humanity [1].
|
| We can have prosperity without growth, and we cannot have
| infinite growth in a finite planet.
|
| [1] https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/carbon-emissions-
| ric...
| mcguire wrote:
| That's actually a separate problem. Or rather, two separate
| problems: Inequality of growth, and externalized costs of
| growth.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| Reminds me a little of Goldsmith's "what is the purpose of an
| economy?". First few minutes set out the argument.
| https://youtu.be/RowLyW5X52A
| sgt101 wrote:
| The big concern that I have for an economy without growth is that
| it becomes a zero sum game. Collaboration is a strong method of
| keeping the peace, without growth there seems a reduced incentive
| for collaboration.
| k__ wrote:
| Like the quote in the beginning says, growth is good, but only
| when it improves the life of the people.
| andi999 wrote:
| And didn't get the life of the people improved? Maybe the US
| is an exception but on a global scale globalization lifted a
| lot of people out of poverty. (need to look at data for the
| US though, but still if you compare life of a worker at
| Steinbecks 'grapes of wrath' time to today's workers, today
| is still better, isn't it)
|
| I found: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N If
| anybody has better data (and I care about normal people and
| poor, and do not worry that the rich get richer)
| r-bryan wrote:
| I don't see why zero-growth has to be zero-sum.
|
| If not all the "labor" inputs are eaten up by society-wide
| subsistence, some value will continue to accumulate, somewhere.
| To the degree that owners allow the workers to retain any of
| their "surplus value of labor," everybody's lot will
| continually improve.
| marcinzm wrote:
| It also doesn't imho make for a more equal society. The worse
| an economy is the more the rich seem to profit from it compared
| to the rest of society. Zero sum games I feel favor those with
| established power bases much more so than those without them.
| lcam84 wrote:
| Sadly I think that the battle for resources will be more
| detrimental to peace than the reduction of collaboration.
| Collaboration will be more localized, but I hope our ability to
| communicate globally will maintain peace. Yet I may be too
| optimistic here.
| mmarq wrote:
| Yet again another person with no background in economics that
| argues against growth.
|
| Deploying the latest build to prod in 5 minutes, while I write a
| comment here, instead of spending 8 hours typing commands and
| hoping the DB doesn't explode, is economic growth. Sending a text
| to my mother for free, instead of spending a trillion for an
| intercontinental phone call is growth.
|
| As per the "system" or "capitalism", I am not sure I understand
| what it is supposed to be. If I really had to give a definition,
| I'd say capitalism is the result of some Italians inventing the
| anonymous/limited company and double entry bookkeeping between
| year 1000 and 1500. I don't understand what we are supposed to do
| about that, and this opinion piece doesn't really add anything to
| the conversation. There's a discussion to be had on income and
| wealth inequality, but a discussion is not noise, such as this
| piece.
|
| As per "socialism", it brought chaos, death and destruction
| wherever people tried to implement it. Unless we call "socialism"
| what's going on in continental Europe, which is workers rights,
| unemployment benefits and personal hygiene. And that we call
| capitalism.
| streamofdigits wrote:
| Its hard to imagine a calm, reasonable, informed person with any
| degree of empathy reading this depressingly eloquent piece and
| not agreeing, at least with its broad outlines.
|
| Yet we are ten years later and the interim period didn't just see
| no alternative metaphor make any inroads, its been regressive in
| very visible terms. At some point there is a need to understand
| what is going on? There are several possible scenarios:
|
| * psychopaths really do rule the roost. a tiny minority of well
| placed individuals hinder any chance of systemic change,
| essentially sacrificing the majority (and future generations) so
| that they maintain their current status quo for a few more
| decades
|
| * there is positive change but its imperceptibly slow, dominated
| by "noisy" short term regression. the timescale of change is
| simply too slow to satisfy the impatient activist. the tumor is
| ultimately under control, too bad for the current generations,
| just keep persisting
|
| * there is no change, because there can be no (controllable)
| change. the system is trapped in its own logic and sources of
| legitimization. Like a Jenga game we are at the point where
| removing any piece will bring down the whole. Like a runaway
| tumor, the faulty DNA will keep expanding until the organism is
| dead.
|
| Maybe there are other narratives that better explain the
| situation or maybe its a combination of things. But we need to
| start understanding what is really our true condition.
| yobbo wrote:
| Look for professor Steve Keen in various media. He has
| explanations for these phenomena, and some potential solutions.
|
| In the linked article, the term "economic growth" is used
| without definition. One of the main causes of inequality is
| _credit growth_ - not growth in economic output, which wouldn
| 't be problematic but there is almost no such growth in the
| west.
|
| Keen sees a potential solution in what he calls a modern debt
| jubilee.
|
| I also recommend catching Lacy Hunt when possible. These two
| economists have different perspectives, but both have fresh
| perspectives.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > Its hard to imagine a calm, reasonable, informed person with
| any degree of empathy reading this depressingly eloquent piece
| and not agreeing, at least with its broad outlines.
|
| It's hard to imagine a calm, reasonable, informed person with
| any degree of empathy making this kind of judgement about any
| significant piece of writing. What does being calm and
| reasonable mean if you rush to this kind of judgement? What
| does being informed mean if you don't know any other
| perspectives on a topic? What does empathy mean if you can't
| imagine people not agreeing with you?
| jodrellblank wrote:
| This might be a fine rebuttal, if this wasn't a decade old
| article about a decades old problem that everyone has been
| living through. Ursula K. LeGuin (author of this article)
| wrote The Lathe of Heaven in 1971 which featured Malthusian-
| style overpopulation problems and the societal problems that
| go with it. With that context, your comment is like "another
| History Channel show about the Nazis, excellent, mustn't rush
| to judge them".
|
| It took humans ~15 years between discovery of CFCs destroying
| the ozone layer, and 197 countries signing up to a worldwide
| ban on CFC manufacturing and use. Depending what it is you're
| objecting to, we've seen people raising issues of CO2 and
| climate change almost since oil was discovered, 100+ years
| ago, and decades of stagnant wages, increasing value capture
| by the economic elites, destruction of coral reefs,
| increasing wild fires, floods, storms, melting of polar ice
| and glaciers, increasingly hot summers.
|
| What is it you aren't hurrying to judge, and how long more
| are you planning to wait? Have you honestly not heard _any_
| other perspectives on any topics of population, energy use,
| environmental problems, social organisational problems,
| economic problems, growing imbalance between rich and poor,
| etc?
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| Hold on, hold on.
|
| What does "economic growth" mean, what does "money" mean, and
| what is "GDP"?
|
| There's a serious counterargument that "decoupling" can occur
| -- maybe even is occurring -- where GDP growth is unrelated to
| resource extraction.
|
| Now, I'm not sure how much I believe in this, and part of it
| makes me uneasy. The S&P 500 is already made up of "intangible
| assets" to some crazy amount. Does this enter a completely
| psychological realm of brands, symbols, words, memes, gods,
| where so many degrees of freedom exist that _of course_ the
| mathematical device of a positive exponential can show up
| somewhere (even if cancelled by multiplication with a negative
| exponential somewhere else)? Like, the economy might just be a
| long chain of hashes eating themselves, with boundedly-rational
| humans myopically tagging along to chase NFT representations of
| The One Thing That Made Them Happiest.
|
| At what point does that turn into -- assuming central(ish)
| oligarchical control -- "your living standard is shit but I am
| _so good_ at engineering your consent /entertainment that you
| don't care"?
|
| Or, forget the power aspect for a minute and imagine a
| libertarian paradise of spherical humans who engage in trade on
| equal terms. What is this trade in? It seems to be in
| entertainment? In evoking emotions? So like prostitution, but
| possibly by... other kinds of stimulation? Like outrage? Or the
| joy you feel at the video of an abused animal finally being
| freed[1]?
|
| So I'm not sure that it's a good thing, but we _may find_ that
| we end up in an economy in which tons of exchange value flows
| around, without doing harm to the planet, or, in the grand
| scheme, actually doing very much of anything at all.
|
| [1] Don't ask how those videos are mass-produced.
| caconym_ wrote:
| Money and power inevitably corrupt the systems we build for
| guiding collective socioeconomic development. Even in Le Guin's
| anarchist "utopia" on fictional Anarres, it happens: people
| with a tendency toward consolidating power do so, creating ad
| hoc structures that actively erode the society's expression of
| its founding principles in favor of a mindless, jealous,
| cynical politics.
|
| Whether it's right to classify these people as "sociopaths" is
| up for debate, but their role is pretty clear. In particular,
| the career politicians and others existing at the interface
| between capital and government are looking out for themselves
| and their careers first, and the mid- to long-term health of
| the economy last. I do think it's illuminating to practice some
| empathy for these people, given that most humans _are_ selfish
| to some degree (and for very good reason), but I strongly
| believe that they are the problem in a very real sense. We need
| a system that bends their ambition to the benefit of the
| people, but it 's not clear what such a system would look like
| or if it could exist at all.
|
| On a somewhat related tangent, I think commenters here are
| misunderstanding the linked UKL piece. My interpretation is
| that it's not calling all expressions of economic growth bad,
| but rather suggesting that growth (in so many words) as a
| _guiding metaphor_ is incomplete, deceptive, and ultimately
| harmful.
| streamofdigits wrote:
| power seeking behavior is certainly a homo sapiens invariant.
| feeding this beast while containing it is still the stuff of
| utopias. one would speculate that actually its an instinct
| that could be satiated in less damaging ways.
|
| but money (or that other favorite punching bag, corporate
| structures) are really straw men. they are just recent,
| transient and evolving constructs. it is conceivable that we
| could do better with improved versions, or even additional
| such tools that we haven't yet imagined.
|
| there is, in this respect an interesting data point. this
| other "pandemic" (cryptomania). this too is mostly depressing
| in the amount of financial / economic ignorance it reveals -
| but it offers a silver lining in showing how indeed "made-up"
| the money system actually is, and thus its in-principle
| malleability
| posterboy wrote:
| Sorry, the cryptomania is no independent proof.
|
| It really took off once that big finance started to invest,
| keeping the bubble bubbeling up with astronomic inflation
| rates. This was possible because enough people had been
| speculating with $$$ as the only goal, ie. involving big
| finance whethwr they wanted it or not.
| seph-reed wrote:
| I strongly believe that it is possible.
|
| Basically, there's an arms race between any democratic system
| and the people who live within it. We haven't updated ours in
| ages, and it shows.
|
| I'd like to see more people talking about "liquid democracy."
| It too would be just another tit-for-tat in the arms race of
| corruption, but so it goes.
|
| The beast we're trying to cage is us, every bit as clever. So
| we must be every bit as clever in how it is caged.
| mellavora wrote:
| at the moment, strong arguments can be made that what have seen
| for the last 20 years is a combo of "psychopaths ruling the
| roost" and "the system is trapped in its logic".
|
| sara chayes has some observations on this:
|
| How competently have our own leaders been governing for the
| past twenty years? Meanwhile, how successful have they been at
| achieving that other objective: adding zeroes to their bank
| accounts? Which of those was in fact their primary objective?
| https://www.sarahchayes.org/post/failing-states
| janto wrote:
| I think even the broad outline of the article is flawed.
|
| The vast majority of life at all scales persist through
| primarily maximizing "growth" (replication), implying that the
| associated risks (cancer, resource exhaustion) have been
| acceptable and are sufficiently mitigated through various
| mechanisms.
|
| It would be hard to find a superior strategy (or metaphor) that
| won't be catastrophic once your ecosystem shifts.
| pksebben wrote:
| the vast majority of organisms are not as unary as human
| society has become. we are so tightly coupled, so well
| connected to each other, that a cancer in one place threatens
| the whole. Cancer is fine for an individual from the
| perspective of a large collection, but a cancer in an
| individual when _one individual is all there is_ would be
| catastrophic. the analogy we continue to use for growth in
| "the economy" abstracts out this fact.
| janto wrote:
| i'd say that humanity is _the least_ tightly coupled
| organism when it comes to survivability. when our ecosystem
| changes we are able to adapt better than any other
| organism.
| streamofdigits wrote:
| yes, that's an important point. we are not a normal species
| and there is no point to pretend otherwise. every other
| sort faces a constant struggle for survival with their
| numbers being modulated by natural predators. Predators in
| turn get modulated when they overfeed on their prey. Our
| problem is that our prey is the entire planet.
| janto wrote:
| Fortunately we are farmers as well.
|
| We do need to find a way to _jump beyond_ the next Great
| Filter, but it won 't help to bunker down and not grow.
| posterboy wrote:
| The vast, vast majority of life today has gone extinct. I
| don't know how to quantify that, and it's possibly a close
| call for Homo viewed in isolation.
|
| Obviously, the growth of Homo required other taxa to be
| consumed, since man don't feed on inorganic material. The
| principle of entropy guaranties that this equation holds even
| if inorganic input and outout into an arbitrarily defined
| system of organisms is considered.
|
| It simply doesn't make sense to view living beings as either
| open systems without a clear boundary (and I don't mean cell
| walls), or as closed systems to the extent of inclusing ev-
| ery-thing.At best you have defined living being as open
| system that is "growing", but then you have excluded cancer
| already, as though any system were only open if in principle
| fungible for man.
|
| You have completely missed that growth ad infinitum is
| problem, not re-growth.
| janto wrote:
| That there is any life left at all is because it has kept
| on reproducing. The only other viable strategy to persist
| is to be a rock.
|
| Re-growth (from what starting point?) is insufficient. You
| either expand in number or you run the risk of ceasing to
| exist when your numbers are threatened.
|
| I'd choose going for growth ad infinitum and the associated
| risks. Trying anything else will get me killed.
| posterboy wrote:
| > That there is any life left at all is because it has
| kept on reproducing
|
| utter nonsense, observer survivor bias
|
| > The only other viable strategy to persist is to be a
| rock.
|
| pseudo intellectual bulls
|
| > Re-growth (from what starting point?) is insufficient
|
| _That there is any life left at all is because it has
| kept (from what starting point?) on reproducing_. That
| one?
|
| You are not making any sense
| janto wrote:
| Are you suggesting that _not_ replicating has been a
| better survival strategy for organisms?
| mcguire wrote:
| It is easy to say, very eloquently, "There is a problem." In
| fact, mostly, everyone agrees there is a problem.
|
| It is rather more difficult to say, "Here is a solution that
| will suck less."
|
| In fact, it is hard to say, "Here is what a solution would look
| like." Government planning? (In the most generous terms;
| "government" is the mechanism that large groups of people use
| to make large decisions. I find myself somewhat dubious,
| particularly if your take is, "psychopaths really do rule the
| roost.") Eliminate economic growth, somehow? (But people want
| cures for Alzheimer's and cancer, and all those people
| currently living in huts and squalor may not want to continue
| doing that _forever._ )
|
| (Given the history of such things, I'm personally beginning to
| suspect that saying, "there is a problem," without also saying,
| "and here's what I want to do about it," is akin to yelling
| "Fire!" in a crowded theater.)
| lcam84 wrote:
| I don't think everyone agrees that growth is a problem. Is
| the way our societies are organized and it is very difficult
| to reason against it.
|
| Another aspect that western societies have difficulty to
| reason about is to think in negative terms. Nassim Taleb
| calls this "Via Negativa". We normally think about solving
| problems by doing things (adding), but we can also solve the
| same problems by avoiding doing harm (subtracting). But
| avoiding doing harm normally doesn't make a profit, it
| doesn't contribute to growth.
|
| Health is a perfect example of this, most of the modern
| diseases could be preventable by eating less, sleeping more,
| and having a less stressful life.
| lcam84 wrote:
| And yet there was a systemic change last year. The system
| objective changed from brainless growth to saving human lives,
| and the Jenga game holded. I don't want to romanticize the
| pandemic but it disproved the TINA hipotesis (there is no
| alternative) As Donella Meadows pointed out [1], the most
| powerful leverage point is to change the objective of the
| system. We can make it if we start to be citizens and be
| involved politically. Let's be involved in movements like
| extinction rebellion and Fridays for the future. And most of
| all let's question growth and employment as the goal of
| society.
|
| [1] http://www.donellameadows.org/wp-
| content/userfiles/Leverage_...
| ecshafer wrote:
| What systemic change happened? The Pandemic further increased
| the disparity between the rich and the poor. The massive
| stock market and housing price increases caused by the
| government and loan programs purely benefited the few.
| lcam84 wrote:
| Again I don't want to romanticize the pandemic but we
| should critically analyze what happened.
|
| When I talk about the system changes, I'm referring to the
| paper that I wrote in the thread.
|
| The places to intervene in the system are:
|
| Places to Intervene in a System (in increasing order of
| effectiveness) 9. Constants, parameters, numbers
| (subsidies, taxes, standards) 8. Regulating negative
| feedback loops 7. Driving positive feedback loops 6.
| Material flows and nodes of material intersection 5.
| Information flows 4. The rules of the system (incentives,
| punishments, constraints) 3. The distribution of power over
| the rules of the system 2. The goals of the system 1. The
| mindset or paradigm out of which the system -- its goals,
| power structure, rules, its culture arises
|
| We intervene in the second most powerful leverage point,
| but we need to change our growth mindset (most powerful
| leverage point). If we don't we will recover to the old
| system that is depleting earth's nature. You are talking
| about the 3rd leverage point "The distribution of power
| over the rules of the system" which I agree it's important.
| We can implement UBI for instance. The thing is, there is
| an alternative.
| banannaise wrote:
| > The system objective changed from brainless growth to
| saving human lives
|
| Haltingly, ineffectively, and temporarily. 4-7 million people
| and counting have died from a disease that most experts still
| agree could have been stopped if we were willing to
| _actually_ move away from a growth goal.
|
| But, I think your conclusion is right. The people have the
| power to change our goals, even if those in power refuse.
| streamofdigits wrote:
| yes, love this point. the pandemic revealed so many things,
| mostly damning. but it was also a loud assertion of the
| primacy of life, an instinctive collective behavior that was
| so profound and universal it went almost unnoticed. maybe we
| are ashamed of admitting it as it invalidates all those other
| behaviors.
|
| but somehow this event has not yet worked its way through
| into the system. the collective assumed all liabilities, the
| usual suspects benefited handsomely and position again to
| resume the feast. back to bean counting and "calculated
| risks" so as not to hinder the "recovery" etc.
| lcam84 wrote:
| It's really interesting to think about what caused last
| year's systemic change. I think that was the fact that the
| illness threatened our life directly, but most of all the
| consequences were short term. For me "recovery" is the new
| substitute word for growth, which is a term that
| politicians avoid lately. Academically there are more and
| more evidences that decoupling growth from ecologic damage
| is very unlikely [1] https://eeb.org/library/decoupling-
| debunked/
| marcinzm wrote:
| US economic growth is much much lower than it was 50 or 70 years
| ago. Population growth is also lower. If we're pointing out
| modern issues like the rich getting richer then I feel the
| correlation is with LOWER economic growth causing it rather than
| HIGHER economic growth. Once it becomes closer to a zero-sum game
| the rich have an advantage. Ecological damage goes the other way
| since it's harder to grow quickly with environmental
| restrictions.
| rezendi wrote:
| This really depends on how you look at it. On an absolute
| inflation-adjusted dollars-per-person-per-year basis, rather
| than a relative / percentage basis, GDP growth over the last
| decade has been substantially higher than that of the 1950s.
| Even 2% of $55,000 is still greater than 7% of $15,000...
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYGDPPCAPKDUSA
| smitty1e wrote:
| > As a result of uncontrolled economic (and population) growth,
| our ecology is sick, and getting sicker every day.
|
| I can get halfway to agreement here, but UKL's assertion invites
| the question of who is in control?
|
| More pointedly, how do we agree upon the operating point and
| stabilization mechanisms?
|
| THAT is the sticky wicket.
| citizen16670 wrote:
| Hitler, who disliked Capitalism because he thought it was an
| economic scheme through which the Jew squeezed the world economy,
| also believed in shrinking markets.
|
| His solution was autarky achieved though centrally controlled
| economy in which the state directed private production through
| subsidizes and regulated purchasing.
|
| That's why he started a war.
|
| The author should stick to poetry.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| I think one difference between liberal minded and conservative-
| minded people is their version of the future.
|
| Liberals idealistically look to the future and say what if!
|
| Whereas, conservatives pessimistically look to the future and say
| what if!
|
| Human nature seems to corrupt any system that exists so I don't
| know if a system exists that can both accommodate human nature
| and also spread equality better than capitalism.
|
| I think the key may be to control it somehow.
| mnsc wrote:
| > I think the key may be to control it somehow.
|
| How do you control something that per it's own definition works
| better the less controlled it is? Hence Le Guin suggesting that
| the inherent limitless uncontrolled growth goal in capitalism
| is akin to cancer. Because no cell is better at spreading than
| a cancer cell and when the body is consumed by cancer, some
| sort of equality is reached, that being every non cancer cell
| is equally influenced/wiped out by the cancer spread.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Theres short-term growth and long-term growth.
|
| I think by good regulation you can get better long-term
| growth.
|
| But that's just speculation. I don't know what the solution
| is.
|
| Human nature corrupts every system, even systems that start
| out great.
|
| So what you need ultimately is a system which can easily be
| shrugged off when it becomes corrupt.
|
| With votes or dollars instead of bullets and blood.
|
| Education maybe? It takes educated/ aware people to overcome
| tribalism and see that bettering societiy as a whole also
| betters them.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Capitalism can be controlled. Eg in China they permit
| capitalistic enterprises if it is deemed to "benefit the
| state or people". They also don't permit private enterprise
| to run the banking system.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| I am more or less with her on this, and not just because I like
| her writing (and her audio book narration of her treatment of
| "Lao-Tzu: Tao Te Ching" is beyond wonderful).
|
| Where I differ a bit is that zero growth is not the solution, but
| rather slow and sustainable growth. What we have now is awful. In
| the US, you have close to zero percent loans from the Fed to
| outfits like Blackwater who can buy residential property and rent
| it for a few percent pure profit. Young people I know who want to
| buy a home don't get close to zero percent loans from the Fed.
|
| With both political parties fully supporting the elites it seems
| like all is lost, but I don't think this is so: massive peaceful
| demonstrations are the only way to make progress. When peaceful
| Occupie Wall Street protestors were brutalized at scale, I think
| the whole world noticed, and this kind of peaceful mass protest
| is probably what the world elites fear the most.
|
| EDIT: I just noticed that she was not calling for zero growth,
| rather for equitable sharing.
| banannaise wrote:
| > When peaceful Occupie Wall Street protestors were brutalized
| at scale, I think the whole world noticed
|
| And within a short time, everything was back to business as
| usual. Then in 2020, Black Lives Matter protestors were
| brutalized at scale. The whole world took notice, the police
| kept beating the shit out of people, a lot of lip service was
| paid, and nothing changed.
|
| I'm not advocating for a violent revolution here, but what
| about meekly letting the state beat the shit out of you seems
| to be working?
| dzdt wrote:
| In the long run zero growth is the only possible asymptotic
| besides decline. Our world is finite; we are close to or over
| ecological limits already. Economic growth by improved
| efficiency or technological advancement is still possible, but
| there are fundamental limits there as well.
|
| So whether or not one calls for zero growth, we should plan for
| an eventual situation of zero growth and structure our society
| so this is a good outcome.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| Not all increases in economic growth are at consequence of
| ecological exploitation. Some economic growth happens while
| also reducing ecological impact. These two things are not
| that tightly bound, especially in developed knowledge-based
| economies.
|
| The problem with zero growth is that we would also need to
| have zero population growth. There are two ways of achieving
| this: the nice one, where we get everyone out of poverty and
| people naturally stop having so many kids because they're not
| poor any more, or the nasty one where we impose limits on how
| many kids people can have. The nice solution would definitely
| require lots of economic growth to lift all of us out of
| poverty (without reducing the living standards of the people
| currently having no kids to the point that they start having
| kids again). The nasty solution has only been tried by China
| so far, wasn't that successful, and has lead to all sorts of
| demographic problems for them.
|
| We do have a problem with income inequality which should be a
| lot easier to fix than stopping growth.
| goatlover wrote:
| > So whether or not one calls for zero growth, we should plan
| for an eventual situation of zero growth and structure our
| society so this is a good outcome.
|
| But how far in the future is this? Our light cone is finite,
| but it has a vast amount of energy and matter. Maybe we don't
| get much father than the solar system, but that's still a lot
| more resources than the Earth. Just the sun itself is an
| enormous ball of energy we're barely making use of. Sure, a
| Type 3 civilization might find it difficult to grow much
| beyond it's galaxy, but it would take a while to get to that
| level. We don't really know where civilization might end up
| in the long term.
| lcam84 wrote:
| She may be calling for zero growth or even degrowth. In her
| first blog post, where she fill a questionnaire [1]
|
| "Question 13: "What will improve the quality of life for the
| future generations of your family?"--with boxes to rank
| importance from 1 to 10. The first choice is "Improved
| educational opportunities"--fair enough, Harvard being in the
| education business. I gave it a 10. The second is "Economic
| stability and growth for the U.S." That stymied me totally.
| What a marvelous example of capitalist thinking, or
| nonthinking: to consider growth and stability as the same
| thing! I finally wrote in the margin, "You can't have both,"
| and didn't check a box."
|
| [1] https://www.ursulakleguin.com/blog/in-your-spare-time
| jsty wrote:
| > outfits like Blackwater
|
| Unless the mercenaries are back and diversifying into real
| estate, I think you might mean Blackstone?
| BBC-vs-neolibs wrote:
| Would not surprise me much if they would.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| Thank you! That is what I meant.
| MikeTaylor wrote:
| > When peaceful Occupie Wall Street protestors were brutalized
| at scale, I think the whole world noticed, and this kind of
| peaceful mass protest is probably what the world elites fear
| the most.
|
| Yes, it was great how that incident ushered in a new age of
| shared economic prosperity and political rationality.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| Mike, sarcasm aside, I really think that it helped. Have we
| seen as progress as we want? Of course not, but that doesn't
| mean we can't or shouldn't try. Agree?
| indigochill wrote:
| I think the question behind the sarcasm is really "Did
| Occupy Wall Street actually do anything?" Sure, it made the
| news, but was there any actual lasting progress from it at
| all? Admittedly I didn't follow it closely so I don't feel
| qualified to answer that.
|
| For my part, I don't believe protests (in the US)
| accomplish anything. They could if it was possible to apply
| pressure on our politicians, but the question there is is
| politics the actual determining factor for whether a
| politician gets elects? Some would argue it's really money
| (my personal argument is it's name recognition achieved
| primarily through clever media usage, as seen with FDR on
| radio, Kennedy on TV, Obama on social media, and Trump on
| outrage media, but money's always a key component of that).
| If that's the case, then politics doesn't actually matter,
| it's all about amassing enough money to get your preferred
| politician into office.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Absolutely. Being passive is exactly what people in power
| want us to do. It's not going to be an easy struggle.
| secondaryacct wrote:
| You simplify the problem. You're in power, they're in
| money. You dont want power that you already have, what
| you want is to win, and you'll do whatever it takes, even
| pretending you want to build a new world where "everyone"
| is equal, especially you.
|
| Im not targeting you, mind you, but this idea that there
| are mysterious others in situation of power robbing us of
| our due.
|
| There are no rule to life, nor any meaning. You go where
| you want and do what you want. Dont kid yourself into
| believing your ideal is shared in absolute by most
| people.
|
| I just say that because you sound a bit like an idealist
| drinking his own koolaid :p
| jjj123 wrote:
| Let's also not kid ourselves that belief in the status
| quo is shared across a majority of people.
|
| 70% of people in the US support Medicare For All across
| all political lines [1], but leadership across both
| parties essentially ignored the proposal as some kind of
| radical pipe dream. Why is that? It's simple, M4A costs
| money and would decimate the health insurance industry.
| Donors to both parties don't want to pay more in taxes or
| see their investments drop, so it's off the table. If we
| had something resembling democracy, we would have single
| payer healthcare by now.
|
| What we have now is a minority of powerful (moneyed)
| people who are making decisions for everyone based on
| their own incentives. What people like myself want is a
| more democratic distribution of this power.
|
| So it's not necessarily that activists want to force some
| communist utopia on everyone, but we want to change the
| system so that we (the people) can actually decide for
| ourselves what we want.
|
| [1] https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-
| thinking/494602-pol...
| babyblueblanket wrote:
| My understanding is that this is significantly more
| controversial if it involves removing private or
| employer-provided healthcare. A "public option" is
| something the current president, Biden, supported. And
| he's the president, so obviously not a pipe dream.
| xyzelement wrote:
| The question I ask when I hear "we shouldn't grow past where we
| are now" is - would this person make this claim just as well 20
| years ago? 100? 1000?
|
| What if we decided "we have grown too much" right before the
| invention of the internet? What if we did it right before the
| invention of household appliances that liberated women throughout
| the world to do something else with their time? What if we did it
| before urbanization? Before agriculture?
|
| If we're honest, we look back on all the progress that happened
| before us, with gratitude. Whether we acknowledge it or not, the
| fact that we have a warm place to sleep, reliable food sources,
| ability to connect with loved ones no matter where we are - these
| aren't things we wish never existed (yes, I realize not everyone
| has these things but more people have them than ever before.)
|
| So I look at it like that, and then I ask - if we keep growing,
| challenging ourselves, experimenting, etc - will the people
| living in 100 and 1000 years thank us for it? The pessimists say
| "no", but history seems to show that "yes" - the trajectory of
| the world has been in the right direction for human safety,
| comfort and happiness.
|
| By any measure - infant mortality, safety from war, education,
| access to culture, etc - we're the luckiest generation yet and
| there's no reason to stop working to give our children more of
| the same.
|
| Of course we need to be smart about how we do it - look for
| sustainable and clever ways to grow that benefit more people - no
| question there. But to STOP growth is to betray our future.
| Woberto wrote:
| I think this is conflating growth with technological
| advancement. One can grow without technical advance (e.g.
| farming on more land produces more, feeds more, uses more, etc)
| or advance technically without growth (using your examples, we
| can reduce infant mortality and have the same amount of
| children, defend ourselves better, etc without needing to
| necessarily use more, generate more stuff)
| seiferteric wrote:
| To the extreme, I sometimes wonder what would happen if we
| invent replicators. It would obviously be great for the
| average person, but it would undoubtedly wreck the economy :)
| lcam84 wrote:
| Yes, by any measure - infant mortality, safety from war,
| education, access to culture, etc - we have never been better
| but all evidence suggests that our lifestyles are not
| sustainable. IPCC says that there will be an environmental
| collapse in the next years if we do not change and green Growth
| is not enough [1]. It's like if we are in a modern, comfortable
| and fast car. We can argue that we have never been better but
| it's not the case if there is no road ahead of us.
| https://mk0eeborgicuypctuf7e.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/upload...
| xyzelement wrote:
| Yeah I hear you - but my question is, could someone make the
| same argument at any previous times? In the past there was
| ozone layer problems, peak oil worries, global cooling, etc.
| I think you could always have said "no it's gonna get really
| bad now" if you ignore human history of evolving its way past
| problems that loom at it.
|
| In my experience, our growth has motivated a lot of these
| things.
| mr_overalls wrote:
| I don't see where LeGuin's argument is anything like "we
| shouldn't grow past where we are now".
|
| She's arguing (rather imprecisely, since she's not an
| economist) against a narrow version of uncontrolled economic
| growth that maximizes shareholder value and raw economic
| output.
|
| And the objections she voices - growing inequality,
| environmental externalities, etc - are well-discussed within
| the field of economics itself.
|
| And while humans _are_ generally more well-fed, sheltered,
| educated, etc. right now than during past times, there are very
| serious problems on the horizon, due to increasing population,
| climate change due to burning hydrocarbons, and other factors
| deeply entangled with human economic activity.
| [deleted]
| goatlover wrote:
| Reminds me of Family Guy's Amish prayer where the period
| between 1815 and 1835 was just the right amount of technology
| for God's approval. Not too little, not too much.
|
| Where does society draw the line? It was okay to grow to this
| point (or 20 years ago or whenever the arbitrary dividing line
| was), but now we need to stop? Why not 100 years from now or
| 500? Maybe if we stop now we won't get to a post scarcity world
| where aging has been cured. Maybe we won't terraform Mars. Who
| knows what might be possible.
|
| Or more simply, do we stop growing and make life harder on the
| developing world? Or is it okay for them to grow to this
| arbitrary point and then stop with us? What if the solution to
| climate change comes about from technological progress due to
| economic growth over the next 30-50 years?
| caethan wrote:
| The Amish do _not_ simply reject all technology past a
| particular date. Instead, they collectively decide on whether
| their community will use any particular new technology, based
| on whether they believe it will best serve the needs of the
| community.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2013/09/02/21.
| ..
| MarcPereira wrote:
| May the solution be to live like the people on Anarris, then.
| mmustapic wrote:
| Anarres. And their way of life was not a choice, but their only
| possibility to survive.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| As far as I'm concerned, the optimal size of the economy is when
| everyone can have everything they want.
|
| Until then, there's work to do.
| danparsonson wrote:
| But the point is that increasing it does not improve life for
| everyone, only those at the top. The idea of "trickle down"
| economics is a (frankly laughable) fallacy.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| Right, but isn't that the problem then, not "growth" per se?
| If fulfilling the interests of the rich needs growth, surely
| fulfilling the interests of everyone will need even more
| growth.
| apersonprobably wrote:
| Isn't this just hedonism?
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| Well, it's preference utilitarianism.
| kennethh wrote:
| People always want more. They want a nice car than their
| neighbours, nicer phone, better clothes. We are way beyond what
| you need to survive, everything else is about comfort, security
| and status. And why is these things so important? Mate
| selection is based on status (among other things).
|
| It is also typical of a famous writer and a very high status
| person not to see that others would want/have to compete for
| status in other areas. Not that she is wrong, but the world is
| a complex place than one can imagine.
| [deleted]
| zelos wrote:
| Isn't it a truism in economics that needs are finite, wants
| infinite?
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| I'm not convinced it's actually true.
| lcam84 wrote:
| If you want to explore this you can watch "the century of
| self" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| For some reason people want more wealth than anyone could
| possinly hope to enjoy or need. Talking about multi
| billionaires.
| lcam84 wrote:
| There is a difference between wants and needs.
|
| You have a giant industry trying to change your wants, making
| sure you are not satisfied with what you have.
| ekelsen wrote:
| No matter how big the economy gets not everyone can have the
| best real estate. There will be always be locations that are
| preferable to others and no amount of growth will change this.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| I suspect this will be fulfilled by improved transportation.
| ekelsen wrote:
| Improved transportation won't get you the choicest pieces
| of real estate because you still won't be allowed there. It
| will make the public places even more crowded perhaps.
|
| Some of what expensive real estate buys you is the _lack_
| of other people.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| If you're out in the boonies, you can have lack of other
| people for miles. What you won't have is easy access to
| the nearest city. Transportation solves that.
| kweinber wrote:
| I'm not a proponent for endless growth, but the metaphor is
| fraught. An economy is not a single animal, it is a
| collective.... And collectives/herds/packs in nature grow to the
| limits of their resources (or create more collectives), just like
| human economies do. Often to the point of resource exhaustion and
| colony collapse.
|
| I hope there is a better way to maintain an economy, but nature
| isn't a great inspiration.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Economic growth can be equitably distributed, as it was in the
| western world up.to the 70's, and has been in China. Of course
| GDP says nothing about the way wealth is distributed that's why
| you have to look at where the growth goes.
|
| There's no iron law which says that growth 'has' to go to the top
| 10%
| davidivadavid wrote:
| Not that there's no valid discussion to have about growth as an
| objective per se, but this is a particularly weak rebuttal that
| hinges on a narrow definition of (material) growth. Economic
| growth is first and foremost about the _value_ of economic
| exchanges. Not about the amount of stuff we make.
| lcam84 wrote:
| Gross Domestic Product, is a very gross way to measure progress
| as the name implies.
|
| Robert Kennedy said in respect of GDP "It measures everything,
| in short, except that which makes life really worth living."
| [1]
|
| You have alternatives like the genuine progress indicator (GPI)
| that includes aspects such as pollution, criminality and health
| to the GDP. Most of all we can have many measures, we should
| not reduce progress to only a number.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FAmr1la6w0
| posterboy wrote:
| that's not what the name implies. Gross simply means large or
| super, as in Super-Market or in Bulk-Sale. Originally it has
| also meant rough. In English it still does, but formerly in a
| sense of coarse, and I guess in this case especially rigid.
|
| > ... Its meaning forked in English. Via the notion of
| "coarse in texture or quality" came the senses "not
| sensitive, dull stupid" (1520s), "vulgar, coarse in a moral
| sense" (1530s). Via notion of "general, not in detail" came
| the sense "entire, total, whole, without deductions" (early
| 15c.), as in gross national product (1947)
|
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/gross
|
| Okay, not quite _rigid_ , but not either _dull, stupid_. It
| 's actually difficult to believe the outline, while the
| beginning is uncertain.
|
| A _gross_ may also have meant a dozen, and Groszen was a
| coin, maybe a dime a dozen. So, what are these twelve
| products that estimated national domestic production there
| and then, metal, salt, textiles, big macs?
| lcam84 wrote:
| As Ursula Le Guin, I'm not an economist, but I live in one.
| Didn't mean to be literal, but I find ironic the use of the
| term, because it reminds me of rough which in portuguese,
| my native language is "Grosseiro"
| bsedlm wrote:
| I consider it another mistake to expect any alternatives to be
| fully formed (or well described) and complete in any sense.
|
| The current capitalist-market does some things pretty well, but
| it was not ever described as a system until after it was already
| working in practice.
|
| (I'd go as far as saying that there's no great accepted
| explanation of what it does well and how it does it so well).
| Barrin92 wrote:
| > _" It's as silly for me to write about economics as it would be
| for most economists to write about the use of enjambment in
| iambic pentameter. But they don't live in a library, and I do
| live in an economy."_
|
| Also reminded me of Einstein in his essay 'Why Socialism?'[1]
|
| _" Science, however, cannot create ends and, even less, instill
| them in human beings; science, at most, can supply the means by
| which to attain certain ends. But the ends themselves are
| conceived by personalities with lofty ethical ideals and--if
| these ends are not stillborn, but vital and vigorous--are adopted
| and carried forward by those many human beings who, half
| unconsciously, determine the slow evolution of society.
|
| For these reasons, we should be on our guard not to overestimate
| science and scientific methods when it is a question of human
| problems; and we should not assume that experts are the only ones
| who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the
| organization of society."_
|
| Unlike a lot of technologists or experts today Einstein was very
| aware of the difference between what is and what ought to be and
| the limits of trying to manage human affairs with expertise,
| which shows a remarkable level of humility given his achievements
| in science. The narrative of never-ending growth, or inevitable
| 'technological progress' or expert management all strengthen the
| same premise, that people cannot take control of their own
| environment or aim to develop economic or technological domains
| towards social and ethical ends.
|
| [1]https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/
| nickelpro wrote:
| We already have enough poems, more poems than any person can read
| in a single lifetime. And they already cover every possible
| subject, life, death, love, war, poverty, whatever subject you
| prefer.
|
| When will the poets stop ceaselessly creating new works? We've
| reached and surpassed the optimal size for the body of poetry.
|
| What a nonsense argument.
| [deleted]
| isoprophlex wrote:
| In medicine, you'd call unbounded growth a tumor. I'd say our
| desire for ever growing economies acts as a tumors towards the
| environment...
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