[HN Gopher] Degrowth and the monkey's paw
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Degrowth and the monkey's paw
Author : jseliger
Score : 41 points
Date : 2023-05-17 20:58 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.worksinprogress.news)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.worksinprogress.news)
| Vecr wrote:
| I think this makes sense, maintaining your country (and humanity
| as a whole) even at its current state is very hard. Things get
| worse unless you fix them.
| aeturnum wrote:
| I'm not a de-growther and I also think people are reasonably
| worried about structuring things in such a way that future
| expansion is assumed. Of course you can do it for a while, but it
| seems very possible we're coming up on the end of a while (or did
| 20 years ago, etc).
|
| I agree that our political undercurrents suggest an inchoate
| inability to actually change things. Stuffs all fucked up - for
| lack of a better way of putting it - and we don't know how to get
| into a sustainable situation. We've gotten by on growth for years
| because we could, and now we have to actually figure it out.
| peepeepoopoo5 wrote:
| Degrowth is a euphemism for economic recession/depression.
| well_actulily wrote:
| On a finite planet, how is perpetual growth supposed to work
| indefinitely?
| peepeepoopoo5 wrote:
| The space of possible future human technologies is
| effectively infinite, to say nothing of extraplanetary
| resources.
| prottog wrote:
| Of course it doesn't. But there is no agreement on how close
| we are to reaching the limits of the finite planet, with
| degrowth advocates thinking that we're near, at, or past it
| already, and others thinking that we have a long way to go
| still before the planet cannot sustain humanity.
|
| And of course, growth may hop onto other planets.
| BjoernKW wrote:
| Thermodynamically, nothing will work indefinitely.
|
| For all practical intents and purposes, the finite resources
| available on this planet and in the universe are more than
| sufficient, though.
| Syonyk wrote:
| That's rather wrong, though it's a common enough bit of
| nonsense slung at the degrowth movement.
|
| In any reasonably modern use of the word, "growth" is defined
| as "exponential growth" - percent year over year growth. We
| expect companies to grow by N percent, every year - this is how
| expectations are phrased. And while it may be a small number,
| "1% growth, year over year," is still an exponential curve.
|
| The first question that matters is, "Can exponential growth
| continue forever on a finite planet?" We _do_ live on a finite
| planet. Pick whatever metric you want and continue
| exponentially, you _will_ run into limits, eventually. Various
| physics bloggers have played with this rather extensively over
| the years. A trivially true statement we don 't often consider
| is, "Anything that can't go on forever will stop at some
| point."
|
| Combine those two, and exponential growth on a finite planet
| _will_ stop at some point.
|
| People try to argue around it via "decoupling" or "But
| asteroids" or various other methods, and some have some
| effects, but so far, they've either been "one time" sort of
| gains (various lighting or transportation efficiency gains), or
| "slowing the rate of the exponential growth" - but not
| fundamentally changing the problem of it being exponential.
|
| Given that, if you agree with both, there are then two general
| categories of response to it. The first, and I'd argue the
| current default, is to kick the can, and assume that someone or
| something else will fix the problem (or, more practically, that
| you'll die before it becomes a problem you have to deal with).
| This means that the collisions with the end of growth will be
| uncontrolled and generally quite destructive (as "accelerating
| into the approaching cliff face" tends to be).
|
| The alternative, which is what the degrowth movement argues
| for, is finding ways to terminate the exponential growth before
| we hit those walls. Under our current economic systems, that
| does imply something that looks like a recession/depression,
| but that's not the _goal_ - that 's just a transition from a
| "must grow" economy to a "steady state" sort of economy in
| action.
|
| And there's a lot of debate what it looks like, but I'm not
| convinced it's worth going into the details of that here, now.
|
| So... if you're going to criticize a movement, at least _try_
| to understand it first?
| peepeepoopoo5 wrote:
| You opened by saying that you're not proposing economic
| stagnation, but then wrote several paragraphs arguing for
| economic stagnation. Human technology isn't a finite
| resource.
| Syonyk wrote:
| Do you believe that exponential growth can continue forever
| on a finite {planet, solar system, galaxy, universe}?
|
| If not, then we will eventually have to deal with the
| problem. We can do it now, or later. Personally, I think
| "sooner" is better than "later" to deal with it, because I
| don't see us meaningfully getting off the planet, so maybe
| let's not trash the place worse.
| peepeepoopoo5 wrote:
| It's a fallacy to suggest that economic growth is finite,
| because human invention isn't a finite resource.
| Syonyk wrote:
| Human invention isn't, but energy certainly is, and the
| correlation between "economic growth" and "energy use per
| capita" is very, very strong. At least some of the
| "degrowth" has been a result of "financialization
| services," or the fine art of playing investor games
| enough times that you end up believing you're immune to
| things like, say, the 2008 housing crash.
|
| But we clearly disagree on this matter, and I don't see a
| point in continuing to go around on it. Time will tell
| which of us happens to be closer to correct.
| green_man_lives wrote:
| I think that what people mean, or think they mean, when they
| say "de-growth" is switching from pure GDP as a metric of
| standard of living, to a normalized GDP-per capita. Probably
| GDP per capita divided by hours of labor and also negative
| externalities like pollution and stuff.
|
| The idea here is that GDP should rise from a rise in
| productivity, rather than relying on an increase in population
| or working hours or increased environmental exploitation to
| achieve growth.
|
| It's annoyingly used in the case of this article to point to
| economic stagnation and say "look here's the de-growth you
| wanted". When the whole point is that GDP _should_ be
| increasing, just not at the expense of the citizens or the
| planet.
| peepeepoopoo5 wrote:
| GDP per capita would effectively give you the same metric,
| unless you're also implying that we need to cull the human
| population.
| crispinb wrote:
| Economic growth is a euphemism for biosphere destruction.
| Borrowing your phrase. More truthfully 'economic growth' and
| biosphere destruction are literally two terms for the exact
| same physical process. Circular economy stories excluded for
| the sci-fi fantasies they are, of course.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| > So why is it hard to decarbonise our energy systems? The rules
| against wind turbines and solar farms weren't lobbied for by top-
| hatted capitalists, but by campaigners who think of themselves as
| protectors of England's green and pleasant land: not BP and
| Shell, but the CPRE and the RSPB and countless local groups, and
| politicians seeking to accommodate them.
|
| The combination of smugness and gaslighting makes me genuinely
| angry.
| epistasis wrote:
| I'm not sure if you're accusing the author or the subjects of
| this paragraph of smugness and gaslighting.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| The author.
|
| I genuinely didn't expect the next phase of climate change
| denial to be trying to rewrite history to blame
| environmentalists for stopping progress.
| green_man_lives wrote:
| [flagged]
| Jtsummers wrote:
| From the guidelines:
|
| > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling,
| brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion
| and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email
| hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Also, it's got a whopping 10 upvotes (at the time of your
| comment). Pretty poor astroturfing it is.
| green_man_lives wrote:
| My bad
| coderintherye wrote:
| I like the author's approach, as this problem really comes down
| to one of various interest groups and their interests and
| incentives. In the U.S., we subsidize home ownership through
| mortgage interest tax breaks and various other legislation and we
| treat homes as investments. Naturally then, most homeowners will
| want to continue to push for anything that increases the value of
| that investment and oppose anything that decreases it (e.g.
| building more housing).
|
| It will be interesting to see how California's approach to this
| problem plays out. We have had local regulations and NIMBY groups
| forestall new construction/denser housing, but the state pushed
| through legislation to forcibly override those local blockers.
| Incentives should now be aligned for builders to build, but local
| homeowners will continue to fight against it because their
| incentives are not aligned.
| gretch wrote:
| > Naturally then, most homeowners will want to continue to push
| for anything that increases the value of that investment and
| oppose anything that decreases it (e.g. building more housing).
|
| The example is commonly cited, but it's irrational (though that
| doesn't mean people don't do it).
|
| Developed denser areas are higher value than sparse rural ones.
| For example, if the area around your house suddenly became New
| York and you owned a SFH sized lot in Manhattan, you'd be rich.
|
| There are many nimby groups opposed to construction, but hardly
| ever have I seen it due to being "I want the value of my house
| to go up".
|
| Source: I own a house in the Bay Area and talk to my neighbors
| about what they think.
| tristor wrote:
| > There are many nimby groups opposed to construction, but
| hardly ever have I seen it due to being "I want the value of
| my house to go up".
|
| The quiet part nobody wants to say out loud is that the
| NIMBYs aren't opposed to construction to make their house
| value go up, it's to keep it from going down. Nobody wants
| the undeveloped land in their subdivision to get turned into
| a landfill or chemical processing plant. Nobody wants a
| collection of SFHs bought up, bulldozed, and replaced by mid-
| rise apartments that will be part of an "affordable housing
| project" (which is a euphemism for rent-subsidized government
| housing). Nobody wants the strip mall down the street
| replaced with a homeless shelter.
|
| What people don't want is a nice place to live turned into a
| place where they and their family get exposed to
| environmental toxins, crime, poverty, and violence. This also
| has the side-effect of lowering property values, but that's
| not why anyone cares for the most part, it's that they /LIVE
| THERE/ and don't want to live near squalor and desperation.
| millimeterman wrote:
| In the very long term, yes a large plot of land in a densely-
| constructed city would be extremely valuable. In the short
| and medium-term though, the downward price pressure of
| increased supply outweighs the upward price pressure of
| amenity effects.[1][2][3]
|
| Very few NIMBYs will openly admit to wanting to maintain
| their property values because it's a much less noble sounding
| cause than "preserving the character of the neighborhood" or
| whatever.
|
| 1. https://research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=13
| 34...
|
| 2. https://blocksandlots.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Do-
| New-...
|
| 3.
| https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3867764
| renewiltord wrote:
| Sure. No one says "I want the value of my house to go up" but
| everyone says "This plot near my home shouldn't be an
| apartment block. It should be a park".
|
| Ideally, for those who believe this, their house is solo on a
| block and then around it is nothing but parks paid for by
| other taxpayers.
| millimeterman wrote:
| > We have had local regulations and NIMBY groups forestall new
| construction/denser housing, but the state pushed through
| legislation to forcibly override those local blockers.
| Incentives should now be aligned for builders to build, but
| local homeowners will continue to fight against it because
| their incentives are not aligned.
|
| California has only made a few tiny steps toward allowing
| construction. They are good steps, don't get me wrong, but
| there is still a very long way to go before California can even
| begin to catch up on its decades of under-building.
| Syonyk wrote:
| California is also facing a net reduction in population in the
| past few years (around half a million total - that counts
| births, deaths, people moving in, people moving out - the
| state's absolute population has gone down the past two years).
|
| Eventually, problems do solve themselves. One way or another.
| It just may not be in the desired way.
| scythe wrote:
| LA (metro) saw a decadal growth of just 2.9% -- total -- from
| 2010 to 2020. That's less than half the national average, and
| well below many cheap cities. Zoom out to the combined
| statistical area (including SB/Riverside) and it only goes up
| to 4.2%. Yet it hasn't gotten significantly cheaper.
|
| Stopping growth does not imply achieving affordability on a
| reasonable timescale. Over several decades, maybe. But
| letting pain solve problems usually requires more than people
| realize it will take.
| prottog wrote:
| > Eventually, problems do solve themselves. One way or
| another.
|
| As Keynes said, in the long run, we are all dead. It would be
| nice to solve some of these problems within our lifetimes.
| Syonyk wrote:
| A reasonable question, and one not terribly often asked, is "What
| is the point of the economy, growth, etc?" Is it to serve human
| health, happiness, prosperity... or is it to just grow for the
| sake of "numbers go up"?
|
| Is the economy made for man, or man for the economy?
|
| We (collectively, western, industrial, etc) are trapped in the
| "growth" thinking - the way out of any problem is to grow out of
| it, which works fairly well until you start hitting the problems
| caused by growth - which, I'd argue, we are now facing. Carbon
| emissions, general "stripping large parts of the planet for the
| mineral goodies under it," etc. And, of course, we've ended up in
| a debt-based economy that works great, until growth slows down.
|
| It's going to be an interesting ride, and the best suggestions
| I've seen are to simply get ahead of the curve, and figure out
| how to live on LESS (Less Energy, Simulation, and Stuff) now,
| while we still have the resources to make mistakes and figure out
| the details - because that lower energy future (or, at least,
| more limits on energy, growth, etc) is coming down the tunnel at
| a good clip.
|
| I deal with it regularly, since my office is a standalone, off
| grid power system. I just _use less energy,_ by an order of
| magnitude or so, in the winter - and I bundle up out here.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| You believe in a consumer driven solution?
| Syonyk wrote:
| I can hope for a mass change (reduction) in energy use,
| consumption, etc, driven by consumers - though I don't
| believe it's likely to happen until the issue is forced by
| something like "unavailability of resources compared to
| income" - as we're seeing right now in various ways.
|
| I fully expect us as a society to hit the various walls at
| speed, and have to find some way to do something useful with
| the various pieces remaining.
|
| But, given that, "working out the useful things one can do
| beforehand" is useful - because you can afford to screw up,
| to learn what works well locally, and have the resources to
| experiment. I'll point to things like "direct solar heating
| of homes" (solar thermal air collectors) as the sort of thing
| that take some learning how to build and use effectively, and
| it's useful to work that out while Home Depot still is
| tolerably well stocked. And/or to collect supplies ahead of
| time.
|
| I'm aware it's a pessimistic view, but it's been working just
| fine for modeling reality.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| I'll try to summarize to check I understand: people won't
| take real action until suffering is unbearable; and, you
| suggest becoming an ecological disaster prepper.
| Syonyk wrote:
| If you want to phrase it that way, sure. I won't argue.
| It gets at the core of it well enough. Though I'd
| rephrase the second part as "Building a robust lifestyle
| against a wide range of possible disruptions."
| Ecological, food security, financial, etc. It happens to
| be grand fun, in the deal, and far more fun than staring
| at screens filled with little glowing dots.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > Is the economy made for man, or man for the economy?
|
| Pendulums swing.
|
| Right now we're in the part of the cycle where man is being
| adapted to the economic system (so the latter). We're in a
| situation where more and more capital seems to be ending up in
| fewer hands - the rise of AI seems likely to accelerate that
| trend and lead to even more income inequality if we're not very
| careful. The rising tide was supposed to raise all boats, but
| that doesn't seem to be happening so much anymore as it did
| earlier.
|
| We've sort of been here before (The Gilded Age) and we were
| able to get the pendulum to swing back in favor of the workers
| through mass labor movements in the late 19th and early 20th
| centuries - that was a move towards the economy made for man.
| Will we be able to do that again?
| prottog wrote:
| The history of human progress is one of harnessing more energy
| per capita in a mighty struggle to leave behind the
| disadvantaged state of man in nature ("solitary, poor, nasty,
| brutish, and short"). We've done quite well so far.
|
| I'd like for humanity to keep going until the average Sri
| Lankan or Congolese can live like the average Texan or Swiss[0]
| does now, and hopefully until everyone can live in a true post-
| scarcity world a la Star Trek.
|
| It's all well and good for an individual living in the
| developed world to freely choose to try and consume less
| energy, but degrowth as a whole I'm afraid would mean that the
| global poor stay globally poor.
|
| [0]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > I'd like for humanity to keep going until the average Sri
| Lankan or Congolese can live like the average Texan or Swiss
| does now
|
| What if the average Texan could use 1/2 as much energy as
| they do now and still have a decent lifestyle? Even a better
| lifestyle. In a lot of ways cars are not healthy for us, for
| example. What if we made more of our trips on ebikes, for
| example? Much less energy use and a bit of exercise. I'm not
| sure the average Sri Lankan wants to be as obese as the
| average Texan - similar for rates of diabetes. I think Sri
| Lankans can do better than the average Texan by keeping their
| cities walkable (and bikeable) and not putting in a lot of
| car-centric development which is the norm in Texas.
| Aunche wrote:
| Who exactly are the boogeymen who are tunnel visioned on making
| "numbers go up"? The vast majority of people's political
| beliefs instead come from narratives that resonate, which is
| how you get such ridiculous ideas such as degrowth will
| magically solve climate change and catalyze a proletariat
| revolution. IMO, we would be in a place if people genuinely
| cared to shape their beliefs based on raw numbers. In the few
| instances that people care about numbers, it is to do the
| opposite: cherry-picking numbers that reinforce their
| worldview.
| ben_w wrote:
| > Who exactly are the boogeymen who are tunnel visioned on
| making "numbers go up"?
|
| If my (literally and proudly to-the-left-of-Castro communist)
| ex is anything to go by: billionaires.
|
| I am not clear if she's representative in this regard, what
| with her being an actual communist and all.
| scythe wrote:
| >I just use less energy, by an order of magnitude or so, in the
| winter - and I bundle up out here.
|
| Unfortunately this is about as far as "degrowth" gets: "what if
| we were just _cold?_ " Or worse, hot? How do we enforce this,
| anyway? Rationing? Taxes on energy? Have you seen what happens
| to politicians when gas prices go up?
|
| People complain about fast fashion -- should we have a tax on
| clothes? People moan about airplanes -- do we want it to be
| harder to travel?
|
| >we've ended up in a debt-based economy
|
| If you want to be taken seriously, step one is not adopting Ron
| Paul's economics rhetoric.
|
| >because that lower energy future (or, at least, more limits on
| energy, growth, etc) is coming down the tunnel at a good clip.
|
| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics
|
| >Is the economy made for man, or man for the economy?
|
| "The economy" is a description of what people are doing. Do we
| do things for ourselves, or do we do them for the doing -- is
| this the right question? Is it even a meaningful question?
| renewiltord wrote:
| It is quite obvious what's going on: so-called protectors of the
| environment and of peoples' rights can now be judged by their
| actions. The Democratic Socialists of America's primary
| achievement is blocking building of homes so that golf courses
| can be preserved. The Sierra Club's primary achievement is
| ensuring urban sprawl. Burning Man's primary lasting achievement
| is the stalling of geothermal power.
|
| POSIWID. The Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea is not judged
| by its name but by its actions. So be it for the
| environmentalists and their ilk.
|
| If you fail at X and succeed at not X, you're a Not X
| organization. Sure, I know I know it's the corporations. But you
| did act as well, and you always succeeded at not X and failed at
| X. That makes you a Not X Organization. What you win at is what
| you are.
| jasmer wrote:
| Interesting but there isn't necessarily a hard link between lack
| of growth and these issues.
|
| The West has a demographic problem, that could be hitting hard
| and I'm not saying it explains everything, but it's a significant
| enough issue that it could basically be the whole thing.
|
| China is selling us a ton of stuff very cheaply, which reducees
| jobs and profits in the West, but does provide surpluses that we
| don't measure. I mean, just look at photos from 30 years ago: we
| have way more selection of clothes, electronics. We love our apps
| and mobile phones. Those are distinctly valuable, but not very
| profitible on the books.
|
| Definitely there has been a lack of growth and foundation of new
| industry, and that should be a concern.
|
| For those wondering, GDP matters because wealth tends to make a
| lot of problems go away. Go to a poor country - they have garbage
| healthcare because they can't afford it it's that simple.
| Obviously money is not everything but it's definitely a thing.
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _We love our apps and mobile phones._
|
| We collectively spend a lot of time staring at them, for sure.
| That the best paid minds of our time have set themselves to
| finding ways to "improve engagement" endlessly in various ways
| and dark patterns probably has a lot to do with that, and I'm
| far from certain that it's good for human... anything, really.
| Health, sanity, happiness, the works. We've been told that
| "social media" (which is what a lot of the staring at phone
| involves) connects us, but study after study demonstrates the
| exact opposite - that it atomizes us and alienates us, with
| plenty of follow on impacts on happiness, contentedness, etc.
| It's a great gig, make people unhappy and then sell their
| eyeballs to people who want to the sell them the solutions to
| that problem, but let's not pretend it's more than just seeking
| more money.
|
| There is certainly a range of things that can be done with more
| money to spend on a society, but American healthcare being
| "staggeringly expensive" doesn't also mean it's "the best."
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