
Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth? - doctoroctogon
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/02/10/can-we-have-prosperity-without-growth
======
b0rsuk
Growth is an international arms race.

I think the biggest problem is that economic growth gives countries a
(military) advantage. If you opt out of growth-based economic system, your
neighbors will have more army or resources or manpower. They will eventually
invade you or dominate you economically.

This is similar to the situation Africans were during Industrial Revolution.
Europeans needed a lot of workers for factories and plantations, so they would
visit a coastal African country and buy slaves. You could refuse to sell them
slaves, but then they would sail to your neighbors and sell them firearms.
Then those neighbors would have substantial military advantage and could
invade you. There were only two options: be the ones that receive the rifles,
or form a large alliance which refuses to sell slaves to Europeans. Forming
large alliances is HARD. Africans weren't stupid - they tried to negate the
technical advantage, for example the king of Kongo wanted to pay well for ship
technology. (source: "Black Mother" by Basil Davidson)

Back to prosperity without growth. To resist pressure from neighboring states
that practice economic growth, you would need to continuously improve
efficiency and that's hard. Produce terminator-like killer machines and drones
to make up for less numerous army. Have super advanced science, strategy or
diplomacy. The only country I know that comes close is Switzerland, and it has
the advantage of mountainous terrain away from major transport routes. Ideally
the advantages you have should be ones that can't be taken away from you or
"stolen" via espionage.

~~~
merpnderp
1% growth difference over 100 years is the difference between the per capita
income of the US vs Mexico. So yes, unless you arbitrarily limit the entire
globe to some level of prosperity like a novel about a disutopian world ruled
by an evil anti-science theocracy, people are going to look at countries
growing faster than them and wonder why they have to slum it like peasants
without their flying cars and vacations on the moon.

~~~
coldtea
> _So yes, unless you arbitrarily limit the entire globe to some level of
> prosperity like a novel about a disutopian world ruled by an evil anti-
> science theocracy,_

I don't see much evil to that (limiting the "the entire globe to some level of
prosperity"). Nor it has anything to do with being anti-science. You could be
pro-science (pro understanding the world, physics, math, etc), and against
continuous growth.

Better that models that treat the environment as externalities, or which
convolute and stress the daily life for ever more trinkets to fuel the growth
machine...

~~~
andersonvieira
You probably live a comfortable life and is mostly satisfied with what you
have so you see no need for more growth. Now imagine someone had the means to
implement this same idea 200 years ago. We probably wouldn't have water and
sewage treatment, fast transportation, modern medicine, electric light and all
the appliances that come with it, internet, etc. I find it disingenuous to
dismiss all these as trinkets.

This would be basically limiting the possibilities of all future humans in the
name of some "greater good". That is textbook evil for me.

I think the main problem with this kind of thinking is that it is always based
on what you know now, and not on what is possible. The world we live today,
our technology, and the way we use resources would be unimaginable 200 years
ago. The same is true about our knowledge of what will be possible 200 years
from now.

~~~
raducu
I think you are being disingenuousby saying 200 years. Except medical advances
and science, I'd be all willing to trade ALL the economic "growth" in the
first world of the last 20 years if we could also revert wars, climate change
and destruction of habbitat for the last 20 years. Oh, and by "growth" I mean
the insane asset price inflation and concentration wealth, strengthening of
the military-industrial complex, monopolisation by corporations, too big to
fail banks and financial institutions.

~~~
virgilp
Do you also mean AI, space flight, genome research, evolution of computing,
etc?

Also - I agree that growth in the first world came at the expense of the
middle class - but in much of the rest of the world, it didn't. I was
_massively_ poorer 20 years ago (and not just me, most of my country, really).
And it's not a singular thing - AFAIK a lot of people came out of poverty in
those last 20 years. In east asia & pacific this seems to have been dramatic:
[https://ourworldindata.org/exports/share-of-population-
livin...](https://ourworldindata.org/exports/share-of-population-living-in-
extreme-poverty-by-world-region_v4_850x600.svg)

~~~
rbrtl
I think you know OP didn't mean those:

> Except medical advances and science, I'd be all willing to trade ALL the
> economic "growth"

I don't understand if you're making a larger point or not, but the "first
world" is the focus of the discussion of whether or not growth economics is
harmful. It worked fantastically well for the first world for many years,
possibly even the 200 year scale that the commenter above challenged. The
issues have arisen in the last 50 years (opinion incoming) and particularly
since the US, and UK embraced the Trickle Down model that Reagan pulled over
the American people's eyes.

Western Civilisation spent some 600 years taking their freedoms from those who
held them down -- the politically, and economically, elite. In 8 years
President Reagan convinced the American people that these overlords no longer
needed to be held account for taking the bulk of the wealth of the masses for
themselves, on a promise that it would come back to them, and that this was a
required measure to encourage growth of the economy as a whole.

This was a bald-faced lie, wealth-capture and the chasm of wealth inequality
was at an all time low in the developed world circa 1970, the last 50 years
have served only to restore the land- and robber-barons to their political
city on a hill.

They used the oldest tools in the despots handbook to achieve this: propaganda
and agents provocateurs.

Today it is easier than ever for the political class to deploy these weapons
against their citizens (whom, by the way, should be their peers in a
democracy), and to obfuscate the use of these tools from those worst affected.

~~~
thu2111
Problem is that view is contradictory.

In the absence of discovering a natural resource bounty, GDP (economic) growth
comes from two sources:

1\. More people working harder.

2\. Better technology.

If you exclude "medical advances and science" you're basically excluding (2)
which means the only source of growth is (1). More people working harder.
Saying the world can only get better by increasing the number of hours we work
is dystopian and doesn't make sense to wish for.

Ultimately, all progress comes through technology.

~~~
zemvpferreira
That's a big claim you're making. Can't economic growth (AKA inflation) come
about from rising asset prices such as houses?

It seems to me that conflating humanity's progress and economic growth is
exactly where our problems start.

~~~
raducu
How is a rise in house prices helping the nobler parts of the economy? People
spend considerable more of their income on mortgages or rents, leaving a lot
less for other less fixed and shorter lived assets. I'd be 1000% satisfied
with a 50' house and valuation, leaving me to spend my money on travel,
charity, high-tech or just work less, do stuff that really interests me; or
spend a lot more on education. How is the education bubble helping the
progress of humanity?

I'd be extremely happy with the education + costs of 50 years ago, or just
online education -- I'm not talking about content, but delivery and costs.

It boggles my mind that people don't see it for what it is -- the feudal lords
are back and they take a lot more of your production just so you stay alive.

They are not helping humanity(except for some benevolent ones) progress, they
99% help themselves.

~~~
zemvpferreira
Sorry if the language wasn’t clear but that is the point I was trying to make:
when we use economic growth as a measure of improving quality of life for
people, it ceases to be a good measure.

------
weeksie
The one fundamental reason why growth is so important is that without growth,
the economy becomes a zero sum game. In order for you to get more money you
_must_ take it from someone else since there is only a fixed amount. A low
growth world is one where we plunder each others' wealth, not one were the
incentives are aligned with building new industry.

That's why productivity increases are so important. Without them, if we want
growth, we have to get it from positive sum games. I'm skeptical that will
provide enough to stop people from reverting to a more Malthusian plunder
mindset.

Any vision of a non-growth world needs to take that into account. Without
growth we'd have to fundamentally rethink how we handle distribution without
reverting to bloodsport.

~~~
pif
As bilekas was saying, the one fundamental reason why growth must not be so
important is that it cannot continue ad infinitum, thus we will have to learn
and cope with that.

While you state an important point, the issue of growth having to stop (sooner
or later) cannot be ignored.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Growth may eventually stop if humans remain constrained to Earth, but if we
can advance to a point where we can mine the Asteroid belt between Mars and
Jupiter, the wealth influx from that will be enough to sustain growth in human
society far into the future.

------
mjburgess
As far as I can tell this is just a misunderstanding of "growth" in an
economic sense. Growth is the result of improvements in productivity, which
tend to reduce energy use (per item produced). We consume more energy _net_
because we produce more.

If, eg., products became more expensive because of limited energy (or relevant
taxing of externalities) then we would grow more slowly -- we can still
produce more through innovation _and_ consume less energy.

It took a huge amount of energy in the past to make a single pair of socks --
today, it takes a tiny amount.

I think the relevant question for 'exponential energy-consumption graphs' is
what the relationship is to growth (it simply cannot be assumed that there is
a 'deep causal' relationship; this is fallacious equivocation).

Eg., population has been increasing exponentially. Could a static population
size produce a flat (or falling) net energy use graph -- whilst still
obtaining economic growth (ie., productivity improvements)?

~~~
paulintrognon
Empirically, economic growth has always been related to consumption of energy
and raw materials. One explanation is the Rebound effect[1]

Maybe theorically they can be decoupled, but we have yet to see that in the
real world.

More about it: [https://eeb.org/library/decoupling-
debunked/](https://eeb.org/library/decoupling-debunked/)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebound_effect_(conservation)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebound_effect_\(conservation\))

~~~
pas
There is a lot of raw materials and energy. The problem is how clean we can do
extraction and energy generation. So it's not surprising that we are still
very much tracking both correlates.

------
mech1234
Lots of people underestimate the degree to which economic growth fuels good
life outcomes for wide swaths of people.

-Even though many people live paycheck to paycheck at many different income levels, enough income growth can get you out of a paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle and enable you to have real financial autonomy.

-One thing that has stuck in my mind over the last few years is that one of the worst outcomes of unemployment is when people feel useless as a person- leading to psychological problems and behavioral problems.

-The pace at which we solve real, useful problems grows with economic growth.

~~~
thanatropism
More importantly, you can enjoy (maybe exploding inequality moderates this a
bit) a rising standard of living while living from paycheck to paycheck.

Growing up I was raised by classical musicians permanently on the bleeding
edge of solvency (not with debt either) but new _stuff_ kept coming that
increased both their quality of life and ”nonmonetary” productivity: microwave
ovens and computers that my dad could use to take his orchestral compositions
(in sheet music for all parts) to part sheets (for individual players)
automagically whereas this was _work_ before.

We weren’t in the kind of self-reproducing poverty because my parents had a
high “cultural level”, but we were definitely cash poor, and yet kept getting
wealthier and wealthier.

------
novalis78
It’s fascinating how the reality of Earth being embedded in a vast ocean of
resource is completely lost on so many. Human ingenuity is key. With every
step we unlock another level of resource utilization driving prosperity. If
anything social organization and financial frameworks need to support the
unfolding of our technology tree. As humanity we just woke up. Enlightenment
now.

~~~
slumdev
> Earth being embedded in a vast ocean of resource

This reads like prosperity gospel and law of attraction nonsense rolled
together and repackaged for a technical audience.

A kilogram of _anything_ from space is orders of magnitude more expensive to
acquire than a kilogram on Earth. No technology will change that within my
lifetime. If there are no physics-redefining advances in nuclear fusion and/or
nuclear fission, my grandchildren will probably be able to make the same
claim.

~~~
dTal
>A kilogram of anything from space is orders of magnitude more expensive to
acquire than a kilogram on Earth.

This is true, if you are on Earth and wish to remain there.

If you are in space already, and don't have deal with pesky things like
gravity and friction, it could conceivably be way easier to chip a lump of
metal off an asteroid and hurl it in the general direction of where it needs
to be, than to dig it up and put it on a boat. It's a bit chicken and egg, but
it's easy to imagine a scenario where off-world becomes the new Shenzen.

~~~
0xffff2
> It's a bit chicken and egg, but it's easy to imagine a scenario where off-
> world becomes the new Shenzen.

So easy to imagine that we've been doing so for 40 years [0]. In fact, the
basic technology seems to have been in place for 40 years as well, but no
economic incentive to execute on these grand plans for permanent human
habitation in space has yet been found. Furthermore, I have yet to see any
evidence that such incentive will ever be found.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Frontier:_Human_Colon...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Frontier:_Human_Colonies_in_Space)

------
mark_l_watson
I talk about the effects of limiting GDP-style growth on our lifestyle with my
wife. We burn a lot of carbon and use a lot of resources traveling, but on the
other hand in our day to day life we tend to buy food in bulk at health food
stores, try very hard to avoid using plastic, share one fuel efficient car,
etc.

Our take is that, for the sake of our grandchildren's generation and
generations beyond that, that we would be willing to reduce our travel,
concentrating more on visiting family and friends rather than international
travel.

The effect has taken years to become noticeable, but not having network TV in
our home so we are not deluged with BUY THIS NOW commercials for stuff we
don’t need has helped us to avoid buying stuff we really don’t need.

As a society, if we invested more in libraries, public parks, venues for
entertainment, science and education, etc. then I think we would be better off
than embracing a more material world/life style.

Everyone gets to make their own decisions, so for my preferences to be
achieved, we would need to stop corporate socializism and make consumers pay
the real costs for goods. An example would be to remove the $50b per year
water subsidies for the beef industry, and make consumers pay for the
approximately 4000 gallons of water required to produce a pound of meat in the
grocery store.

~~~
vonmoltke
> An example would be to remove the $50b per year water subsidies for the beef
> industry

Do you have a source for that? Every one I have been able to find indicates
that total meat and dairy subsidies are less than that, let alone just water
subsidies for the beef industry.

~~~
ryanmercer
I doubt it's a remotely accurate figure. However, cattle consume a LOT of
water. 20~ gallons per head per day is a fairly accurate figure and the US has
something like 95 million cows.

So with farming and animal husbandry water rights are a big thing. Often water
rights will go to farmers/ranchers long before they go to people.

So you've got cows, with a conservative estimate, using 500 billion gallons of
water a year in the U.S. alone just for drinking. Obviously most of that is
coming from natural sources but that has financial impacts on the treated
water that ends up pumped to your house/business via pipes. How big is that
financial impact? _shrugs_

I highly doubt it's close to 50 billion USD a year though.

They definitely do get comparatively obscene amounts of financial benefit
though. Water rights, forage disaster, livestock compensation, indemnity
payments, feed assistance, general relief, then you have to think about what
sort of subsidies the growers get that then gets passed through as a benefit
in the price of the feed going to the livestock...

Man I love meat, I love love love meat, but I switched to primarily whole food
plant based last year. WFPB is far more sustainable as far as water and land,
arguably much healthier, requires far less fossil fuel input, and noticeably
cheaper (my weekly grocery bill as halved).

~~~
BlueTemplar
And who knows if that water even comes from renewable sources...

------
enriquto
Cue to a physicists view on this subject (starting from basic termodynamic
principles):

[https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-
physicist...](https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/)

~~~
spodek
Do the Math is one of my favorite sites on the internet for the value and
perspective it brings. I had a few great conversations with its author on my
podcast [http://joshuaspodek.com/guests/tom-
murphy](http://joshuaspodek.com/guests/tom-murphy).

I found this report valuable too: Decoupling debunked – Evidence and arguments
against green growth as a sole strategy for sustainability:
[https://eeb.org/library/decoupling-
debunked](https://eeb.org/library/decoupling-debunked).

------
bitxbit
Growth is good but we are entering an economic environment where countries and
companies are growing simply to show growth. It’s inorganic. In the past this
type of behavior would result in boom and bust cycles, now the easy money has
made it possible for us to go on indefinitely.

This all started with Wall Street. I want to make that ABSOLUTELY clear.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
"Growth" just means "Wall St gets a positive return". That's all it has ever
meant.

When wealth was being more aggressively redistributed this also meant the rest
of the US saw some practical benefits. Now that's no longer true, it's just a
numbers game for the 1%.

------
_red
Debt-based monetary systems will skew towards ever increasing growth.

~~~
chii
The way I think of it is that in order for debt to exist, interest on the debt
must be paid. But to pay interest, you must create more value than the debt
you incurred, otherwise you'd not have enough to pay the interest!

But the other side of debt is somebody's deposit. So if you summed the debt,
it must be equal to all deposit. So from where would the interest come from?
It must come from new production. But interest paid become a new deposit (for
somebody), and from that new deposit, new debt is created...and hence, require
infinite growth to continue to service interest payment.

~~~
beefield
I think there is something wrong with your premises. There is no rule of law
nor nature that interest must be paid. Negative or zero interest are
completely possible.

~~~
chii
but if someone loaned out money to somebody else, you'd expect that they'd ask
for interest payment.

negative interest rates seems like it's an impossibility (in the sense that
only a central bank is willing and able to charge negative rates) for normal
commercial loans. And if a bank charged negative rates on deposits (higher
than it costs to keep cash safe in a secure safe!), then i suspect people will
just withdraw their cash, unless something forces them to keep it in (like the
abolishment of cash by central authorities).

~~~
beefield
In Denmark you can take a mortgage and "pay" negative interest rate [1]. That
is, you pay less back than what you borrowed. I fully agree that most people
would expect the interest rate to be positive, but their expectation is no
rule.

Actually I am very sure interest rates have no causal relationship with
continuous growth. The one (and only?) thing where the the continuous growth
requirement comes from is that most people do not want to be unemployed.
_That_ is the choice you need to make. Do you want growth or unvoluntary
unemployment?

[1] [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/12/danish-bank-is-
offering-10-y...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/12/danish-bank-is-
offering-10-year-mortgages-with-negative-interest-rates.html)

~~~
chii
that denmark negative interest rate is interesting. But it still doesn't quite
answer the central issue - who is "giving up" money to lend? The guardian
article ([https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019aug/13/danish-bank-
lau...](https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019aug/13/danish-bank-launches-
worlds-first-negative-interest-rate-mortgage)) only mentions that it's banks
passing on negative rates from institutional lenders in money markets.

~~~
beefield
Sorry, I do not quite understand your question.

Anyway, it is ultimately (when you get your head around it, that is...)
relatively simple. These institutional investors have cash (well, not exactly
cash, but "cash" as in overnight deposits) that they need to invest. some
poart of that they want to invest in "safe" instruments, e.g. bonds/commercial
papers issued by banks. And it happens to be that they are willing to do that
even if they are paid negative interest rate[1]. So the bank pays for its
funding say -1.0%. Then the bank can lend the money forward with -0.5% and
still make money.

[1] Why do they want to do that? If you have a decent amount of money, say
millions, and you want to save that for a while to purchase something say next
month, you have not that many good alternatives to bank deposits/commercial
papers/bonds. Actual cash is surprisingly cumbersome and expensive. Stocks are
risky, you may lose quite a bit within one month. Government bonds pay even
less. so if your bank says yep, we take your money for a month and pay you
back a bit less in a month, you are likely going to swallow it.

------
nnq
This is dumb, and subtly evil too. We can have the cake and eat it too:

The point is to keep the growth of _scientific understanding_ and of
_technical know-how_ without producing too much physical crap that is hard to
recycle and overloads the environment. We need to:

(1) move our economy to more non-physical / virtual goods and service - we're
doing this, but we could do better, since there are still lots of "status
goods" (with little practical survival utility) that are physical and damage
the environment by their production and operation - _the rich should be able
to buy better VR-avatar spells or exclusive-in-game-diamonds or whatever
instead of cars, yachts, expensive to maintain houses etc.!_

(2) make warfare fully digital in means and virtual/economical in consequences
- 99% of conflict should be cyberwarfare-with-low-environmental-impact - like
in "hacking to steal coins from country X's national budget wallet", not
"hacking to sabotage industrial infrastructure" (sure, people will still die
when country X goes bankrupt and nobody living there has health insurance
anymore, but this shouldn't happen that often...)

A solution for accelerating (1) would be increasing research into how to make
virtual stuff feel real and be more and more _addictive_ \- real-world "stuff"
should feel soul-crunchingly-boring to our dopamine addicted brains (why go on
a cruise ship or travel to Tropifukistan, when you can ride a dragon around
Hogwarts and earn $$ if you're good at it!) For (2) it probably helps that
everyone getting to have WMDs makes everyone scared s`less of larger scale
military conflict. Oh, and fear of communicable diseases also helps move
towards (1), as we can see now, but I'd personally prefer alternative
"solutions"...

 _So we 're probably heading in the right direction, we just need to stabilize
the symptoms/consequences of environmental degradation short-term, and to
push-the-pedal-to-the metal to disconnecting our consumption-oriented economy
from the physical world (and on a parallel track go for the space-
colonization-game for actual physical action - the fans of "real war", could
have it too, but outside Earth, heck they could even bring in the nuclear
toys, space is large)._

~~~
BlueTemplar
ur dumb :p

No, seriously, the "digital economy" is not new these days - have you seen any
positive impact on resource consumption / pollution ? It only got worse...

Warfare is about control of real resources - some people might be willing, but
countries in general won't settle for fake ones !

~~~
nnq
Ofc you'll say that "it only got worse" overall bc other things got worse...
The digital-virtual economy needs to grow at least 10x, and percentually to at
least 95% of the actual economy (physical goods need to be comoditized, and
some maybe distribute equally in a pseudo-socialistic way, outside of the
economical system - the fight should be for virtual resources). You're not
going to see any "things getting better" result yet, we need to go full-speed
all-in in this direction, not half-heartedly... Virtual economy has a > 100x
growth potential once we have better VR, AR, and later neural interfaces.
"Demand" will appear or be manufactured, in the end we'll probably have too
much of it.

And tons of services can be created even around the negative consequences of
this... all the cornucopia of new diseases mental and physical brought about
by excessive virtual consumption will boom into a huge healthcare industry
etc. This will also be growth!

And just like "power" can't be real or fake, it either is or isn't, same with
resources - as long as there are exchange mechanisms, there's no difference
between "real" or "virtual", everything is as real as everything else...

Entities that insist on "old fashion fighting for `real` resources" should be
restructured. People rewired / reeducated.

 _We 're on the right path, but yeah, we're maybe only 0.01% of the way
there... need to do things faster and harder. Let's not chicken out now and go
retro/conservative instead of pushing further! The future is... amazingly
incomprehensible! Heil to it!_

~~~
BlueTemplar
I concur, you'll either have the power working to make your
computer/VR/network run - or not. And it's the people that have the control
over that power delivery that are going to have the real power (as they always
did). Who is going to restructure / rewire / reeducate Vladimir Putin (or the
like), hmm ?

~~~
nnq
> Who is going to restructure / rewire / reeducate Vladimir Putin (or the
> like), hmm ?

"Control over physical resources" is just a means, not an end... If you want
"more power for your nation" or whatever and the world stage has been
restructured so you can better get that by playing a different game, you'll
switch the game. And Russia seems to be good at both cyber-warfare and "mental
games", they can get even better and win even more, good for them, whatever.

(And the future of cheap-renewables plus mini-nuclear will mean power/energy
will be available to everyone... fight would be more on "fabrication and
repair capability/tech for next-gen hardware" or stuff like that - here China
and SE-Asia seem to be winning the game, and they overall are pretty pro-
globalistic and pro-virtual... for their own f up reasons, but whatever, if it
pushes things in the right direction, fine.)

Anyway, things are going fine, though slow (sometimes progress goes one casket
at a time unfortunately)... let's just hope some people don't f things up
because they have their own personal/national/etc. crusade to fight for and
mix it up with nostalgia for the "past full of meaning" and they drag us into
some messed up war. Let's try and be peaceful and keep commerce flowing,
previous generations have worked too hard to get this global system going for
us to f it up by, ironically, being nostalgic for some good-ol-times that
never actually existed...

~~~
BlueTemplar
> And the future of cheap-renewables plus mini-nuclear will mean power/energy
> will be available to everyone...

This is wishful thinking. You would need incredible improvements in technology
to maybe hope to start reducing resource consumption. Because so far, resource
consumption only got worse as efficiency got better.

------
esjeon
"Growth" is surely a good way to ease domestic pressure, but I believe it's
not the only option. What we need is more "optimization", not corporate-wide,
but society-wide.

The idea is still vague even to myself, so let me give a concrete example:
self-driving car. While CV/AI-based self-driving cars certainly can drive, it
should still acquire most critical information, like signals, crossroads,
lanes, obstacles, etc, through ambiguous-at-best algorithms. At the same time,
the inherent difficulty in making good-enough AI empowers companies over
people, which is a straight highway to cyberpunk dystopia.

However, what if we implant digital data sources all over the road? (1) self-
driving cars will always acquire correct data (2) developing safe self-driving
cars become much easier (2-1) market diversity is ensured (2-2) people regain
power (3) it is much easier to achieve the economy of scale with sensor nodes
than cars.

Or, perhaps, what about delivery/reservation services? If the standard
protocols are enforced on all restaurants, we can cut all the middlemen,
lowering the prices. The same can work for taxi, hotel, scooter, bicycle, etc.

We really should start rethinking about things we have and use. The industrial
structure we have today is just a mess caused by the rapid IT revolution. We
weren't really ready for it. But now we've expanded enough, and should shrink
down, so that we can have breathing room for another move.

~~~
machiaweliczny
100% agree - Most likely data interoperation/protocols need to be enforced by
government as there is no economic incentive to do so otherwise.

------
samdung
As long as you have short term growth targets (quarterly financial results)
you cannot get big businesses to reckon with the environment. The only
possible way is for people to stop buying unwanted stuff just because it is
cheap.

~~~
Reason077
> _" you cannot get big businesses to reckon with the environment."_

Well, that's what governments are for. It is the government's role to create
regulations which promote the broader, long-term interests of the population
and environment in situations where markets fail to do so.

~~~
BlueTemplar
And the issue is that big business can afford to "buy" the government. I don't
see any other solution to this than to outlaw big business...

------
choonway
But why? The universe is so vast and under-populated it's hard to make a case
why growth would be constrained.

~~~
coldtea
We don't live in the universe at large, we live on Earth. Until someone takes
us there or shows us how to go practically, and bring stuff back practically
(not with e.g. "generation ships" and not with hand-waving about what we could
or could not do with "ingenuity" in 100 years), we should not use a mere wish
as a permission to not respect the hard present limits.

(That's not something said against the idea of space exploration. In the
contrary, not respecting those limits might be the very reason why we never
reach the universe -- e.g. because we collapse before we have a chance. Same
in this regard as our playing with nukes and other careless follies).

~~~
allendoerfer
To do that, we need more research, more production, better technologies,
better energy usage, which turns out to be growth.

~~~
coldtea
No, we could do that with limited growth (of general commerce economy) and
just having more resources given to science. Even as a matter of political
will (tons of resources in the US e.g. are given to the military which could
be use for NASA programs).

We went to space with an 1/10th the economy of today. We had not been to the
moon for 40+ years, despite the economy growing ever stronger.

~~~
allendoerfer
What got America to the moon was taking the leftovers of an beyond-imagination
evil dictatorship, designed to take over the world, and applying it to win a
race against another dictatorship. During that whole process millions of
people experienced horror or lost their lifes in the cruelest ways imaginable.

While I acknowledge, that economic growth has problems, it does not seem all
that bad to me.

I imagine going to the moon just is not a priority right now. The superrich
already want to spend their money on space projects. Let's wait what regular
people want to buy, after health, etc. is solved.

------
whiddershins
Growth includes technological advancement, including for example ... trying to
cure cancer and Alzheimer’s.

Am I correct in this?

If so, please let’s stick with growth.

~~~
dgb23
Innovation can positively influence growth. But the article, including
references and papers, is not about reducing innovation.

It is about the fallacy that economic growth (= increase in GDP), somehow
magically solves all problems of society. This belief is mostly ideological
and the implication is that the market should not be regulated, which would
reduce growth and prosperity. The effects of this strategy include increased
inequality, weak infrastructure/education and ecological exploitation with
dire consequences.

Innovation, which really advances society in sustainable ways, is often
intrinsically or socially motivated, not financially and certainly not by a
GDP increase, which benefits a tiny minority.

Reducing inequality, improving education and increasing individual freedom
within organizations seem to be much more sensible ways to fuel innovation in
the long term, than just deregulating the market.

------
journeymanblue
What a more important measure is growth per capita, not growth in the absolute
for personal prosperity / national stability etc. Population decline combined
with growth per capita can both bring prosperity while reducing our adverse
impact on the planet.

------
pjkundert
Yes — iff your monetary base isn’t brought into being by payment of interest.

If interest must be payed in order for each unit of currency to exist, then
growth is required. If not, then equilibrium between stock/flow of money and
available goods/services/wealth for sale can be maintained.

If currency is brought into being by attachment of wealth (as is done in
typical users based Fiat via Liens), then issuance/withdrawal of units of
currency is accomplished across the entire base, to ensure absolute value
stability vs. a reference basket of arbitrary commodities (or whatever)

------
dharma1
I'm not sure how you would fund pensions without growth

~~~
digitalengineer
Agreed. you can not. There are just too many pensioners: "Between now and
2050,the number of older persons will rise from about 600 million to almost
two billion. In less than 50 years from now, for the first time in history,
the world will contain more people over 60 than under 15"

[https://www.cassandracapital.net/post/the-unprecedented-
demo...](https://www.cassandracapital.net/post/the-unprecedented-demographic-
boom-and-bust)

~~~
demosito666
And how is that a problem? As long as productivity grows at same rate as
workers/pensioners ratio, the portion of gdp that should go towards retired
ppl remains constant.

~~~
magicalhippo
That productivity will have to come from automation, and a robot doesn't get a
salary so doesn't have to pay income tax. So that'll have to change if you
plan on using the productivity growth to fund pensions, no?

~~~
okr
You might not need a pension if you have a robot that is highly productive
towards you. Everything might be so cheap. All the externalities that one
needs to pay for a lot today, might be vastly available tomorrow. I think it
is hard to predict the future.

~~~
dharma1
This is an interesting thought experiment. I think it's conceivable the cost
of many things one needs would fall as a result of automation - but there are
many things which have limited supply and that there would still be
competition for, many of them consumable - so you would still need a source of
income for these.

------
Reason077
Perhaps a better way to phrase the question would be:

Can we have economic growth, improving prosperity and quality-of-life, while
reducing our environmental impact?

~~~
hannob
That's actually the question most people have been asking for the past
decades. The answer is: The world has tried and failed and there's some
serious questions about the plausibility of that endeavour.

The question whether growth==good or maybe just.. it's more complicated than
that and we may be able to get more quality of life without growth is far more
interesting.

~~~
Reason077
Have we _really_ tried? Firstly, despite a lot of talk and bluster,
politicians around the world have done very little to regulate against climate
change and other environmental issues.

Secondly, many of the technologies that will make this possible - renewable
energy, electrification, energy storage, etc, are only just now beginning to
reach the mainstream. Many of them seemed like science fiction in past
decades.

~~~
hannob
> Firstly, despite a lot of talk and bluster, politicians around the world
> have done very little to regulate against climate change and other
> environmental issues.

Interestiong question is what's cause and effect here. You could argue
politicians haven't done more against CC because they always shy away from
doing anything that might harm the economy.

------
bawana
Prosperity without growth. Only possible if money has a half life. This slow
devaluation of money over time would allow stable prices, growth and more
granular control of the economy. This kind of money could be electronic and
only minted by the fed as FED-COIN. The blockchain would be essential in
tracking and controlling each fedcoin. An interesting solution might be for
the fed to give fed coin to people as a UBI(Universal basic income). Of course
once the fedcoin is spent(undergoes a transaction) it’s value would freeze.
the seller of a product would then have regular money. The current mode of the
fed being limited to repo operations is blunt. Direct involvement of the fed
with the public would allow more direct management of the economy. In addition
fedcoin would traceable (anti crime), taxable, and controllable(it might have
no value for example in trade for gambling, cigarettes alcohol or other items
that are unhealthy)

~~~
acoye
You would then have to try to ban bitcoin Why would an individual want to keep
around an eroding by design currency?

> In addition fedcoin would traceable (anti crime)

You would only successfully trace the law abiding citizen IMO.

~~~
bawana
The incentive to spend it will drive the economy. The ability to prevent its
use in ‘bad’ transactions will limit ‘bad’ behavior.

------
sunsu
Relevant: WTFHappenedIn1971.com

------
fjfaase
I am getting the impression that growth is largely an illusion, because there
is also something like inflation. And it also seems that it is mostly the
(very) rich that benefit from the growth.

~~~
BlueTemplar
Growth doesn't necessarily mean money-wise. And GDP is generally tweaked to
make inflation disappear.

------
hx87
The more important question is: can we have growth in economic output (which
is what we actually want) without growth in economic input (which is purely
instrumental)?

~~~
BlueTemplar
Short-term - maybe, though past history isn't exactly positive about that.

Long-term : no, as this would reduce economic input to an arbitrary small
fraction of the overall wealth, which anyone would be able to corner. So it's
either self-limiting or unstable.

------
Double_a_92
If an industry has grown so much that it can fulfill all the demand the market
has for it, why does it need more growth?

So "growth" would come from changing demands eventually.

------
coretx
Prosperity is subjective. Growth is not or relative. Can we turn a long string
into a boolean? So no. The question itself is logically flawed.

------
naringas
well, we better figure out how to do it or will kill the planet and then die
along with it.

it's not an easy challenge; over 6000 years of western cultural evolution are
built, hinged and based on growth and expansion by exploitation. but there
aren't many thing left to exploit nor expand into.

------
rezeroed
Can you get countries not to compete?

------
jhoechtl
As long as

* our needs and deeds don't take over

* marketing stops to teach us longings for things we actually do not need --

Yes!

------
julbaxter
Can we have prosperity without growth? No. Can we have sustainability with
growth? No. Then we can not have prosperity and sustainability. Can we afford
not having sustainability? No. Then we can not afford prosperity.

~~~
mytailorisrich
We can have sustainability and prosperity.

It's a triangle: prosperity, sustainability, population. Choose 2 (and
obviously if you don't choose sustainability the sh*t is going to hit the fan
at some point anyway).

The key issue is the global population.

(Edit: We're discussing life on this planet. Colonising space obviously means
that human population may continue to grow, but not on Earth and not using
Earth' resources)

~~~
chii
why can humans not expand interplanetarily? Then, inter-stellarly, then
finally, inter-galactically?

~~~
goatlover
If humans can expand inter-galactically, then it likely it would have happened
already by some other species, given the size and age of our galaxy. But since
we're not part of some prior alien galactic empire, it's probably not
feasible. And we would also be able to see the energy output from other
galactic civilizations nearby. But we see nothing. Not from Andromeda, not
from anywhere in our local cluster.

~~~
logicchains
>If humans can expand inter-galactically, then it likely it would have
happened already by some other species, given the size and age of our galaxy.

That's only true if we assume the chance of life arising is relatively high.
It could actually be incredibly massively low, and we wouldn't notice, because
we're observing from a position of extreme selection bias. I.e.
probability(intelligentLifeInUniverse given weAreObservingIt) = 1.0.

------
patrickskim
It depends on who "we" includes.

------
adultSwim
Yes

------
biolurker1
Europe

------
egberts1
Yes, we can prosperity without growth. — We call that “socialism.”

~~~
BlueTemplar
The USSR in the early 20th century astounded everyone by its amazing growth.
Not surprising since Lenin's main goal was to beat the capitalists at their
own game! (But the price paid was very high too...)

------
bra4you
Short answer: No

Long answer: [https://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/02/21/there-is-no-steady-
sta...](https://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/02/21/there-is-no-steady-state-
economy-except-at-a-very-basic-level/)

