
The U.S. economy is growing and using less and less stuff to do so - Anon84
https://hbr.org/ideacast/2019/09/dematerialization-and-what-it-means-for-the-economy-and-climate-change
======
rdiddly
So I read the Jesse Ausubel essay that apparently inspired this, and while I'm
tempted to dismiss it all as utter unsupported horseshit, that would be
unsupported as well. The most I can say that is defensible is that I'm
suspicious of it, and here are some random thoughts about reasons why, in no
particular order:

It could be clearer throughout, whether he's talking per capita or overall.

Data is selective and ignores resource utilization shifts. Example: In the
1940s crop acreage decoupled from crop yield, he says. Great! Instead it
coupled to petroleum and energy, he doesn't say. American farms today are in
the business of converting fossil fuels to food. For example, the 1940s are
when when cheap internal-combustion tractors started being mass-produced,
thanks to all that spare manufacturing capacity left over after the war.
There's also a graph where he looks at "every input" into growing corn, even
down to the phosphates, while scrupulously avoiding any talk of fuel or
energy.

A resource shift of a different kind: efficiency gains in chicken production
are due mostly to inhumane factory farm conditions. (Ones to which pork & beef
are less amenable, hence chicken outdoes them.)

Wood is no longer used for railroad ties, because we use concrete. Which has
its own problems! The point in most of this _kind_ of example is that we stop
using A because B comes along to fill the void. Nobody uses paper anymore, but
they sure use a lot more lithium than they used to. And so on.

Finally, and speaking of stepping in to fill the void: ctrl-F - "China" \- 1
match. The single mention is to refer to it as a developing country, not to
acknowledge it as the present-day location of much of the USA's manufacturing.

~~~
thedudeabides5
Re concrete, I’ve been hearing a lot that we are running out of sand (the kind
we make glass out of and the kind we make concrete out of).

Is that true? Anyone have numbers/research on sand that’s good?

~~~
mdorazio
Depends who you mean by "we". Seems there are regional shortages [1], but the
US only hits supply constraints occasionally.

[1] [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/world-
facing-g...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/world-facing-
global-sand-crisis-180964815/)

~~~
rapnie
Also discussed on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15739917](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15739917)

------
dkural
This does not take into account materials use in other countries that is in
direct relation to the US economy. US is not primarily a resource-extraction
economy, and many of its firms do most of their manufacturing overseas. Rarely
will a high-tech company buy natural resources directly / from a US source. It
won't show up in any of the studies' metrics of 'stuff used'. This objection
came up recently in a panel discussion about this study as well.

~~~
vannevar
Yes, it's either disingenuous or incredibly naive to ignore the outsourcing of
materials-intensive activities to other countries, the most obvious example
being manufacturing. Would our rate of material use look so low if we included
the materials used for every retail good sold, regardless of where it was
manufactured? I doubt it.

------
gniv
Interesting quote from the (long) transcript:

"The USGS tracks, I believe, 72 different materials. I think all, but six-ish
of them are now on a downward trend. The biggest exception is actually
plastics, but there’s something interesting going on there as well. Overall
plastics consumption used to grow even more quickly than the economy did.
Plastics are super useful. We use them all over the place. Now, plastics use
is still increasing, but it’s increasing more slowly than the overall economy
is."

------
legitster
There was a big moment this decade where metrics like life expectancy and
quality of life decoupled from energy consumption. Which is a capitalized Big
Deal in economics.

If you actually believe that software has the ability to change the world,
this is it in action.

~~~
briga
On the other hand, as software and frameworks get more complex, they require
more compute to run. Software hasn't decoupled economic growth from energy
consumption, it has just made the energy consumption harder to see.

Edit: since people are asking for examples, I would have to point to the
insane cost of training modern ML models. For instance, according to [1],
training a single big NLP model can burn up to 620,000 lbs of CO2.

I say a lot of energy consumption is hidden because it's generally moved to
data centres, which by the way use up astronomical amounts of energy [2]

[1] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.02243](https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.02243)

[2] [https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/publication/trends-data-
centre-e...](https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/publication/trends-data-centre-
energy-consumption-under-european-code-conduct-data-centre-energy-efficiency)

~~~
dmitriy_ko
Moore's law has decreased amount of energy required to run the same code.

~~~
ralusek
I think Moore's law was just about compute capability, not energy consumption.
I could be wrong, though. That being said, processors have become more
efficient. I think the other poster was saying that our code complexity often
expands to fill the voids. Obvious examples are neutral nets, render farms,
crypto mining. But then there is the cost of React vs vanilla, electron vs
native. Efficient processors don't necessarily mean less energy consumption,
though I think in general that had still proven to be true.

~~~
lonelappde
The way Moore's law worked was that ever more fraction of energy was being
used for compute instead of fort waste heat.

~~~
Gibbon1
I deal with low power microcontrollers. They keep using less and less power
while running faster.

Old Z80 based board I first worked on drew 1A at 5V, so 5W. Put your hand on
it, it's nice a warm. Current board I'm dicking with draws 8ma at 3V or
0.024W. 200 times less power. But it's 50 to 100 times faster.

------
ehmish
This seems like it's a natural result of the US economy being concentrated in
the finance, insurance and real estate sectors, i.e just shuffling money
around rather than production.

~~~
perfunctory
If only it was just shuffling money around. From another post today:

> in the three years since the signing of the Paris climate accord, which was
> designed to help the world shift away from fossil fuels, the banks’ lending
> to the [fossil fuels] industry has increased every year, and much of the
> money goes toward the most extreme forms of energy development. [0]

Also I wonder how much of that "dematerialization" is due to outsourcing
manufacturing to other countries.

[0] [https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/money-is-the-
ox...](https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/money-is-the-oxygen-on-
which-the-fire-of-global-warming-burns)

~~~
wallace_f
That's nice virtue signalling, but at what point would finance's share of US
GDP be alarming to you? Should 1 in 10 people really be working to allocate
resources?

In another industry, healthcare, people complain passionately about the costs
but never about the fact that while technology, efficiencies have improved
there has been a 100-fold increase in the number of healthcare administrators
per capita. A lot of our economy is just shuffling people and money around --
not actually efficiently allocating resources to produce useful goods and
services--oh about that abnormal growth in the people who are supposed to be
responsible for that?

~~~
perfunctory
The finance's share of US GDP, as well as the number of BS administrative
jobs, _IS_ alarming to me. I am not sure how my comment implied otherwise.

------
spodek
Increasing efficiency is different than lowering total waste. People push for
efficiency thinking it will lower total waste, but you can easily increase
efficiency and increase total waste.

In the physical environment, total waste is our biggest concern. Our economies
are more efficient than ever, but we're also producing more total waste than
ever.

We have to focus on lowering total waste. I talked about this in my podcast
episode 183: "Reusing and recycling are tactical. Reducing is strategic."
[https://shows.pippa.io/leadership-and-the-
environment/episod...](https://shows.pippa.io/leadership-and-the-
environment/episodes/183-reusing-and-recycling-are-tactical-reducing-is-
strategic)

~~~
glbrew
"Jevon's Paradox"

~~~
lioeters
Thanks for the reference, today I learned:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox)

------
m463
There's a theory that "the solution to pollution is economic growth"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuznets_curve#Environmental_Ku...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuznets_curve#Environmental_Kuznets_curve)

It is controversial (and I'm uncertain about it personally)

~~~
goldenkey
Are we just exporting the pollution?

------
Ancalagon
I believe in the power of software, but also wonder how much of this growth is
due to financial engineering (specifically debt being bought and sold at
varying interest rates)?

------
EGreg
The point is that it keeps adding up year after year. Sure we could use less
plastic and still the series of partial sums converges to a really large
number.

This is not sustainable. Elephants in Africa. Insects and birds.
Desertification. Deforestation. Brazil chopped down the size of Hong Kong in a
few weeks. Plastic in the oceans. CO2 PPM is on a steady rise. Permafrost is
melting. And we are saying what?

------
carapace
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephemeralization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephemeralization)

> Ephemeralization, a term coined by R. Buckminster Fuller, is the ability of
> technological advancement to do "more and more with less and less until
> eventually you can do everything with nothing," that is, an accelerating
> increase in the efficiency of achieving the same or more output (products,
> services, information, etc.) while requiring less input (effort, time,
> resources, etc.).[1] Fuller's vision was that ephemeralization will result
> in ever-increasing standards of living for an ever-growing population
> despite finite resources.

------
pteredactyl
Wait, things are not as bad as has been crammed down our throats for years?
Imagine my surprise. But, yet many armchair doomsayers will still only find
the negative. Yes, this isn't perfect. But neither am I. Or you. Peace

------
roenxi
This can easily be reversed. What exactly is being measured as growth if it
does not result in more stuff being consumed and produced?

Growth measures aren't usually linked to soft outcomes (eg, happiness, moral
fulfilment, access to basic needs, etc) because they are too hard to measure.
Growth measures aren't linked to stuff produced (thesis of article).

We're measuring something. Probably some sort of technological advancement.
Does it make sense to call it growth? If resources Energy per capita is
dropping; I would call that contraction rather than growth. I like having
access to stuff.

~~~
esoterica
If your car gets twice the mpg and you’re consuming half as much gas do you
consider that a bad thing? You’re deriving the same amount of utility at half
the resource cost.

~~~
roenxi
Yeah, but that isn't growth. Growth is my car gets twice the mpg and I now
have a petrol heater on cold nights. Or I drive twice as far. My lifestyle
staying the same from one week to the next is stagnation even if I'm using
less resources.

This is an appeal to Jeveron's paradox. If efficiencies increase, growth looks
like getting _much_ more output. Getting the same output when efficiencies
increase doesn't signal growth.

I suspect the disconnect is people think that "good" and "growth" mean the
same thing. That isn't a real link. The situation doesn't look like it is
growing, even if it is good.

~~~
daxfohl
Your savings on gasoline would be put in banks which would create growth by
reinventment. Also while your car getting twice the mpg may not open up new
possibilities for you, it could make a huge difference for people and
businesses and nations where cost of transportation is significant.

------
nabla9
"Dematerialization" is a term that is not very commonly used.

Economists usually talk the resource intensity of production and consumption.
You can divide the concept into material intensity and energy intensity. If
you use them as a start of your search you find more Resource productivity is
also more commonly used term.

There is evidence of a relative decoupling in resource extraction from global
economic growth. In developed economies this is clearly happening.

Resource Productivity in the G8 and the OECD
[https://www.oecd.org/env/waste/47944428.pdf](https://www.oecd.org/env/waste/47944428.pdf)

>Global extraction of material resources continues to grow, but there are
signs of decoupling from global economic growth. G8 countries‘ resource
productivity has been improving , their material intensity decreased by more
than 47% between 1980 and 2008 and their annual per capita material
consumption declined from nearly 20 tonnes to less than 18 tonnes. Over the
same period, OECD economies have reduced their material intensity by 42% and
their per capita consumption declined by 1.5% to 17.6 t.

OECD library has "Green Growth Indicators 2017"
[https://www.oecd.org/environment/green-growth-
indicators-201...](https://www.oecd.org/environment/green-growth-
indicators-2017-9789264268586-en.htm)

OECD "Global Material Resources Outlook to 2060"
[https://www.oecd.org/environment/waste/highlights-global-
mat...](https://www.oecd.org/environment/waste/highlights-global-material-
resources-outlook-to-2060.pdf)

There is negative relation between total factor productivity and material and
energy intensity per unit of GDP. When productivity increases, most of the
value is created buy other means than using materials and energy.

The catch is "per GDP". Per capita material consumption in OECD countries
remains unsustainable. Developed nations produce their high living standard
more efficiently but the living standard is so high that resource usage in
absolute terms per capita extremely high.

------
sanxiyn
You can't actually substitute something with nothing, and conservation laws
(of mass, energy, etc) do hold. But in practice, substituting with, say,
atmosphere, is almost as good. OP discussed the case of substituting copper
network with atmospheric spectrum.

Consider guano: guano use for manufacturing fertilizer is down, because
Harber-Bosch process substituted guano nitrogen with atmospheric nitrogen.
Atmospheric nitrogen is still a material thing, but it sure does look like
dematerialization.

~~~
why_only_15
You can also shift the structure of the things people care about to be things
that are easier to make. If people buy less cars and spend more time
backpacking across Mexico, that also substitutes something with nothing (or at
least less).

------
skybrian
I'm wondering if this has anything to do with Bernanke's "global savings glut"
or Larry Summer's "secular stagnation?" It seems you may not need as much
money to make money?

I tried asking about this on /r/AskEconomics and it seems that some still
believe that more savings is better, based on the Solow model.

------
randyrand
Could this also be indicative of a bubble?

~~~
DeonPenny
Quite the opposite. Money is getting more efficient not less

~~~
Gibbon1
If money is getting more efficient why have interest rates been heading into
the toilet for 35 years?

~~~
DeonPenny
Massive misallocation of resource mainly from the financial crisis into bad
financial products. But if you look around the rate of technological
development and the amount of money to start one of those ventures it's only
been failing

------
Nasrudith
I am a bit surprised it took this long to show up really given so many other
trends

------
exabrial
Glad to hear this merely because is has positive downstream effects. No need
to beat one's chest, just maybe a moment to reflect on humility and figure out
how to continue the trend.

------
ozim
This is the thing that those doomsday prophets talking about next economic
downturn don't take into account.

Whole virtual goods economy that is not visible.

------
systematical
The article cites low-tech raw resources like timber, paper, nickel, and gold
(okay this can be hiigh-tech) being used less in advanced economies. What
about ones like rare earth minerals used in high-tech? It would have been nice
for the article to touch on that. I would love if someone could find that
information. A quick Google search didn't yield much.

The author does mention the energy usage rate is leveling out. Not believing
this, I did a basic search on electricity usage and it does appear to be true:
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/201794/us-electricity-
co...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/201794/us-electricity-consumption-
since-1975/). I did not check total energy usage though (petrol, natural gas,
etc.)

This confirms my belief that has been derided a bit here on HN. That is, I
believe Capitalism one-day, in the far distant future, will end or at the
least mitigate resource scarcity. When Capitalism achieves that, it in effect
nearly goes away or is at least greatly reduced. Humanity will then reap the
benefits of abundance. Hopefully moving beyond Capitalism, thanks to
Capitalism.

------
jhoechtl
Which in turn means that more and more of the benefit gets accumulated at the
top.

------
oyebenny
Is this some shill HN implant article? lol

------
phkahler
I'm seeing a lot of inflation. Maybe not in the things used to measure it?

~~~
collias
Where are you seeing "a lot of inflation"?

The inflation rate in the US has been pretty low for the past decade or so,
relative to history.

Source: [https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-inflation-rate-history-by-
yea...](https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-inflation-rate-history-by-year-and-
forecast-3306093)

~~~
lotsofpulp
Healthcare, education, real estate in desirable areas, and taxes. I can also
see that I spend more on hotel room nights, restaurant meals, groceries,
supplies for my businesses. I don’t know where the inflation stats are coming
from, but I’m certainly spending more every year for the same quantity.

~~~
taurath
I wonder how much the averages bring that down. Healthcare is up across the
board, but real estate may not be up much if at all in non-growing areas.
Wages just aren't growing I think.

~~~
pixelperfect
A large fraction of the population lives in growing areas, so the rising cost
of real estate in growing areas is an extremely important factor, and on
average it's been rising faster than wages for decades.

------
zeofig
I wonder how long pretending _literally nothing_ is a "growing economy" can
continue before something bad happens. I have a feeling I won't have to wonder
for long.

~~~
why_only_15
The point of the economy growing is so that the society as a whole can do more
things that it wants, not about using more natural resources. If we can do
more things that we want and also use less natural resources, that's what we
want, not an omen of something bad.

------
TheBobinator
This story is an example of why "mainstream media" (The big 4 outlets) need to
have all of their major and minor publications banned from this site going
forward or be reduced to being allowed to post 1 or 2 articles per week, tops.

When I come to HN, I come here to learn about some cool doohickey someone is
working on or a study that someone published about a different approach to
security. I come here to learn about a bitcoin heist or something novel and
new and most importantly, to learn from the comments. Lots of interesting
people here with interesting views to contribute.

I don't come here to read about MIT flamebait; there's no in-depth study to
read, no conclusions to draw, just a re-hash of CPI numbers which are at best
horribly inaccurate, aside from the name, this might as well be a short novel.
Worse, we're re-hashing something that's already there; CPI Numbers. This
article is utter trite and a total and complete waste of time.

Then, the entire community begins discussing this Trite, which lets be honest,
there's some interesting studies and observations in the comments but at the
end of the day, the discussion has no direction or conclusion and that is
dangerous because it invites an scopeless conversation. We should be talking
about how this professors study is or is not accurate or interesting sidebars,
which is useful to the professor for feedback and to the reader for coming to
a conclusion, not talking in generalities and in circles because someone at a
Big 4 wants to stay "relevant" and thinks getting the geeks talking to each
other about their topic is a good way to do that.

Leave the trite where it belongs; on CNN or NYT or on any big 4 publication.

------
teabee89
Dematerialization is the biggest fallacy in the industry. Data centers need
energy to run. Buying the latest servers, network equipments, iPhones and more
every year or two, requires an enormous amount of energy. GDP is directly
correlated with energy, so there is no sign of change: an economy cannot grow
without energy. I wish more people understood the economy from a physics
standpoint.

~~~
dev_dull
Also why I believe nuclear power must play a vital role in carbon neutral
power generation. Wind and solar is great for homes, but what else can power
the steel industry? The duty cycle is enormous.

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
Steel and aluminium manufacturing actually are somewhat well-situated to make
use of solar and wind power. The energy-intensive processes (i. e. heating
metal until it melts) has somewhat flexible timing. So you can heat it up when
energy supply is plenty or other demand is low and smooth out the grid.

And nuclear energy is simply too expensive. I know it hurts that some people
were maybe too afraid of it in the past, but that's no longer the argument. It
loses not just to un-subsidised wind and solar now, but even to natural gas +
planting trees to offset carbon.

