
The Growth Ponzi Scheme (2011) - minikites
https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme
======
lisper
Before someone says something like, "This is why we need to colonize Mars"
remember: the laws of physics do not permit sustained exponential growth, full
stop. Even with arbitrarily advanced technology that allows you to freely
colonize the universe at the speed of light that only buys you polynomial
growth (indeed, only O(n^2) growth) in the absolute best case.

Sooner or later mankind is going to run up against the limits of exponential
growth. We can make conscious decisions about how to deal with it, or we can
let the laws of physics decide for us. IMHO things will go better for us if we
take the bull by the horns, but very few people seem to be on board with that
even here on HN where gloomy Malthusian prophecies are rarely received with
much enthusiasm.

Happily, I'm now old enough (and childless) so I can afford not to give much
of a fuck. But sooner or later someone is going to have to. If it's not you,
it will be your children, or their children. The sooner someone starts to give
a fuck, the less painful it will be when -- not if -- we finally discover what
the limiting factor to growth actually is.

~~~
Ididntdothis
Most likely these issues will get resolved the old fashioned way by violence.
Climate change issues will get resolved the same way. Humanity has never made
collective decisions for the whole planet and I don’t see that changing any
time soon.

~~~
elmo2you
> Humanity has never made collective decisions for the whole planet ...

League of Nations, later becoming the United Nations, Universal Declaration of
Human Rights ... hopefully you will have heard of those.

Within the UN there are not that many members that complain much about the
organization being dysfunctional or even useless. Unsurprisingly, all those
who do are the USA and ones that are extremely dependent on the USA. One could
argue that the USA is indeed an exceptional country, but not in a good way.
The UN was explicitly set up with the goal of collectively solving global
problems. The current status quo within the UN, where the USA regularly
flaunts the treaties they signed/ratified or falsely accusing others of
violations (without sufficient proof) just as justification for ditching their
own commitments, says little about humanity and everything about the USA.

I have no doubt that the USA will indeed do everything to "resolve" these
issues rather the old fashioned way by violence. Hopefully the rest of mankind
will be a bit smarter than that.

~~~
Ididntdothis
”League of Nations, later becoming the United Nations, Universal Declaration
of Human Rights ... hopefully you will have heard of those.”

These organizations are/were a good thing but they haven’t been able to stop
violence so far. The League of Nations couldn’t prevent WW2 and the UN
couldn’t prevent a lot of atrocities and war since its creation. I wish they
could. I also don’t think international collaboration will work once we have
tens of millions of people having to move due to climate change or if
overpopulation causes severe resource shortages.

~~~
elmo2you
I can follow that line of reasoning, but I think it is biased (maybe
unintentionally) to the point where its conclusion is inaccurate.

Indeed, the League of Nations couldn't prevent WW2, neither did the UN prevent
a lot of atrocities from happening. That is, aside from all the atrocities
that it did actually prevent (probably numerously, but we will never know for
they didn't happen). If not from starting, than at least from expanding to the
point that they otherwise would have. As for WW2, besides its roots in the
settlement of WW1, it was also the opportunistic selfish advantages that some
particular countries (not talking about Germany) saw in it's unfolding, while
pretending otherwise to the public, that made WW2 to unfold as it did
(reminder: it was the USA who continued doing good business with Germany,
until it was Hitler who declared war on the USA).

The real question to ask is: what would we have without the UN? All there
would be is bilateral agreements between individual countries. It is well
known from history how easily those create extremely complex situations where
a local conflict can often quickly spiral out into global conflicts (because
of conflicting agreements between allies of the involved parties). WW1
probably being a good example of that, and in fact a primary motivator behind
the creation of what eventually became the UN.

Climate change will indeed cause all sorts of problems, violence no doubt
among them. One thing is sure though, with only bilateral agreements between
countries, it will be only more bloody and inhumane than with the UN at least
striving for a global consensus approach. It's only with collective agreement
that the effects of these challenges can be limited to their least worst
outcomes. It will be bad either way, but that's no valid argument to
fatalistically argue that nothing will matter. Of course, the USA could choose
that none of this is their problem, and only look at their own self-interests.
But that will rather sooner than later pave the way of their own inevitable
demise (which in that case would probably be a very unpleasant one).

As long as a substantial part of the US economy and international political
dominance comes directly from how the country profits from conflict elsewhere
on the globe, little chance that the USA will ever sincerely contribute to
making this world a better place. This is not to say that other countries are
benevolent or sincere, but it is the USA who openly advocates breaking down
whatever instruments we still have to resolve issues by consensus instead of
violence.

The UN is by no means a perfect solution, but without it this world would
likely be a far worse place. The world before it existed sure was. Something
apparently only the USA (and a few vassals) seems to openly disagree with. I
remember only a few other countries that did; mostly totalitarian ones and
responsible for some of those atrocities that that the UN failed to prevent.

~~~
Ididntdothis
I think we are in agreement. The UN does good things but it's limited.

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manfredo
The main premise of this article is that suburbanization led to increased
long-term infrastructure costs (because sparse populations require more per-
capita spending to deliver power, plumbing, roads, etc.), but failed to
generate a commensurate increase in tax revenue. This is much less of a
problem than it it seems because:

1\. The population is becoming increasingly urban. The trend of
suburbanization has not only stopped, it has been reversing for several
decades now.

2\. When infrastructure fails, there's a very strong incentive to raise money
to improve infrastructure. Admittedly this is less effective than preventing
failures in the first place, but the challenge of raising tax dollars to fix a
bridge becomes much easier when residents can no longer use said bridge to
commute and thus have a much larger incentive to pay the necessary taxes.

~~~
cagenut
w/r/t #2 you're not arguing the point you're just re-phrasing it. That money
has to come from somewhere, so it comes from the schools and the spending
power of the residents via higher property taxes. That's why all the "old
burb" areas like mass/ct/nj/long-island have very high property taxes. People
think they can flee it by moving to burbs in delaware/florida/rdc/whatever but
its just moving the problem and kicking the can a generation, not solving it.

------
natmaka
Pertinent and sound points are made at
[https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/12/16/best-
of-2019-...](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/12/16/best-
of-2019-trickle-or-the-fire-hose)

------
tempestn
Something I've noticed that came to mind as I happen to be vacationing in
Playa Del Carmen (Mexico) while reading this. I'm from Canada; visiting here,
and walking through the town, I obviously notice many buildings, vehicles,
roads, etc. are in much more of a state of disrepair than I'm used to at home.
This includes downtown areas, so it's not a sprawl issue, but (I assume) just
that there isn't the same amount of capital invested into maintaining
infrastructure, updating vehicles, etc. that we see at home. (On average;
obviously there are plenty of exceptions.) Now, this isn't surprising since
GDP per capita in Mexico is much lower than in Canada or the United States.
However, in most visits I've made to the US, I've noticed the same thing to a
lesser extent. Almost anywhere roads are in worse condition that what I'm used
to. Outside of large cities, infrastructure in general seems more run-down
than in similar places in Canada. But this is all just in my limited personal
experience.

So first of all, I'm curious whether this is actually the case, or just my own
biased personal experience. Have other cross-border travelers noticed this?
And if it is a real thing, then I'm curious what the reasons are, given that
the US has somewhat higher GDP per capita than Canada.

Some possibilities I've considered are 1) wealth in the US is more
concentrated in large cities than in Canada. I'm sure this is the case in both
countries, but perhaps the effect is greater in the US? 2) The spending
priorities in the two countries are different. For instance, US spending on
healthcare and on military are both higher per capita than Canadian. Perhaps
Canada just spends more (publicly and/or privately) on infrastructure and less
on other things? If so, is this the result of intentional priorities to some
extent? Or is it just an artifact of history or of governmental structures?

I'm not trying to argue that one approach is better than another, or even that
my observations are generalize-able. Just curious if others have noticed the
same and have thoughts.

------
davidw
If you like the article, his book is good too, it distills a lot of the
thinking (that site has a _lot_ of articles) into one source:
[https://www.strongtowns.org/book](https://www.strongtowns.org/book)

------
blackrock
How exactly would we colonize Mars anyways?

All equipment on Earth is run off fossil fuels: gasoline cars, diesel trucks,
jet engines, helicopters, busses, etc. Tesla electric cars barely make a dent,
and rely on electricity produced by natural gas.

Solar intensity on Mars is much weaker than on Earth. I assume this would
require huge acres of land to capture as much energy from the sun via solar
panels, as compared to Earth. Fortunately Mars has electric dust storms that
can scrub the solar panels for us, which would reduce the need to send human
labor out to clean them.

So that leaves hydrogen and nuclear. Hydrogen can be split via electrolysis,
but this requires a lot of electricity. See problem #1. And it requires
expensive fuel cells to convert it back into electricity, so that it can be
used on demand. But we haven’t yet mastered the mass production of fuel cells
here on Earth, in order to produce it cheaply enough. Fuel cells requires
platinum, gold, and a bunch of other precious metals. So this would add to an
already very expensive camping trip to Mars.

It’s possible wind turbines might be used, but Mars has a thin atmosphere,
which already presents problem for spacecraft trying to land. But this may
work for wind turbines.

Or geothermal, but his assumes the core of Mars is hot. But from all satellite
reconnaissance so far, Mars doesn’t seem to have any hot springs.

Then nuclear, this is likely the most viable technology. Possibly by RTG,
which seems to be the most portable, as we can build that on Earth, and launch
it to Mars. You would need to launch a lot of them from Earth to ship to Mars,
which further reduces the affordability, and kills the possibility of living
off the land. And if uranium exists on Mars, which I’m sure it does, then
you’d need a huge industrial base just to mine and process it. But first,
you’d have to find it, which would require expensive human and robotic
exploration outside in Martian excursion suits.

Fission based nuclear plants as we know it on Earth seems overly complex to
use on Mars. It’s just a giant water boiler, used to produce steam, to spin a
generator, to create electricity. And I doubt the technology as it is used on
Earth, can function correctly in the cold winters of Mars. You’d have to
prevent your radioactive water coolant from freezing on you. So you’d need to
redesign it in order to be used safely on Mars.

Fusion reactors, well, we still haven’t invented that yet, and they keep
saying that it’s only 50 years away.

So that brings us back to fossil fuels. If they’re correct in assuming that
Mars used to be a tropical paradise, billions of years ago, and full of lush
vegetation and flowing rivers, before it froze over, then, I’m certain that
there is oil buried somewhere in the dirt. It may be frozen, but we can bring
in our fracking technology to extract it. Or maybe it’s frozen in tar sands,
in which case we can excavate it.

So there you have it. Mars has oil! Possibly..

Now, it’s time to go plant a flag. Every man (or nation) for himself!

