
Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy - utternerd
https://reason.com/2019/10/09/the-economy-keeps-growing-but-americans-are-using-less-steel-paper-fertilizer-and-energy/
======
pjmorris
Someone I know posted a picture of an empty rolodex today, saying that they'd
moved their friends to 'the cloud.' I'm sure you can look at your phone apps
and see other things that would've been physical objects ten or twenty years
ago. So, that's one way material use has, at least, shifted.

There are two other trends that worry me more. One is visible in the freezer
section at the grocery store; a "half-gallon" of ice cream is no longer
actually a half-gallon. Many other food items have shrunk. The article's
example of lighter buildings is what I view as the same category, something
blogger Yves Smith terms 'crapification.' We've now had at least two
generations of spreadsheet-wielding MBA's optimizing corporate costs to reduce
what is spent on materials and labor. Evidence of their success is showing up
across the economy, and politics, and society at large.

The other trend is money supply; One of the chief problems leading to the 2008
financial crisis was that much more credit had been extended than could ever
be paid back by those to whom it was loaned. The 'solution' was to have
central banks 'pay back' the loans that never should've been made. That put a
lot of credit in to the economy, which shows up as economic growth. I'd like
to see an analysis of 'economic growth' where the contributions of resources
and credit are accounted for separately.

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
In the EU, shops are required to display the price per <appropiate round
value>, i. e. all coffees have a (usually smaller, but readable) Euro/500g
price.

There used to be an even more drastic law proscribing certain sizes and
disallowing all others. Flour would only be available in 500g and 1kg bags,
for example. They got rid of it, possibly because they got sick of people
making fun of EU regulations (that's what happened with the famous banana
ratings)

~~~
breakbread
>In the EU, shops are required to display the price per <appropiate round
value>, i. e. all coffees have a (usually smaller, but readable) Euro/500g
price.

Grocery stores in the US do this, but it's not something you necessarily see
in food service shops.

~~~
CharlesColeman
> Grocery stores in the US do this, but it's not something you necessarily see
> in food service shops.

They do an absolute shit job of it, because there are no standards or
regulations. Most times I see this, similar items next to each other on the
shelf are using different "standard" units making comparison impossible (e.g.
price per ounce vs. price per piece). I've even seen two sizes of the same
brand/product use different "standard" units on the grocery store price label.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
You're being way over dramatic. 99% of the time the unit makes sense and is
the same for comparable products.

~~~
uoaei
That may be your experience based on what you shop for and where you do it.

America is way behind Europe on this. 99% of the time I go to Safeway, I have
to bring out my calculator because the reference volume/weight is different
from the other items on the same shelf.

~~~
mandelbrotwurst
Interesting, yeah the Safeways I've been to have all had price per ounce
pretty consistently.

What is a bit irritating is having to recalculate when items are discounted.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
They usually include the price per for the discounted tag also. Only when it’s
a buy x get y free is it hard.

------
ChuckMcM
From the article: _It suggests that economic growth in a mature economy does
not necessarily increase the pressure on the world 's reserves of natural
resources and on its physical environment._

Jesse Asubel has been looking at "dematerialization" for a long time[1] but it
has only been relatively recently, now with a couple of decades of additional
data to look at, that it is getting the attention I think it deserves.

One of the consistently annoying things, for me, in science reporting is the
extrapolation of a given set of ratios out to some point where the result is
very click-baity. The systems guy in me has experience that all exponential
trends are s-curves, and so I feel that one must at least acknowledge that
fact in your reporting. I understand it, it means that the predicted outcome
might not happen at all, but it is important to the story.

So economists do the same thing, they take some ratio of numbers that seem to
be tracking the 'size' of the economy and then run that trend out 50, 100, 500
years. It really doesn't matter, but what is important, and this article and
other papers on de-materialization have demonstrated, is that neither the
economic growth rate, or the relationship between that growth rate and some
other factor, are ever really constant. Thus any point that depends on them
being constant for more than a decade or so, is really stretching it.

Its nice to see this reality (of how extrapolating is bad because things
change) demonstrated in a clear and convincing way.

[1] "Materialization and Dematerialization: Measures and Trends" \--
[https://www.jstor.org/stable/20027375?seq=1#page_scan_tab_co...](https://www.jstor.org/stable/20027375?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents)

~~~
LoSboccacc
> Its nice to see this reality (of how extrapolating is bad because things
> change)

...but when they do that same thing on earth temperature everyone loses his
mind

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
The heat-trapping behaviour of CO_2 was first accurately measured in the 19th
century, and all climate change models do actually predict convergence, not
linear rise. It's just that the point of convergence is not one compatible
with civilisation as we know it.

~~~
tialaramex
Exactly. If global warming said the typical outside temperature in Seattle
doubles to almost 600K then it'd be fair to argue that's crazy people
extrapolating - water isn't even liquid at that temperature, no model we have
could make sense. But actually the model says it will go up say 2 or 3K. Much
less like a wild extrapolation, and unfortunately still completely terrifying
because that is already far too much.

~~~
souprock
2 or 3K really isn't enough for Seattle.

------
seibelj
Some people say growth can't happen forever, and all growth comes at
environmental cost, but that simply isn't true. I can create digital goods and
services which people buy, and this increases GDP, and it doesn't hurt the
environment and is indeed economic growth in the realest sense. I can even
give massages all day, and this also doesn't destroy the environment.

~~~
qsymmachus
This is incorrect. Every economic output requires material inputs.

> I can create digital goods and services which people buy

Your digital goods and services require physical machines to run on. These
machines are made of physical materials, including some rare earth minerals
that are costly to extract. These machines require energy to run, which also
requires material inputs.

> I can even give massages all day, and this also doesn't destroy the
> environment

Human beings like yourself require material inputs to live – food, shelter,
energy, to name only a few. Just by being alive on a biosphere, you are
impacting the environment in some way. The size of that impact depends on your
individual lifestyle.

There is simply no such thing as "immaterial" economic production.

~~~
abstractbarista
Ahh but those machines are constantly becoming simultaneously more efficient
and more powerful. And soon enough they'll all be ran on renewable energy.

OP said nothing about growing the population. His statement can be true even
as world population growth is slowing.

Like many things, there may be no purely immaterial, but there is much (and
increasing) practically immaterial.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Ahh but those machines are constantly becoming simultaneously more
> efficient and more powerful._

There are limits to efficiency due to fundamental laws of physics. We're
already hitting some, we might be far from others, but a) we may not hit all
of them fast enough to met the demand of exponential growth, and b) after we
hit them, we can't improve those machines/processes further.

------
twoslide
It really only makes sense to understand the world economy as a whole. On this
scale, consumption (e.g. steel production or oil consumption) continue to grow
[1,2]. Americans are in the fortunate position of selling services (e.g.
finance, advertising, information management) and consuming finished products
from the rest of the world, but the American economy should not be considered
a closed system.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_steel_pro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_steel_production)

[2]
[https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/data/browser/#/?vs=IN...](https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/data/browser/#/?vs=INTL.44-1-AFRC-
QBTU.A&vo=0&v=H&start=1980&end=2016)

~~~
JackFr
Your point is well taken, insofar as manufactured goods, but does not explain
the decline in agricultural and construction inputs. In agriculture we're
(currently) a net exporter and construction is non-traded.

~~~
vannevar
There certainly may be industries where real dematerialization is taking
place, and the author of the article would've been better off sticking with
those. Instead the article makes sweeping, unsubstantiated claims across the
entire economy that just aren't credible.

------
TeMPOraL
This reads to me mostly as the US importing more, so the increased material
use doesn't show in statistics. The article also mentions increase in use of
plastics.

One thing I'm curious about though - how come energy use stopped being
correlated with economic growth? That's new.

~~~
freeflight
Afaik energy use being correlated with economic growth depends on how much of
the economy is based on energy-intensive industries, like manufacturing.

The US, as many other developed countries, has been shifting out of
manufacturing economies to service economies for a while now.

Case in point: Nothing at Disney stipulates a correlation between their
"economic output" and their energy consumption.

Meanwhile, a steel/aluminum plant in China will have a pretty direct
correlation between economic output and energy input.

~~~
wazoox
As I understand it, a service-based economy is _more_ energy-intensive. A
service based economy requires a pre-existing industrial base; services
activity are actually _managing actual stuff_ streams, and streams about these
streams. Plus, you need heating, transportation, internet etc for all of your
office workers, which requires energy.

The absence of obvious correlation doesn't remove the need. Just like there
would be no advanced economy without a working agricultural infrastructure to
provide food to everyone...

~~~
freeflight
Doesn't that really depend on what the services are based?

Driving food around in a gig economy is just another logistics jobs, driving
refined metals around between different refining processes is also just
another logistics job, but one with more "energy-intensive cargo".

All that tech, the cars, the infrastructure, they need those base materials
you can't just "service into existence" as you can do with IP and copyrights.

Sure, all that tech needs electricity to run, but the really big emission and
energy footprint they create during their creation, not during their use.

------
lkrubner
Wages have been mostly flat, so consumers have no extra money to engage in
additional buying. Since the Great Recession of 2008, the top 1% of the income
distribution have absorbed 125% of productivity gains. This is the reverse of
what we saw in the 1940s and 1950s and 1960s when strong labor unions were
able to win 110% of productivity for workers, so that the share of national
income going to labor increased. Now the opposite is happening, with the share
of national income going to labor decreasing.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Well... just last night, I was planning a trip. There was a place I could see
on Google Maps (satellite view) that looked interesting, but it wasn't clear
that I could turn onto it (there might be a barrier or an elevation
difference). But Google Street View made it clear that I could turn onto this
little dirt road in the middle of nowhere. For free.

That isn't wage growth. And yet, I am better off for being able to do that -
not better off in terms of dollars, but better off in terms of being able to
more easily do the things that I want to do.

~~~
prawn
Would the computer or mobile phone used to see that satellite map be a new
category of device if we're comparing to 30+ years ago? I remember when I
first moved out of home that there were council rates, water, electricity and
gas bills. Optionally, phone too. Now there's internet, 2x mobile phone plans
(more if you have teenagers), Netflix, Stan, etc.

A lot of people are upgrading phones or laptops every few years too.

The tech is great, but it isn't always free.

------
danans
I wonder what this will look like in a renewable energy world where the cost
of energy on the margin drops to the the small operating cost + the
principal/interest on the capital expenditure.

We might actually see a reduction in GDP in that case, especially if coupled
with ever increasing production efficiency for energy consuming processes.

In that case, we might have to re-evaluate how we define "success" to be less
weighted for GDP, or include the reduction in fossil fuel externalities in the
definition.

Could be be best race-to-the-bottom ever.

~~~
toomuchtodo
New Zealand is a model to follow [1]. As you mention, of course GDP will
plummet as renewables and technology act as enormous deflationary forces (good
luck Central Banks trying to inflate against those forces). Software is eating
the world, there is no marginal unit cost for delivering that benefit to the
world. For example, consider what was previously spent across the world on TLS
certs that now Let's Encrypt provides to the world for a few million dollars a
year. Every opportunity for a Unicorn is an opportunity for a lean, well
functioning non-profit to deliver similar consumer excess (or as a Human would
say in behavioral econ, "happiness") very inexpensively (another example I
love: Watsi.org [2]).

[1] [https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/6/8/18656710/new-
zea...](https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/6/8/18656710/new-zealand-
wellbeing-budget-bhutan-happiness) (Forget GDP — New Zealand is prioritizing
gross national well-being)

[2]
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tZq47h6jg7NX4ddhTS_H...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tZq47h6jg7NX4ddhTS_H8JFVfLZiDbxwwdQD47_ow64)
(Watsi.org Transparency Log)

------
uoaei
Considering how much of the economy is derivatives, options, and futures
trading, this isn't exactly a surprise.

I'm no economist but the fact that we're using less of the most fundamental
resources available despite a growing population doesn't seem like improving
efficiency in aggregate, it just seems like decreasing activity masked by the
inflated aggregated metrics about the 'economy'. A lot of money moves around
nowadays and relatively little of it is actually put toward something "real",
instead being diverted to quant firms' operational costs and their employees'
bank accounts.

~~~
lovecg
Define “real”. If I replaced your spreadsheet with a bunch of Python scripts,
vastly improving your productivity, and you paid me for it, did something
“real” get created in the process?

------
eutropia
I think the subtext here is obvious to people on HN, but isn't this because so
much value is generated using electrons on increasingly efficient computer
systems?

~~~
sp332
That doesn't explain crop tonnage going up while fertilizer and water use are
going down.

~~~
doctorpangloss
Did it occur to you that, like ordinary consumer products, industrial products
also oversell their efficacy?

There was just a paper released about a widely used pesticide that did not
appear to actually increase yields.

If the question is, how does crop tonnage go up without water and fertilizer
use, maybe the answer really is a computer helped people plan better and be
less wasteful.

Or all the least efficient farmers were bankrupted out of the market.

~~~
testuser454
"There was just a paper released about a widely used pesticide that did not
appear to actually increase yields."

When my father was in a university geology department in an Agriculturally
intensive midwestern state in the 80's, he worked on a few projects with
farmers related to water use. One thing he looked into (unrelated to the main
research project) was the cost/benefit of ferilizer use. The gist of it was
that he came up a curve representing the marginal value added of fertilizer,
which started high, and eventually went negative. Past a certain point, less
fertilizer was absorbed into the soil and more went directly to runoff/there
was more than the plants could use, something like that, and thereafter the
added cost outweighed the further crop gains. Most of the farmers in the area
were going beyond that point to some extent, and could increase their profit
by decreasing fertilizer use to some extent. He said the farmers he talked to
were skeptical, but one tried it out on one of their fields that year, found
it to be an improvement, and a number of farmers in the area reduced their
fertilizer to some extent using the curve as a guidance. The fertilizer
sellers would probably just have said that more fertilizers would lead lead to
more productivity, which was true, but not presented the cost/benefit.

I don't know too much about farming/crop science, but could see there having
been improvements in things like this as well as GMO's & selective breeding.
At one point Iowa State University was one of the leading statistics
department in the US, which I believe was in large part due to the
applicibility of statistics to farming.

"Or all the least efficient farmers were bankrupted out of the market."

One of the trends in the Midwest over the last few decades has been the
transition from a larger number of smaller farms to a smaller number of very
large farms. Perhaps this is greater efficiency/mechanization/scale.

~~~
bluGill
If nothing else a large farm gains more from efficiency. $10/acre when you
have 80 acres is $800. If you have 3,000 acres that is $30,000 - which means
you can afford to pay for more efficiency.

------
georgeburdell
I didn’t see it addressed in the article so I’ll slip on my tinfoil hat for a
moment...

Could this be related to growing income and wealth inequality? Poor people buy
less stuff, and presumably rich people get rich by not buying more stuff
commensurate with their incomes. Even the falling fertilizer consumption might
be explained if poorer people are shifting to more processed junk food.

The article notes 1970 as the critical turning point, which is the same year
Piketty identifies in his book Capital as the inequality turning point in the
U.S. and Europe

~~~
SllX
I don’t know enough about economics, nearly enough, in fact I’ve decided after
listening to an economics podcast for the past month (still working through
the backlog) that I’m essentially a know-nothing today.

That said, I have some questions if there’s an economics know-something around
here, because there might be an alternative explanation than just a rise in
inequality. For one thing, to maintain the standard of equality/inequality
that exists today, I would think even the richest would need something to dump
their money into. Right now that seems to be the United States economy,
mostly, and a few fairly solid foreign markets, Japan, the EU, Hong Kong,
Britain, and for the less risk averse, there’s also the PRC and various
developing economies. Mostly the US is where you get your safest ROI.

So a massive growth in investment, would seem to also suggest a massive growth
in the financial services market. Not to mention the massive amounts of money
sloshing around throughout the Bay Area. At the end of the day, you still need
bankers handling all the transactions.

And that’s just it, the United States today, near as I can tell and certainly
this is what I was taught and the dogma of today, is a services-based economy.
Banking, health care, government, etc, not to mention the usual suspects among
tech: Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Uber, Lyft, Doordash, Microsoft,
Netflix, etc.

Now between them, there’s a lot of products getting designed, and built, and
shipped, and sold. Computers, phones, and I’m sure even the cars drivers use
for fares and deliveries are consuming a fair amount more resources than your
average car. In providing their services, they are charging a premium, and in
return you get convenience. If you use AWS or Azure, you’re still using
something tangible and real, you just don’t own the infrastructure. But the
people that do are benefitting from economies of scale large enough that there
are ultimately fewer servers and data center than there otherwise would be if
all of their customers bought their own. So in a real sense, it really does
seem like more value is being created with less resources that way.

So now that whoever is reading this knows where I’m coming from, here is my
question to economics know-somethings (fair warning, my jargon might even be
off or used incorrectly): does our economic shift away from agriculture and
manufacturing towards a service and information-centric economy have a
possible causal effect on our ability to grow the economy with seemingly fewer
resources? If so, is there one part of the services sector which seemingly has
an outsized influence in decreasing our resource use while growing the
economy, be it financial or tech or something else?

Seriously, thanks in advance.

~~~
bluGill
There is a factor. The energy it takes to melt metal is hard to get around.
The US manufactures more than we are given credit for, and there have been
improvements in efficiency, but it is still energy intensive and hard to get
around it. Thus services are a factor in that they need less energy.

Other factors:

Things last longer. (when there isn't planned obsolesce) We have learned to
make things higher quality, so even when we make something the energy cost to
replace it latter is deferred a little.

The miles people drive isn't increasing. Something as somehow got people to
drive more and more each year. Services is probably a factor in that: why
drive to X when you can stay home... (walking - or even driving someplace
closer count as staying home)

It is really hard to know which factors are important though.

------
SolaceQuantum
Does this relate to the buyback-debt cycle of companies? [0]

[0]. [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/29/buybacks-companies-
increasin...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/29/buybacks-companies-increasingly-
using-debt-to-repurchase-stocks.html)

------
spodek
Physics > Economics

The Do The Math blog by Caltech-trained UCSD astrophysicist Tom Murphy is the
best resource in this area.

In particular the posts

\- Galactic Scale Energy [https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-
energy](https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy)

\- Can Economic Growth Last? [https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/can-economic-
growth-last](https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/can-economic-growth-last)

\- The dinner conversation with an economist on this topic
[https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-
physicist](https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist)

~~~
nostrademons
I read those and conclude "Physics is not a particularly relevant constraint
on economic growth."

His energy analysis concluded that at 2.3% growth rate and current technology,
we would need to use the entire energy supply falling upon the earth's surface
within 275 years. Improving technology might be able to stretch that to 400
years. Within 1400 years, we would need to use the entire energy of our solar
system.

But we have a number of more pressing _demographic_ constraints. As countries
develop, fertility falls; fertility rates are currently below replacement in
the entire developed world [1] with all regions other than Africa falling
below replacement rate by 2050. Within _80_ years, population is likely to
start falling, with some studies predicting this within _30_ years. Worse,
there's a worldwide demographic bulge of 18-30 year old males that's hitting
just about now; such demographics have been associated with a higher
likelihood of war in the past.

There's plenty of other problems that these bring: if you don't get killed in
war and manage to find a mate, you're not likely to see your social security
or 401(k) worth all that much, nor will you find health care unless your rich
or lucky or both. But they'll happen _way_ before we reach physical limits on
growth. Our threat model should be stupid politicians doing stupid things at
the behest of frustrated populations, not the laws of physics.

[1] [http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/total-
fertility-r...](http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/total-fertility-
rate/)

~~~
freeflight
The demographics issue makes this whole situation such a massive paradox.

On one hand, we want all those extra humans to generate "economic growth" to
keep our perpetual growth train going.

On the other hand, the environmental consequences of that seem already
unbearable for our biome right now.

It's like we want to have our cake and eat it too, it just won't work. If we
want to "save the planet" then we need to let go of this insane idea of
perpetual economic growth we supposedly only can solve by throwing more human
bodies at it.

~~~
spodek
Many human cultures have lived without growth.

Economists and others who think growth is necessary to distribute goods don't
know what they're talking about or have ulterior motives.

------
jdkee
A parallel to this concept is that of "decontenting" a product. Nissan did
this in the 1980s and 1990s to the Maxima to keep prices in line with the
Camry and Accord.

See
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/decontent](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/decontent)

~~~
dredmorbius
Specific references on the Maxima and Nissan's practices?

~~~
jdkee
[https://www.autonews.com/article/19960122/ANA/601220731/deco...](https://www.autonews.com/article/19960122/ANA/601220731/decontenting-
when-there-s-no-costs-left-to-cut-japan-wrestles-with-what-to-take-out-of-
cars-trucks)

~~~
dredmorbius
Thanks, though I'll note that's a 23 year old article.

------
RenRav
Related to this, he's made a whole slew of longbet predictions on us consumimg
less of these resources.

[http://longbets.org/user/amcafee/](http://longbets.org/user/amcafee/)

------
throwawaysea
Is this simply because manufacturing is offshore?

~~~
swebs
That seems like the most likely explanation, especially since this trend
started right when trade opened with China.

~~~
cmrx64
It's confusing to me that this isn't proffered at all in the article or most
of the comments here. Without understanding this factor, how can
"dematerialization" be taken seriously?

~~~
throwawaysea
> Without understanding this factor, how can "dematerialization" be taken
> seriously?

I don't think it can. My thought went to suspecting we simply don't "directly"
consume raw materials only because this story doesn't pass the common sense
'sniff' test. If I look around me at my lifestyle or my
friends/family/coworker's lifestyles, consumerism seems to have increased and
not decreased. Think of the rise of ubiquitous handheld electronic devices,
fast fashion (Forever 21, H&M, and so on), online shopping, and so on.

------
ggm
Moving an economy from real things to services and ideas begs many questions,
not the least of which is "what does price even mean" because the cost/price
nexus had some meaning with real goods, but has almost no meaning with
services and ideas.

A perfect cure for age related death is worth so much, it probably has
undefined value. A TV show as a bitstream is worth nothing (bits ephemerally
have no value), can be infinitely copied, and yet IPR law defines its value as
a function of the lock on the disney vault.

~~~
dredmorbius
Economic treatment of costs varies, but there are two principle variants.

The mainstream view is that "all costs are opportunity costs", which is to
say, the best alternative use of some input. This is probably best further
expanded to the notion that an opportunity cost is based on the _consumer
value_ received from the use stream defined by the alternative use, which is a
bit abstract, but generally tractable.

An alternative, with antecedants to Adam Smith, is that costs are based on the
factor inputs to production. The mainstream views these as labour and capital
(or increasingly, simply capital), but a more comprehensive view would be for
a number of inputs: material, energy, knowledge, capital (itself reserved
production from earlier periods), labour, organisational services, and sinks.
An early version of this appears in Leo Tolsty's _What is to be Done?_ (1886).

Service and information are distinct from material production (goods,
construction, capital) in several regards, but are not fully immune to
physical considerations. In particular:

\- Services require labour, capital, and energy inputs.

\- Services are, in the words of one of the early economists (Smith or Mill as
I recall) "immediately extinguished". That is, in the most fundamental sense,
services are _non-capitalist_ in that one cannot reserve production of
services as capital. (The _results_ of services _may_ be.)

\- Information has numerous characteristics which make its pricing virtually
completely incompatible with market-based systems as information is a pure
public good, in the econonomic sense: nonrivalrous and nonexcludable.

The upshot is that service-and-information economies neither spare us from
physical resources, nor are amenable to the management and explanatory
concepts that have guided most of the past 200 or so years of economic
development.

Also, nit, the question is _raised_ but not _begged_ :

[http://begthequestion.info](http://begthequestion.info)

------
bronlund
Because there is no growth! It's just the multiplujillion dollars The Fed
plucked from thin air that make it seem so.

Anyone with half a brain knows that something is fucky.

------
mooreds
I had a friend who was gloomy about resource extraction one time. I comforted
him by saying there are few limits on the number of masseuses and story
tellers we need.

As we get better and better at producing the necessities, we'll desire more
luxuries, some of which are experiences.

Glad to see it confirmed in the numbers.

------
jganetsk
I would like to know how much of American dematerialization is just exporting
materialization to China. They make our stuff, we import it. Does that count
as materials consumed by Americans? Note that they mention the great reversal
starting in 1970. Nixon went to China in 1972.

~~~
dredmorbius
There's a strong reason to believe it's much of it.

See:

The true raw material footprint of nations

[https://web.archive.org/web/20130906063246/http://newsroom.u...](https://web.archive.org/web/20130906063246/http://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-
technology/true-raw-material-footprint-nations)

The material footprint of nations
[http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/08/28/1220362110](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/08/28/1220362110)

As of 2010, total global per capita energy consumption was rising:

[http://i.imgur.com/5hO5Hep.png](http://i.imgur.com/5hO5Hep.png)

Most of the above, plus further discussion:

Economic decoupling? The recent relationship between energy and growth

[https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1vlksg/economi...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1vlksg/economic_decoupling_the_recent_relationship/)

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DeonPenny
With information age I'd assume those things with more predictive logistics
and transparency would get more efficient. We should add in data transported
too in these metrics and I'd guess the correlation would become more obvious.

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pjmorris
I'm no gold bug, but, looking at the graphs in the article, it's interesting
how GDP decouples from resource use around the same time that the US went off
of the gold standard.

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swiley
Americans are flat out doing less. We move stuff around, tell people what to
do in other countries, and write software and that’s kind of it.

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sime
The a16z podcast recently had an interesting episode featuring the author of
this article. It discussed the divergence of the GDP + energy usage curves as
well as some of the other stuff in his book.

[https://a16z.com/2019/10/03/the-environment-capitalism-
techn...](https://a16z.com/2019/10/03/the-environment-capitalism-technology-
progress-more-from-less/)

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grdeken
Can we overlay the use of plastics? Which is curiously absent from this study?

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erva
Andrew McAfee did an interview last week w/ Sam Harris [1] that was a fun
listen if you are interested in a conversational understanding before reading
his book.

[1] [https://samharris.org/podcasts/170-great-
uncoupling/](https://samharris.org/podcasts/170-great-uncoupling/)

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NTDF9
Isn't that a good thing? Use less real resources folks.

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barnabee
“but”? how about “and”… these are all positives

~~~
s_y_n_t_a_x
It doesn't fit the narrative.

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Excel_Wizard
More value with less inputs? Sign me up.

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ctdonath
Capitalism at work, saving the environment.

Increasing profits necessitates reducing one's demand for supply. Using less
steel, paper, fertilizer, and energy to achieve same/better results while
tautologically using less resources is indeed good all around (mostly).

~~~
kls
While I don't disagree that capitalism is at work. It is almost a given that
the reduction in steel is due to auto manufactures and many other industries
have moved to aluminum or composite materials. Neither one of them offers a
great environmental or energy savings over steel.

Paper is most likely digitization which again just transfers the energy use
into computing every time the document is viewed and is almost certainly a net
negative in relation to energy consumption.

Fertilizer I don't know but a half ass guess would be GMO's. As they are able
to target traits that allow them to use less fertilizer and pesticides to
produce the same amount of crop yield.

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not_a_cop75
"Good news! We’re getting more while using less."

Or maybe we just haven't accounted for inflation and the rampant advent of
landlords and landlord-like start ups which consumes greater and greater
slices of the consumer's money.

~~~
Gibbon1
Yes. I think the financialization of the economy means you can't compare
numbers over time.

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seamyb88
Growth for who? Interestingly the words poverty, austerity, unemployment,
education and health cuts are all missing from this "economics" article. There
has been a single trend since Capitalism began centuries ago - the rich have
been getting richer and the poor poorer. Yield curve's looking good today
dear, we're being evicted, but damn it looks good.

------
Decade
This seems to be the flip side of designing things to be no more durable than
necessary. With the highly regulated exception of cars, the profit motive is
driving companies to use the least amount of material, whether it’s a washing
machine made of stamped metal or a tissue-thin plastic bag.

On the other hand, well-meaning socialist interventions are driving additional
environmental impacts, as people buy “reusable” bags or higher-CO₂-impact
paper bags instead of changing their behavior the proper way.

~~~
thrower123
This feels right to me. At the peak material usage highlighted in the graphs,
around 2000, consumer products seemed to built considerably more ruggedly than
they are today - possibly over-built, really, in some cases. If you shave off
1 or 2% of the material going into a product year over year, that really
amounts to something after two decades.

