The title should say economic growth and not prosperity. You can have prosperity in a system whose objective is not infinite growth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPUogXUkr7I
Prosperity is about having an abundance of the things in life that really matter. That only requires economic growth when there aren't enough of those things to go around. Right now, there are enough of those things to go around, and way more, if all the people doing stupid useless shit like working in advertising became farmers and makers. Our society is being held hostage by plutocrats.
You have the example of the United States which has economic growth but has recently seen its average life expectancy fall.
Many other countries have less GPD per capita but higher average life expectancy.
What do you think of this?
Life expectancy is a crappy measure of healthcare, too many confounding factors.
And let’s ignore the US. For other countries with high life expectancy, how do you think they pay for it? By economic growth. Norway drills and sells a ton of oil.
Don’t kid yourself. People clicking on ads and buying new iPhones is the type of economic activities that pays for things like healthcare, welfare for the poor, etc.
Ok, but don’t force your views on others. If you want to die because a tooth is infected, then go for it. I’ll trade “enslaving the planet a bit” for another 50 decades of life, thank you very much.
This proves that we need a system change. Covid made that, we change from a system with the objective of producing stuff to a system with the goal of saving lives.
People of HN should take a look of the clube of rome book "limits of growth".
GND will not save us beacause it will demand energy and resources to swap all the infraestructure. At most developed countries will shift their enviromental cost to the poor ones
If the objective of the system is to produce stuff you need to think in large scale. When we do that we favor big corporations and as you say business around you shut down.
So change this system will help to solve your problem to.
How do you think we can solve the problem you pointed at?
Thermo-industrial consumer societies don’t need to change. Rather, as you said, we need a system change. We need to swap our current model for something else. The outcome should (and will) be different from a thermo-industrial society — it will be another society altogether. What sort exactly I don’t know yet. But « a systemic problem can only be approached by systemic solutions » seems like a reasonable assumption to make. :)
If we don’t do it ourselves, then the currently overstretched Earth system will just regulate itself, causing pain and suffering. COVID might just be an appetizer of what lies ahead if we don’t realize old ways (more technology, keep the economy growing at all costs, etc, ie things that demand more or too energy or impede resiliency) are very likely to fail the test.
I like how you mentioned the Club of Rome’s report because it was an early work that goes beyond the scope of IPCC (whose role is limited to climate change, which to be clear has a ton of merits in its own right) and presents the problem for what it is: a systemic problem that is riddled with feedback loops and that has deep ties with the roots of our society model as it developed over the 20th century.
I don’t like the idea of a systemic change. It’s uncomfortable, and at first it sounds ludicrous. But if we’re serious and dig into the topic with a critical eye towards our own mental models, that’s a conclusion we reach very soon.
I see this answer is being downvoted; I’d be happy to discuss points of discord. I was definitely being radical on purpose — perhaps to highlight what seems to me as a blatant reality that our can’t go on forever (and that we can work towards remodeling so it doesn’t happen that way).
Instead, I see downvotes and the parent comment received a straw man argument. I wouldn’t be surprised if I was being seen as an « integrist », except trust me — I’m not. Please, let’s discuss and not fight against one another. I know HN is much better suited to that than some other platforms. :)
Whenever I talk about this I am downvoted too.
I follow hacker news for the rationality in the comments but on this subject it is rare to exchange good arguments.
The aim of the economy before the covid is to produce things and this production is no longer synonymous with increased comfort. For example, Spain has many more houses than families but these families have more difficulty in paying rents.
However this production has to exist in order to maintain a profit of a few and above all to give work to the rest.
But what we have to do to avoid anthropocene is not compatible with this economy and so we have to think of a post-work society.
> However this production has to exist in order to maintain a profit of a few and above all
And to keep the jobs of those doing that kind of production.
I read an article a few years ago about Spaniards living in small flats more than any other country in Europe.
There are a few features of Spain that can explain why:
- Spain is mostly empty space and population is concentrated in cities
- Spaniards spend a lot of their time on the outside, so they don't need much space at home
- There are 18.5 million of families in Spain, the largest group are families of two people (with children), the second largest are people living alone (4.5 million) that would explain why there are empty houses, many people living alone cannot afford or do not want to live alone and share an apartment.
> so we have to think of a post-work society
You mean the pre-work society, right? :)
Work as the means of subsistence is a relatively recent invention.
There are other factors beyond the economic value of work, most of them are non-rational.
Take for example Christianity, for Christians until 19th century work was a form of redemption and salvation.
The idea has never completely faded away among them.
Calvinists and Protestants still believe that "born of poor parents and made his way up the ladder by sheer ability, self-reliance, and perseverance in the face of hardship. In short, he had to be "self made." The so-called Protestant Ethic then prevalent held that man was a sturdy and responsible individual, responsible to himself, his society, and his God. Anybody who could not measure up to that standard could not qualify for public office or even popular respect."
Do you think that large segments of US population (just as an example) would believe that or what Martin Luther King jr. said?
> We have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor — both black and white, here and abroad
More recently work for Christians has become a means of subsistence but it has become a way to express righteousness, as Weber said "Good works may express our devotion to values of care, compassion, or love for our neighbor, to a way of being that emulates the life of Jesus".
So in a way people go to work for reasons other than simply the salary.
To imagine a society without work one needs to also address the social and political issues revolving around it, it's not simply a technical solution to a technical problem, it's much more than that.
So in a way people go to work for reasons other than simply the salary.
This is critical. Most people think passion first, then you'll find the perfect job, and it's not always like that. You may need to work for a while in order to find what you truly are good at, and enjoy.
For that to happen, though, there needs to be reduced red tape and taxes, so switching jobs is easy and affordable for both parties.
UBI torpedoes this: it means higher taxes, and reduces the incentives to look for a better job.
It cannot be stressed enough how limited job mobility is here when compared to somewhere like the US.
As a personal anecdote, I have been threatened with legal action by two CEOs when I gave them my notice. The first time it was because I mentioned that I was interviewing for positions at local competitors, the second time it was because I gave them a week's notice instead of two weeks, even though I wasn't required to give them any notice. It is that ridiculous.
This will sadly ring so many Spaniard bells. I was told, upon giving my first job's two week notice, that I'd never find a better job and that I was wasting a lifetime opportunity.
But that's because employers know mobility is close to none when no one wants to risk moving, so they're emboldened by the asymmetric relation. Fun fact: this was a large consulting company with its own union, aside from the national and local ones. Never heard or saw any of their doings.
Just a note about Spain. It's mostly Catholic so culturally the protestant work ethic is pretty weak there.
Same also for Italy and Ireland I guess. It's half and half in England. It's more protestant in Scotland, and of course the US was founded on the notion
The south of Germany is meant to be Catholic but I don't know if culturally they are more laid back when it comes to work there.
I advice everyone interested in ecology to learn about the Club of Rome and the Limits of Growth.
This is the true inconvenient truth specially for people in businesses that treat growth as the ultimate objective.
This reminds me moves in the fast fashion business were you can dispose your clothes and receive vouchers. The consumer feels good because he is caring for the environment and the store can keep selling more stuff.
Advertising needs to be targeted directly. Otherwise, companies rightly reason that why should they opt for direct payments only, when they can take direct payments and shove ads in anyway?
In the great scheme of things, sure, that's true. But we need much cleaner energy at current prices.
If you watch from around the 1h22m mark, you will see that he conceeds there is no such thing as "energy conservation", and that what he argues for actually is an increase of at least three times the in price of energy and food. Well, that's a non-starter even if you accept the philosophy, it will lead to revolutions and regime changes, it cannot possibly work.
So we absolutely need to maintain the relative standard of living, while significantly cleaning up energy. A 5x drop of our carbon intensity can lead to a more or less ecologically sustainable world economy where billions can enjoy the western standard of living without fucking up the planet in less the a century.
> it will lead to revolutions and regime changes, it cannot possibly work.
While we're all comfy with cheap energy and produce, IMHO revolutions and regime changes aren't neccesarrily a showstopper. With +2℃ we will have regime changes, lots of refugees, probably revolutions, while hopefully avoiding war.
But the timescales are entirely different. To prevent +2°C a few decades or a century down the road, politicians need to make today moves that are guaranteed to leave them unemployed in the best case and and possibly even guillotined. It's simply not fathomable, whoever proposes a 3x increase in the price of food and energy as a solution for anything has no connection to reality.
Not only programmers, many of us tend to look at progress as an end in itself. Progress is the process of measuring if we achieve the objectives, it can not be the objective. Many times we do not achieve 100% of the objectives and that is fine, we need to consider the law of diminishing returns.
