David Hare-Scott wrote:
songbird wrote:
David Hare-Scott wrote:
songbird wrote:
Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:
...
capitalism does not require infinite resources,
i dunno where you get that idea from.

You sell one, and buy materials to make 2. You sell 2, and buy
materials to make 4. You sell 4, and buy materials to make 8, ect.
Pretty soon you are looking at very big numbers. Capitalism is
founded on growth. Even with planned obsolescence, an infinite
amount of widgets requires an infinite amount of resources.

you're confusing capitalism with some imaginary
construct.

No he isn't. The way capitalism works in Western economies requires
constant growth in the economy, not only that but it has to be at the
correct rate. Our (Oz) federal bank manipulates money with the
stated intent of maintaining growth within a narrow range - about 3%
PA IIRC. I think yours does too.

oh, i know, it's an attempt to moderate the so called
business cycle because there isn't a sufficient amount
of a safety net for people. the larger problem is that
the safety net is really people wishing that they didn't
have any responsibility for taking care of themselves.
which to me is a wider sign of how rotten the current
system is, but that's a whole different topic.


But get back to the main point. Governments and financial institutions
acknowledge the system produces crap outcomes if growth is not in the 'good'
range and they do all in their power to keep it there. Do you acknowledge
that capitalism produces unacceptible outcomes if growth is not maintained?

no. i think deflation or steady state on prices
is as preferable to some people as inflation is to
others. i think the policy of pushing the system
to have some inflation is actually destructive in
the long term, but the governments/social tinkerers
at present like to hide all sorts of inefficiencies
by using this. also it is a transfer of wealth
indirectly (not very efficiently either) from savers
to debtors (usually this means from the elderly to
the young).

the crap results are crap because the system is crap
front loaded from the start. garbage in, garbage out.

as for sticking to any one point, heh...
i'm in a rambly mood tonight.


as you have seen over a lifetime that even such
attempts at moderating the business cycle are largely
driven by entrenched interests in keeping the status-
quo. when there are large events that gets thrown
out the window (wars, natural catastrophes). so it
is largely an artificial mechanism that breaks given
the right lever.


If by entrenched interests you mean governments that don't want to see
rioting in the streets as either goods are not available due to depression
or money has no value due to hyperinflation then I agree. I also agree that
these economic and fiscal levers are of limited value.

but it isn't the capitalist system that makes hyperinflation,
it is the governments and the managers of the money supply
that abuse their powers and then the reaction of sane people
to that abuse.

riots are a whole different matter, a response to injustice
in some cases is the desire to correct the injustice.

i couldn't give you any system other than complete behavior
and emotional control which eliminates riots or unsatisfactory
outcomes to some people.


Politicians of most colours cannot keep from crowing
when growth is 'good' and trying to blame somebody else when it is
'bad'. They have accepted that the people want higher standards of
living (or at least as high as they have now) and that living
standards are inextricably linked to growth. There are plenty of
examples to support this where very fast growth or economic
shrinking has produced horrid outcomes for the wider population.

surely, however, there's also a fair bit of evidence
that efforts to limit the destruction only makes it
last longer.

Let's not get too sidetracked here.

i don't know if it really is a side track to point out
that one of the possible crappy outcomes of tinkering is
prolonged pain and poor economic performance. it isn't
a hard science any more than medicine is. the Japanese
real-estate bubble, when it finally burst, is pretty much
still on-going in being corrected. they've dragged their
fixes out for close to 15 years and they've pretty much
had the poor economy, market and close to a depression as
a result.

i think in the future many economists will call that
the Japanese Great Depression.


so instead of taking the hit up front
and getting on with things after shaking out the weak
businesses we drag all these weak business along.
eventually they do go under.


There is much more to it than weak businesses going under in bad times. But
let's stick to the point.

that capitalism requires profit? well how many
times can i disagree with that as it's pretty clear
to me that the system doesn't magically stop when
companies go non-profit or have a bad year. even in
the worst parts of the Great Depression there were
still companies in business, there were still people
buying and selling things. it really wasn't a problem
of capitalism, but many failed policies and the lack
of banking regulations. then about 80 years later we
ignored the lesson and made banking regulations too
lax and once again the economy took a severe hit,
but in that mess there were a lot of opportunities
for the smart person willing to take risks.


Very few publicly question the system that requires this but
question it we must.

Capitalism is the product of the era of unrestricted human expansion
across the globe. To maintain economic growth one simply increased
population and found new resources and markets in foreign lands. Of
course technology fuelled this expansion by enabling faster
extraction, transport and utilisation of resources.

it will change as values change. values will
change as resources become more limited. that's
the nature of the beast. prices rise as supply
becomes limited. people either produce their
own (food, water, etc.) or conserve or find other
sources. what drives the whole system is the
many individual choices made, how they add up.
when we start bumping up against hard limits
like fresh water and food supply then people
will start valuing water conservation and not
wasting so much food. this type of gradual shift
is already happening and will continue to happen.

There are three things wrong with this:

1) The assumption that market forces will eventually result in a
satisfactory new equilibrium

no, i only claim the system keeps working. it is a
dynamic system that also has many conflicting forces
just like there are many different actors with varying
degrees of influence.

i suspect the future is going to be full of many
unsatisfied people. we're not a species geared towards
contentment. it's not a skill that is taught, valued
or explored by many. i think i've done fairly well on
that count though, perhaps others can learn from what
i'm doing...


This is a blue-sky imagination product. Either you have to show that
capitalism with zero growth will continue without ultrahigh unemployment or
that a new system that doesn't produce unemployment with zero growth will
evolve. You have done neither.

i think you ignore the fact that for the most part
actual production of real things is a very minor part
of capitalism these days. i.e. the values have already
shifted. most people could be considered unemployed or
under-employed because most of what they do is shuffle
information, provide entertainment to others, they
really aren't producing tangible things. there are
millions of workers who simply have given up looking
for work. anyone over 50 has a very difficult time.
these people aren't included in the unemployment
statistics in the USoA unless you happen to find someone
who's really looking at the whole trend. that is just
one example of how the system shifts as the values
shift. this has happened several times in my life-time.
i don't expect this process to disappear.

(for a good example of how the current numbers are
being jiggered take a listen to a program from
This American Life called Trends that was on about a
month ago)


2) The assumption that the transition will be gradual and orderly

i don't make that claim either. i've been a student of
the markets and history to know better. the only argument
i'm making is that the system continues to function without
growth. we've had many periods of deflation or stagnation
and in those cases the markets worked, people bought and
sold things and the world did not end. yes, it hurt some
people and was painful, but that doesn't show that the
system didn't function. what it did show is that people
don't normally have any long-term thinking for retirement
or very much discipline when it comes to savings and
investing.


The booms and busts of the last 200 years give the lie to this. If anything
the global economy is less stable than individual economies. Shocks
propagate through the system at light speed now. Once real limits to
resources become apparent prices will rise very quickly, whole sectors that
work on thin margins will go belly-up very quickly. The adjustment is not
going to be pretty.

we have a government that has been running on debt
for eons, and it's still chugging along. we have
quite a few companies (public and private, non-profit
or not) and organizations that will continue along
quite fine even if they continue to lose money for
a period of years.

i do agree that the speed of things has greatly
increased, but that negative also has a positive in
that the whole system can react to new values much
more quickly. we are building a world-wide system
because the kinds of problems we are now having to
solve are world-wide. not that i'm saying it is
perfect by far. there's a lot to be said for needing
better regulations and some stops in place for when
it oscillates too far out of kilter. people who
put in automatic trading are simply nuts as far as
i'm concerned.


3) The assumption that it will happen soon enough to allow orderly
transition away from dependence on diminishing resources.

We see as plain as day with the climate change issue people will stick to
the old ways until the bitter end. They will not prepare in time for a new
future. They will waste time, deny, continue to exploit limited resources
until the last. The concept of finite resources that limit growth and
require a whole new way of thinking is not one that people want to believe -
therefore they don't - therefore they will not prepare for it.

no, there is no assumption of orderly because you
are talking about people here. people panic and
freak out over all sorts of things. all i assume is
that the system continues to function.

i agree with you about the lack of many people to
plan for the future. i don't know how this is going
to play out. it may not be very pretty, that i do
agree with. yet, through it all there will be
economic activity that continues. it won't be based
upon resources which no longer exist. it will be
reflecting possibilities of exploration for new
resources and also likely increasing values of
recycling technologies and work in that area.

the longer term, simply put, is very similar to
what happens if you read about the history of
science and some of the really long-fought dragged
out disagreements. the scientists died out and the
rest of the scientific community went on with what
actually appeared to be working. they still don't
have the full answer in many areas of science so
in effect there are many avenues still open for
arguing about physics and cosmology and ...
this is what will be happening with respect to
climate change deniers. eventually they die out
and are replaced by more aware people.

in the USoA a great number of farmers are quite
old and will be retiring. some of that land will
be put to use by younger people who have a better
idea of how to do things to preserve the topsoil and
produce food in ways that don't rely upon so much
inputs. it may take 100-200 years, but it will
happen. it's just how it goes. farmers who destroy
the land will eventually be forced out of business.
then there will be a chance for remediation.
techniques exist for pretty much any circumstance if
you have the time and patience.


Economic growth requires goods, production of goods require
materials. Thus as it currently works the system must continue to
extract fuel, metals, fibre, timber etc from the earth at an ever
increasing rate. Many of these resources are limited and will be
consumed sooner or later. Thus, the present system embodies the
seeds of its own destruction.

the system also has seeds of its own transformation.
we are the determiners of value, not the system, the
system works because of the choices that people make.
when prices rise then choices get made differently.


Hopeless optimism based on nothing but faith in economics which have
repeatedly been shown to be no better than voodoo. It isn't a matter of
deciding what brand of conflakes to buy, it's take everything you know and
rely on and turn it upside down. We are talking about changes that are way
outside the scope of anything in the past happening much more quickly all
over the world.

i'd say that you didn't live through the Crusades in
the Middle East or many other times of rapid change.
we're in for it. no doubt. i still say that the
capitalist system will continue on in some form or
another and it won't require growth. it just requires
people buying and selling. that's not faith. that's
facts. people trade things for other things. as long
as people exist they're not going to stop trading. i
don't understand where you come up with the idea that
entire economic system disappears. we have plenty of
examples from history that show that empires rise and
fall, but trading/commerce/markets/money/exchanges/etc.
all continue. for many years after the effective end
of the Roman Empire in Europe they still used the Roman
coins and tables of values for many purposes. it
worked well enough and so it went on.


The issue even
has a name "decoupling". The aim is to find a system where
maintaining a standard of living does not require constant growth,
ie the two are decoupled. So far nobody has done it.

the profit requirement is only limited to
being able to cover overhead of running any
business. the more efficient a business is
the more likely it keeps going. the smarter
any extractive business is, means it knows
it has to shift into renewables and recycling
or becoming a service provider. many companies
have research arms geared towards finding
better ways of doing things and finding other
uses for waste materials.


Profit shmoffit. We are not talking about keeping the investors happy at
the AGM. Back to the main point. How do you maintain constant economic
growth without matching growth in resources? You are just hand-waving the
issue away.

no, i'm simply stating that it's pretty clear that
economies continue to function even when they are not
growing. we've had recessions and depressions yet the
economy still worked. yes, it wasn't what everyone
desired, but it didn't vanish either. what did happen
is that new values were created and then the market
follows those forces as people act on the new
information and make different decisions. it's not
hand-waving away when we have plenty of historical
examples.

if you want to see the most recent example look at
how the shift in the world economy has gone from
manufacturing goods to the information and services.
what it took was people putting enough value on
information and entertainment. the change happened.

a great deal can be said that this is a temporary
change and at some point in the future there will be
some return to a more reality driven system. i sure
hope so. in the meantime we have the system that
reflects the values of the people in a large part
if they continue to stick their heads in the sand
and consume more than the planet can support then
there will be a backlash, a collapse and a great
deal of pain and likely some wars, death, diseases,
starvation, etc. all through that there will still
be a market, there will still be trading and there
will still be losses.

constant economic growth reported right now is often
false if you actually figured in costs of the pollution,
destruction of the environment, diseases, wars, debt,
etc.

if you really want to get critical, go there and
do the analysis. it's all manipulated by governments
bent on ignoring the known costs.


What is worse very few seem to be
concerned. We are generally restricted to peripheral arguments that
climate change isn't real or that science and technology will save
us. The fact that the core system was developed and succeeded in an
environment that no longer exists, and can only continue to succeed
when those conditions exist is widely ignored.

it comes down to energy and not much else.
all resources consumed can be recycled given
enough energy. the only tax is entropy.


In the long term possibly so. But saying that there is no scientific or
technical constraint on growth but energy does not tell us how to organise
humanity and its commerce to achieve this condition.

that is where values come in, and those values
drive the choices and those choices drive the market
(all to some extent, it's not perfect, there's
conflicts and false information).

right now the values needed for a sustainable future
are not widespread enough that all the people carry
them and act on them. but as time continues the older
population dies out and the newer population carries on
with better information. it may not be fast enough in
many cases and there's going to be a big mess in terms
of wrecked infrastructure and changed coastlines and
losses in land/topsoil, but eventually the system does
correct itself, as a closed system, if we're going to
survive, it's a certainty that is how it goes. how
many lives lost, how much damage is done to the other
species on the planet and how that may cause further
collapses is hard to say with certainty, but it's not
looking pretty. still the market will continue, people
were trading long before modern industrial capitalism
came along, it will continue long after. as long as
people are interacting it's almost guaranteed.


the limitation on the overall system is if
the sun gives us enough energy to do everything
we want to do given the materials at hand. when
cheap oil and other fossil fuels run out then
the shift gets made to recycling and renewables.
there is a good chance by then we'll have viable
space colonies.

widely ignoring how things change won't make
any company likely to last long. companies,
like the people that run them, have an interest
in keeping going, in continuing, so they'll pay
attention to changes. many can even drive the
pace of change faster than a government or an
individual can. like, in my lifetime i'll never
buy several hundred million watts of clean energy
or be a force to recycle huge amounts of materials
that used to be aimed at landfills or incineration,
but a large company can do that and many are.

the system can correct itself. it is gradually
doing so. if embedded subsidies for destructive
practices were removed and shifted towards supporting
cleaner alternatives then the change would be even
faster.

You have done nothing to show me that system will repair itself and that it
will happen in good time.

i don't know. i can't prove anything about the
future. get a few nutjobs and nuclear weapons running
around and suddenly we have a whole different set of
values (clean air, filtered water, perhaps living
underground in some form or another, dunno).

good time, the planet has been going on for
millions of years. it's not going to disappear.
if we have an entire collapse it's pretty likely
there will still be some people left to keep on
going. hopefully they'll be smarter.


The system is facing the biggest changes in
history and you just assume that the way it works in economics 101 text book
will be just dandy. This is no better than those who say there is no
problem because God put the world here for mankind to exploit and He
wouldn't lie so all is right.

i'm not saying that at all. if you've read what
i've written here you know i have a lot of concern
for the environment, for how people will figure out
how to feed themselves, etc. i don't have any claims
for how the transformation comes about. i do know
that markets will be a part of that. i don't see
them disappearing as long as people are around.


How do you decouple economic growth from resource growth? So far you
haven't given any indication that you know how or that you can show that it
isn't necessary.

it's been done to some extent as an example already
(the shift to information technologies and entertainment)
as values and desires shifted to these intangibles.
i'm not sure to what extent that kind of intangible
creation of value is possible, how far it can be pushed
from actual reality and what it will be like as forces
to drive the market or how that will all play out in the
longer term. i suspect reality will be the stronger
force in the end and that more people will have to grow
their own food and find ways to conserve energy and
other resources. an accurate accounting of pollution
(in all forms) will be critical in getting the market to
reflect what reality is showing us. as we have more
observations and scientists (and regular people involved
too) involved we get a better chance of making progress.

what the absolute closed system population of the
earth can sustain, i don't know. i also don't know
what size economy is needed to make sure that everyone
gets most of their actual needs met (ignoring the
argument about desires vs. actual needs).

there will also be very hard fights to be had over
expending resources for space flight, colonies on
other planets, doing research on pretty much all sorts
of hard to immediately justify science. these will
be fights for the future of humanity. then there will
also be fights over wild spaces, species diversity and
conservation vs. human needs, etc. i don't know how
these will work out. i hope they work out that we have
a planet still full of wild areas and a more limited
population that knows how to live in a responsible
manner. one that also has enough resources to get into
space and pressing on with getting to other planets and
solar systems (perhaps we'll never actually have to
live on a planet again if we learn what it takes to
live in a closed system smaller than a planet). it's
too early to know. i'll be long dead before the answers
to these questions are in, but i'll put my values behind
the choices i can influence now (treating the land
well, conservation, etc.) that can reduce the pressure
on the rest of the planet. as best i can. with what
i learn. like anyone else who's paying attention.

i do have both hope and faith that humans will be
around, where there are people there will be trading of
one kind or another. not all trades are profitable to
all. not all economies will do well. some people will
be unhappy and others will be just fine. the assumption
that an economy must grow is false. in a closed system
an accurate market will eventually be fairly fixed.
what is lost as friction is made up for by advances in
knowledge or efficiency. at least until the sun runs
out we have at least a large source of energy to draw
upon and a lot of recyclable materials to work with.

i've written elsewhere that i support taxes inversely
and exponentionally related to how much a produced item
is renewable/recycled/recyclable. that adjustment to any
of the large economies already (even if phased in over a
period of years) would do a lot to offset damage done.
that money could be spent on reclaiming and restoring
areas for environmental needs. we have a lot of space
that is currently being wasted that can be reclaimed and
put back into soaking up CO2 again and providing more
habitat for wild species.

if it comes to a great collapse then the wild areas
return and the topsoil regenerates at some rate. any
bare spots that can support life will get used in one
form or another. life is pretty tenacious.

i don't consider what i have as faith, i have both
science and history that show what happens after collapses.
it's not pleasant, sure, but some survive and carry on.
short of complete nuclear blasting of every weapon and
short of large comet strikes and super-volcanoes and
the sun burning out, i'm pretty sure some form of
humanity continues. it may be the case though that we
find other forms (if genetic tinkering gets to be
widespread we may take on all sorts of strange forms
-- i dunno the future exactly) and that gives us more
chances to continue too.

c'est la vie,


songbird