What Daly is saying really is more that growth as currently measured (i.e. GDP growth) isn't a good metric and is one that can't go on forever. He's not (in his own word) agains't growth of wealth, but he's rather asking whether GDP growth is the metric to optimize for.<p>Saying we're bound by the laws of thermodynamics is a bit silly in my opinion. It's almost like saying we shouldn't invest in solar panels as the sun will eventually explode and won't shine anymore. A lot of GDP growth in developed nations comes from increase in efficiency, not increase in resource usage. Higher agricultural yields from better crops, self-driving cars, more efficient computers; they're all things that have the potential to drive much higher growth than their resource usage. Which I guess in ecological economics would be differentiated as "developments" rather than "growth".<p>Now I do agree that higher growth doesn't automatically means higher standards of living. Things like automation, while highly efficient, result in most of the gains going to capital owners. How society should deal with this is another interesting question.
Wikipedia's article on Herman Daly is far more useful.<p>This NYT writer is from the fluff department, the part that cranks out "lifestyle" sections and clickbait, not the news side.<p>Wikipedia: <i>"Daly argues that nature has provided basically two sources of wealth at man's disposal, namely a stock of terrestrial mineral resources and a flow of solar energy. An 'asymmetry' between these two sources of wealth exist in that we may — within some practical limits — extract the mineral stock at a rate of our own choosing (that is, rapidly), whereas the flow of solar energy is reaching earth at a rate beyond human control. Since the Sun will continue to shine on earth at a fixed rate for billions of years to come, it is the terrestrial mineral stock — and not the Sun — that constitutes the crucial scarcity factor regarding man's economic future."</i><p><i>"In Daly's view, ... it is believed that the price mechanism and technological development (however defined) is capable of overcoming any scarcity ever to be faced on earth. ... There is such a thing as absolute scarcity, and there is such a thing as purely relative and trivial wants"."</i><p>That sums up his position.<p>He's right, of course. The question is, on what timescale do we hit the limits of mineral resources?
Tens of years? Hundreds of years? Thousands of years?
The US Geological Survey tracks this for each commercially useful mineral.[3] It's worth reading.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Daly" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Daly</a><p>[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady-state_economy" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady-state_economy</a><p>[3] <a href="https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center" rel="nofollow">https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-c...</a>
Is not growth inevitable? I hear criticisms of it but is it not what happens automatically when there is competition for resources?
I can't really see what the alternative would be. I mean, ideally if you could just agree with everyone in the entire world that no one should strive for something better, we could stay where we are, but reaching such agreement seems impossible.<p>And let's say instead we change direction to reshape society, to become more ecological, more sustainable etc. That will require innovation, labor, capital etc. That is also a kind of growth! Like a child stops growing in height at some point, but continues to evolve intellectually etc.
I feel like this could have been a lot better if it were more concrete.<p>What's wrong with wanting GDP growth?<p>- Consider two families A and B, each with two earners and a small child. The parents of family A both work full time, earning $125k each, and they spend $20k/yr on childcare. The parents of family B each work part time, earn $110k per year each, and together with help from one grandparent are able to care for their small child, and spend more hours together. Family A contributes more to GDP than family B, but are they better off? Or are the benefits of seeing more of their child's early years greater than the difference in income?<p>- At the onset of a recession, a company forecasts that its business will shrink; they will both need less labor, and need to reduce payroll. They offer to allow their employees to choose to work part time with a prorated decrease in compensation. Employee A and B are initially paid the same. A supports a family and wants to continue working at 100%. B is single, chooses to work at 60% for the next year, and spends the extra time on hobbies and spending more time with friends/family. Is B really "poorer"? Or for the right life circumstances, is working less and enjoying leisure more richer?<p>- A country grows its GDP over a 40 year period, but increases in the costs of housing, education, and healthcare are much sharper than wage growth. The older generation could feed and house (buy!) a family on a single income. A college student could pay for their housing and education by working part time. The younger generation can work full time at minimum wage and not afford rent on a 1BD apt, and it can take decades to pay for university. Is the country richer?<p>Never mind the very long term resource and physical limits on growth -- are we already at a point where striving for growth has failed to make most of us better off?
Daly makes the case that conventional economics deals with "intermediate" means and ends, such as food production and health/leisure; and that we should instead be more concerned with "ultimate" means and ends.<p>He explains that "ultimate means" are necessarily constrained by entropy. He equivocates on what the ultimate ends are, but professes his own Christian belief in a creator [sic]. Unfortunately, he ends his argument by doing the very thing of which he accuses his non-religious counterparts -- accusing them of sticking up their noses at religious people, and positing a ridiculous straw-man: "They look down their noses at religious people who say there’s a creator: That’s unscientific. What’s the scientific view? We won the cosmic lottery. Come on."<p>Otherwise, I'm on-board with sustainable living. I think our current economic model is doomed, and our ancestors will suffer for our excess. Accounting for ecological cost and implementing tariffs for those countries that don't seems like a reasonable step.
Can someone explain to me why we can't keep growing until the death of the sun? Growth doesn't mean more materials or natural resources necessarily, a microprocessor uses some of the cheapest and most abundant materials and uses less of them now than before. Why might we not continue to find new designs and discoveries that allow us to make ever more efficient and complex objexts, that in turn are worth continually more than what we have now?<p>Look at software, most of it all uses the same commodity hardware to run but it gets more powerful and complex every year. But by rearranging the same bits of hardware we can get a basic calculator or matlab. The productivity difference between the two is massive and becomes more so every year. Can't we always have new circuits, new software, new FPGAs, new rocket designs, new and better algorithms or even hardcoded solutions calculated once and distributed, that don't use more resources but by being more complex increase productivity?
As someone with a graduate degree in economics: often when people think about 'growth' in a negative light, they're imagining an ever increasing use of resources to produce more output. But the desirable type of growth (in the economic discipline) is generally Total Factor Productivity growth: (very) roughly speaking, being able to produce more output with the same input. This is basically akin to technological progress. As a forum of tech aficionados, I cannot see how this would repel anyone here?
Reminds me of the well-known quote I always enjoyed, though I never looked much into the context:<p>"If something cannot go on forever, it will stop."<p><a href="https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Stein#Quotes" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Stein#Quotes</a>
part of the problem is that we're not just moving forward, we're also moving backwards at the same time. as populations get bigger and bigger materials become ever more scarce, as does land (at the least the amount of land that voters are willing to allow to develop). Increasing regulations continue to lower the standard of living: this is especially harmful to shelter needs. so we need growth, just to maintain our standard living, nevermind improve it. What really needs to happen is to deprioritize growth and prioritize standard of living instead by focusing on the cost of shelter, food, water and by extension, transportation, medical insurance and so called "education".
Maybe it depends on what is growing?<p>Any helpful new technology, including medicine, is growth. Any advancement of human knowledge is growth. Any durable improvements (pyramids, bridges) are growth. Cultural advancements (art, politics, religion) are growth.<p>Many of these things are imperfectly represented in GDP growth. GDP also has many other known problems, like calling growth in consumption "growth" without really having a way to determine if it's really a good thing or not.<p>But we don't want to go to a zero-growth economy where we are just comfortably existing without passing anything to the next generation.
>Every politician is in favor of growth,” Daly, who is 84, continues, “and no one speaks against growth or in favor of steady state or leveling off."<p>Mr. Daly hasn't been to the Bay Area recently then, I see.
Economic growth does not need to be extractive, nor is it zero sum. A vaccine is worth more than the sum of its parts. So is a bridge.<p>We can achieve economic growth through productivity growth, increasing outputs without increasing inputs through design and efficiency gains.<p>The economic growth we've experienced over the past 250 years has been an extraordinarily positive development in human history. We are experiencing serious consequences from this growth most notably climate change and the extinction crisis. We should absolutely consider the ecological costs of economic growth and work to minimize them. However we should try to fix these without dismissing the engine of economic growth that's lifted humanity out of the miserly wretched existence we experienced through most of human history.
I was introduced to Daly's work recently through The Great Simplification podcast. I highly recommend this episode:<p><a href="https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/06-herman-daly?fbclid=IwAR2aaKxCw1XOjPlnRrO7xVibD0_BlJLaEI1OBLeIBRWrOhe0JuSRxoeXYfU" rel="nofollow">https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/06-herman-dal...</a>
“Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.” [1]<p>[1] <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995" rel="nofollow">https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995</a>
Serious egyptologists correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Egypt not change at all between 3000 B.C and the Bronze Age collapse almost 1000 years later? Is that where we're headed: perpetual stagnation?
This is very flawed. Technology makes things easier so growth is inevitable. This "lauded, pioneering" economist seems to not understand evolution.
The only real alternative to growth is decline and eventually death.<p>This is true for companies, individuals, and even countries.<p>I say our obsession with _not_ growing must end!
After this topic gained my attention for the umpteenth time, I have come to believe that the reason that growth remains a very high priority in the face of all the costs is a truly unpleasant justification.<p>Consider the Soviet Union. During its early development the working day was progressively shortened, reaching seven hours by 1929 [1]. Certainly, many people would consider "working less" a nice alternative to endlessly pursuing growth. But then something funny happens. Adolf Hitler comes to power in Germany and the Soviet workday gets longer [2].<p>The reason that we pursue growth so doggedly is not because we have a collective wish to do so. It's because we are afraid that $Enemy is going to grow faster than we are, for various values of $Enemy. The solution cannot be merely political; it must be geopolitical.<p>1: <a href="https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1929-2/churches-closed/churches-closed-texts/seven-hour-working-day/" rel="nofollow">https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1929-2/churches-closed/churche...</a><p>2: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_industry_in_World_War_II#Wartime_economy_and_governmental_actions" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_industry_in_World_War_I...</a>
Without peaceful growth, eventually there will be military growth [expansion by the means of military violence].<p>Op is right that our Earth is limited and cannot grow indefinitely. Sometimes it will be followed by redistribution of growth, so that someone will continue to grow, while others will experience radical negative growth
Encouraging stagnation among the easily impressionable English-speaking audiences of the economically successful nations i see. Good luck convincing certain Asian countries that they should stop their growth in the name of the "steady-state economy" just because.
It's amusing how he goes from "...You can do fantastic computations now with a small material base in the computer..." to criticizing the concept of GDP ("We really don’t know that the standard is going up.") contradicting himself so quickly. The standard doesn't go up, but i sure like me my computer!<p>"...Does growth, as currently practiced and measured, really increase wealth? Is it making us richer in any aggregate sense, or might it be increasing costs faster than benefits and making us poorer?..." increasing costs of what exactly? Manufacturing? Materials? Servicing? Marketing? Privately held assets? State corporation stocks? The cost of a pint at your local bar?<p>The interviewer isn't any better. "... to accept the idea of having “enough” and that constraining the ability to pursue “more” is a good thing. Those ideas are basically anathema to modern Western society ..." completely CLUELESS take that implies that the ideas of striving for wealth, growth, luxurious consumption and people wanting things are exclusive to Western countries, but then you read about "Making ecological room" and it becomes clear what is the exact point of all that fancy talk.<p>But back to the economist:
"My duty is to do the best I can and put out some ideas. Whether the seed that I plant is going to grow is not up to me." <i>wink-wink</i><p>With all due respect to academia, i don't think that ignoring the harsh reality of how people behave, attempting to lightly enforce a feeling of guilt upon the society thanks to which the academia has the privelege to just "...put out some ideas" is responsible at all. I sure hope that this is just a one off case of a bad interview.
Honestly I think this is obvious to anyone who is not financially motivated to think otherwise.<p>The biggest problem is the rich have created a system in which people's future (retirement) is basically linked to "the market" growing over their lifetime. And the hopes that if they get lucky enough with the market they can retire early (or at all). This system of course is built 100% on governments/employers not wanting to guarantee financial security of elders and offload the risk to the individual. Also the rich have a massive incentive for everyone to "invest" (<i>cough</i>) and drive prices up, because the rich benefit <i>insanely</i> more by market movements than a standard person does.<p>Maybe the system will explode in our lifetime, maybe not. But all this insanity focus of growth, profits, etc with no genuine regard to real social issues (providing basic stability to people whether it be healthcare, housing, food, childcare) is so sick I can barely even think about it. And there's almost nothing to do about it- that's the way things currently "work" and it seems insurmountable to do anything about it.
I don't think economists use terms like 'growth' in a very consistent manner.<p>For example: trees are constantly growing in a forest, and trees are also constantly dying, but the overall population size (number of trees in a forest) remains generally stable, in the absence of major changes in climate and animal predation of trees (such as clear-cutting forests).<p>A lot of uses of growth in economics appear to be related to growth of <i>rates</i>, not growth of something like mass. For example, carbon flows through grasslands at a greater rate than it does in forests; the carbon in a grassland was in the atmosphere at most a few years ago while a tree in a forest can be several hundred years old. The rate at which money flows through an economy (less misers, basically, mean higher transactions) is linked to economic growth.<p>However, growth in terms of growth of the number of buildings in a city and numbers of humans in a city, that's absolutely tied to the amount of arable land each human needs for food production, so obviously that's not an open-ended system, and in particular, if there's not enough water then the land isn't arable.<p>Again, if a city of fixed size improves the average quality of life for its inhabitants, then that's a kind of economic growth, isn't it? Even if resource use (in terms of conservation of mass and energy) is fixed, you can still have economic improvements within that steady-state system, can't you?
Author's premise is wrong.<p>Once growth ends, the pie isn't growing. Pie not growing means the focus becomes dividing the pie. Dividing the pie means endless infighting, politics, and anger in a society. This may work in certain societies, but it will never work in America.<p>Second, a growth-oriented society will naturally outgrow and overtake a non-growth oriented society, by definition. Societies choosing low growth will fall to the side.<p>Third, you need an outlet for people in society who are entrepreneurial. Steve Jobs starting Apple is the exact same mindset as a punk kid spraying grafitti on a billboard. It's just a different implementation ambition and rule breaking. If you impose a non-growth mindset on society, what will all the glorified "crazy ones" [1] do? Nothing good.<p>The answer, of course, is space exploration. Elon Musk has talked about this in detail many times: <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1544720926020968453" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1544720926020968453</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z4NS2zdrZc" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z4NS2zdrZc</a>
<i>When your caterpillar morphs into a butterfly, harping on how your butterfly is "failing to thrive according to standard, well-established caterpillar metrics used globally for the past thousand years and certified as super duper accurate for caterpillars by many respected institutions." is basically gibberish that says damn near nothing about the state of the butterfly's actual health for which we have zero established metrics, having never seen one before.</i><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22028732" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22028732</a><p>I will add a quote that was popular in urban planning circles I used to hang in:<p><i>Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.</i>
Ok, but...<p>You better get used to higher taxes when you're of working age. And you better get used to reduced Social Security payments. Because these things rely on growth.<p>You better get used to a flat stock market. If you want to live off your investments when you're old -- you're going to have to save a whole lot more.<p>Growth helps governments inflate away their (very large) debts. In a static economy, this won't work -- so you better get ready to pay off all that money our government has borrowed.<p>People are not "obsessed" with growth -- growth is built into our economy in a fundamental way -- and ending growth would be extremely painful to regular people.
The pandemic made it clear that elites are ok with mass death and debilitation. It may not be a conspiracy, but people in power simply don’t care. So the logical conclusion is that a lot of the most vulnerable people are going to perish, the hardier ones will hobble by in filthy conditions like what you see in old age homes today (but there will be a gun around if they wanna quickly end their misery).<p>Structural change on a massive scale is required to change the status quo.
Club of Rome part 2
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_of_Rome" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_of_Rome</a>
I’ve had this sickness of growth in my early twenties. Rushed into a startup, burnt through 7 figures of VC money. Then took an other shot at it, but slower growth and no VC money. Bootstrapped that company and got acquired. Then started an agency [1] where we get to design B2B software products for a variety of startups. We are keeping it small on purpose and growth is never discussed. The focus is to do work we love with amazing teams of engineers and entrepreneurs. Accidentally we’re generating more money than in my previous ventures, even with a clear cap on growth. It just adds to our runway and makes working every day more fun and fulfilling.<p>[1] <a href="https://fairpixels.pro" rel="nofollow">https://fairpixels.pro</a>
In practice I find that people who bemoan our "obsession with growth" or some such generally fall into one or more of the following buckets:<p>- Wish they lived in a world we do not live in, such as one without violence or one where people were happy with what they have and do not strive for more.<p>- Actually want growth, but the kind of growth where the things that grow are the things they like and the things they don't like go away.<p>- Have a feeling or rationale that existing wealth and output can be easily redistributed, leading to a state of global contentment we would not need to improve on.<p>All dreams, sadly.