https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04412-x
Degrowth can work — here’s how science can help
Wealthy countries can create prosperity while using less materials and energy if they abandon economic growth as an objective.
8 Likes
“… reduce the purchasing power of the rich”
Lolol… you mean, tax the rich?
Hmmm… maybe.
Good article.
1 Like
Economists like to point out the growth cannot go on forever. Eventually you run out if raw materials to feed growth.
That seems to be in conflict with investors concept of growing earnings.
It does remind us that recycling will become more important in the future. Over time iron turns to rust. It does not go away. It can be recycled as long as you have the energy to convert back to iron. Ditto carbon and carbon dioxide.
1 Like
That makes energy the master resource.
DB2
2 Likes
Can one run out of data? The knowledge based economy is much larger than the physical economy. Software, for example.
The Captain
1 Like
Only if you run out of power. The biggest hurdle for the world now is electricity. That is one of the reasons nuclear must be looked at or if only we could get fusion to work reliably.
Andy
Good point!
The Captain
Degrowth is a very lazily chosen word for a key concept, the concept being cleverly applied frugality of use, and a good enough word would be intensification.
Growth in economic terms of “outputs of work/production doing good stuff” is NOT being cut, only the inputs are being cut.
Electronics has been the staggering champion of “intensification” of use during my lifetime, and is why Silicon Valley and its satellites remain the world’s fulcrums of growth, second only to population increase, during my lifetime.
Next up, I expect, are highly genetically tweaked and bred biological entities. Think in terms of growing genetically altered plants that grow into
lightweight, stiff, strong building wall/insulation sheets,
frameworks for structures such as sheds garages barns,
crops providing super nutrition while gobbling CO2
direwolf dogs that like humans and detest AI robots…
We just need to survive long enough for our smarts and civil capabilities to outgrow our idiocies.
david fb
(yes, I swerve violently from despair through optimism)
5 Likes
Energy IS the master resource.
That’s why money, which represents work, has to follow the laws.
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800919310067
The book I wrote was partly motivated by my realization that growth was an economic sacrament. There are reasons why we never accomplish the sustainable, no-growth economy that we know we need, with our finite planet crumbling beneath our consumption.
3 Likes
Someone ought’a write a book …
Oh yeah, they did.
6 Likes
There are many books that say we ought to do something like that.
We never do.
There are a few that say we ought to do this.
They are not believed.
We have been hooning down the wrong path for 5000 years (that is how old the mistake about money is) and the gates of hell are open wide to embrace us and our intentional optimism.
Growth is a sacrament of the church of Mammon as long as money created as debt with interest is the basis of our economic systems.
4 Likes