Yeah this part bothers me. To these companies a solid profit stream is not viable. It has to be iPhone level growth year after year or they think it’s failing and axe it. It’s quite annoying. Eventually you will hit a plateau. That just means it’s a mature market, not failing. Grrrr…
You see the same shit on streaming services. “Oh this show has been out for two days and hasn’t reached Game of Thrones level of popularity already? Let’s remove it from existence forever.”
Who is Oliver Waters and why should I listen to them regarding economic theory? I read the post, and it reads more like a philosophical thought experiment than any applicable economics theory.
While I don’t believe someone needs a higher education degree to speak on complex topics, I’m not going to take a Medium blog post from someone who lists no demonstrable experience in theoretical or practical economics as a central source for discussions, sorry.
It’s not philosophical at all; it’s rather straightforward in its arguments, IMO. Not sure why nobody wants to discuss the points directly, and they are cogent points regardless of whose keyboard they originated. If the points made are incorrect, they should be relatively easy to refute.
Capitalists are behind the most prelavent economic school (neoliberalism) today—just look at the history of the “Chicago school”. I doubt the capitalists themselves believe that BS, but it’s profitable for them to make the rest of the world to believe it.
I highly recommend evonomics.com, some rally good essays on there about the cult-like economic beliefs of today. Written by economists who’ve seen through the BS.
Pretending like capitalism is this new concept that needs to be fully explored and debated before we understand that it’s bad is a pretty bad faith framing of the issue. Infinite economic growth is literally impossible because Earth has finite resources and there is a finite number of humans. There is no necessity or imperative behind infinite economic growth other than to make the ruling class richer at everyone else’s expense.
This has nothing to do with capitalism. And my source explains how infinite growth is possible. Consuming the resources of a finite system is not the only factor that goes into economic growth.
This sounds true on its face, but if you had read my source, you would see how that argument is refuted. The problem is that you are assuming the resources of the system must be used up for growth, but that is not true.
If the last 300 years are anything to go by, we clearly do need resources if we are to maintain growth at a rate high enough to barely keep pace with the needs of the market. Coal, steal, oil, cement, water, food, etc.
The reality is, we can’t replace the current demand on renewable energy sources alone. You seem to believe the system can pivot and adapt fast enough to fix itself. While I’m of the mindset the system will follow the path of least resistance even if that means killing itself.
People used to say this about energy as well, yet in the past 5-10 years, I’ve read several articles demonstrating that we appear to have decoupled energy growth from economic growth
We need resources, yes, of course! However, consuming those resources is not the only way to generate growth. My linked post lays it out fairly clearly, I think.
Whether or not I think we, currently, can pivot quickly enough to a model that doesn’t kill us all, I don’t know. I think it’s possible, but like you, I’m also pessimistic about it happening. In any case, that is not at all what I was suggesting. My only point was that infinite economic growth is feasible in general.
Do you have the text of that article you linked? I’ll confess I hit a login wall nearly immediately into the discussion and I never log in to any of that stuff. But I am curious to read more.
The Strange Necessity of Infinite Economic Growth
Nov 13, 2018
Despite intuitive claims to the contrary, infinite economic growth is not just possible — it’s essential for human flourishing.
In an article for Foreign Policy, the anthropologist Jason Hickel has recently called for an end to global economic growth, as the only way to avoid total ecological destruction. He argues that so called ‘green growth’ — the idea that we can decouple intensive resource use from economic growth — is a myth. George Monbiot has shared a similar concern, echoing previous warnings by influential writers Naomi Klein and Paul Ehrlich.
I’m going to focus on Hickel’s work, since it contains several related misconceptions that are nonetheless highly intuitive. In his article and across his other writings, Hickel makes three key basic claims:
There are hard physical limits to how efficiently we can use resources. It follows that infinite economic growth is impossible on our physically finite planet.
Empirical studies are showing that we cannot ‘decouple’ resource use from economic growth, meaning we will run out of resources if economic growth continues.
We can maintain high living standards even with zero global economic growth.
Let’s look at each claim in turn.
Is infinite growth impossible?
In his article, Hickel claims that there are strict physical limits to how efficiently we can use resources, which means pursuing economic growth in the form of rising GDP will eventually exhaust all resources on the planet. Hickel relies on conclusions from three empirical studies that purport to demonstrate this, which I will unpack in my response to his second claim. But here I just want to clarify what exactly economic growth is. By doing so we can understand why economic growth does not in principle depend on unsustainable resource depletion, before examining if such future growth is an empirical plausibility.
‘Economic growth’ refers to the increase in, and improvement of, goods and services that are useful to human beings. This is often conflated with what is called ‘extractivism’: which is the obviously finite process of extracting material resources from the Earth to sell on the market. The former is a necessary process for the continuous flourishing of humanity, the latter erroneously conceives of nature as, in Naomi Klein’s words, a ‘bottomless vending machine’.
Since the Earth consists only of a finite amount of matter and energy, we clearly cannot indefinitely consume its contents without eventually drowning in waste or starving to death. But even this obvious insight contains a misconception. We never actually ‘consume’ matter and energy in the first place. We are forever bound by the first law of thermodynamics, which dictates that matter and energy are never created or destroyed, only transformed.
This brings us back to economic growth. Fundamentally, it is the process of human beings transforming matter and energy into more valuable forms via the development of theoretical and practical knowledge. It is ‘economic value’ which increases exponentially, measured (very)roughly by GDP. The crucial point is that while the extraction of finite physical resources cannot increase indefinitely on a finite planet, economic growth actually can.
Steven Pinker describes the infinite potential of economic growth eloquently in his book Enlightenment Now:
‘…it’s a fallacy to think that people “need resources” in the first place. They need ways of growing food, moving around, lighting their homes, displaying information, and other sources of well-being. They satisfy these needs with ideas: with recipes, formulas, techniques, blueprints, and algorithms for manipulating the physical world to give them what they want. The human mind, with its recursive combinatorial power, can explore an infinite space of ideas, and is not limited by the quantity of any particular kind of stuff in the ground.’
Of course, it’s abundantly clear from history that most civilisations have failed miserably to generate and implement the requisite knowledge to provide for the needs and desires of their citizens. This brings us to Hickel’s empirical claim: that our own current trajectory is leading us to disaster.
That article is utterly unconvincing. It just handwaves the finite nature of our material reality with a very weak appeal to “infinite” human creativity. And then the conclusion is that infinite growth is necessary because there’s no way to change the status quo of wealth hoarding. It’s just apologism for the very worst aspects of capitalism without a single iota of serious thought.
I don’t think there is any hand waving. Consuming a resource is not the only factor that goes into economic growth. Can you address that point specifically?
Capitalism is unsustainable. We’re seeing what happens in late capitalism. The belts tighten, the workers get left in the dust, the products consumers actually want get the axe.
Most countries today move towards economical fascism, where governments exercise control over private property but do not nationalize it. Lobbying, donor interest protection, cronyism, rise of oligarchy - you can see it in many countries. And then inevitable radicalisation of the public and scapegoating everything else as the core issue. Capitalism, migrants, ecology - everything is a problem but the government.
Contemporary capitalist societies developed in the West from 1950 to the present and this type of system continues to expand throughout different regions of the world—relevant examples started in the United States after the 1950s
This Wikipedia article says that the US is a capitalist system.
Lobbying, donor interest protection, cronyism, rise of oligarchy
Where are these things listed in the article as being incompatible with capitalism, and their presence meaning it’s some other system?
That’s not really true though and it’s anecdotal. The anti-capitalist mindset might be growing due to awareness and people suffering at the hands of capitalism (continued layoffs, increased cost of groceries and rent, union busting, worker exploitation), but that’s because of the ever-tightening squeeze of late capitalism. When you have a structure that requires infinite growth to exist, in a world with finite resources, you end up with the current state of the US.
I think it would be more accurate to say that the anti-capitalist mindset among the working class has definitely grown in the US, but at its core, the US is pro-capitalist.
Where’s US pro capitalist? It’s one of a few countries with legal corruption called lobbying, which helps big corps to shield themselves from competition. US today has a plethora of laws and regulations which create and sustain monopolies. US has whole industries created by lawmakers and completely stonewalled from anyone entering them. Capitalism my ass…
Also capitalism doesn’t require infinite growth. I don’t know where you people are getting that lunacy from.
Laws and regulations that allow capitalists to continue their pursuit of infinite growth. One of the definitions of capitalism is simply:
The concentration or massing of capital in the hands of a few
This is like a 1:1 definition of what we have in the US today, and our government enables, protects, and benefits from it. It’s “late” capitalism because it’s grown into a completely unsustainable system.
Late capitalism is the acceleration of growth and concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, with various crises being the result (layoffs, inflated prices, union busting, cuts in safety—e.g train derailments, etc).
Infinite growth is not a core part of capitalism. You’re right there. But do you know what is? Pursuit of profit. And do you know what leaves dollar signs in companies eyes? Pursuing infinite growth. Infinite growth results in infinite capital, in theory. Such growth is not a requirement of capitalism, but it is the logical conclusion when you throw sustainability out of the window. And boy, do we know that corps love doing that!
You summarized the infinite growth aspect better than I did. This is exactly what I was referring to. Thank you!
I’m not sure where they are getting their info or how the US isn’t a capitalist hellscape. The US in its current state is exactly what happens when capitalism reaches a boiling point because all of the people driving it pursue infinite growth with zero accountability.
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Because infinite growth of profits on a finite planet.
Yeah this part bothers me. To these companies a solid profit stream is not viable. It has to be iPhone level growth year after year or they think it’s failing and axe it. It’s quite annoying. Eventually you will hit a plateau. That just means it’s a mature market, not failing. Grrrr…
You see the same shit on streaming services. “Oh this show has been out for two days and hasn’t reached Game of Thrones level of popularity already? Let’s remove it from existence forever.”
Just throwing shit at a wall to see what sticks.
While companies today are certainly overzealous in their drive for growth, it is a myth that infinite economic growth is impossible. It is not only possible but necessary: https://medium.com/@oliverwaters_76079/the-strange-necessity-of-infinite-economic-growth-ebc2e505cdf1
Who is Oliver Waters and why should I listen to them regarding economic theory? I read the post, and it reads more like a philosophical thought experiment than any applicable economics theory.
While I don’t believe someone needs a higher education degree to speak on complex topics, I’m not going to take a Medium blog post from someone who lists no demonstrable experience in theoretical or practical economics as a central source for discussions, sorry.
It’s not philosophical at all; it’s rather straightforward in its arguments, IMO. Not sure why nobody wants to discuss the points directly, and they are cogent points regardless of whose keyboard they originated. If the points made are incorrect, they should be relatively easy to refute.
Only two kinds of people believe in infinite growth; economists and psychopaths.
Maybe capitalists instead of economists? 😂
Capitalists are behind the most prelavent economic school (neoliberalism) today—just look at the history of the “Chicago school”. I doubt the capitalists themselves believe that BS, but it’s profitable for them to make the rest of the world to believe it.
I highly recommend evonomics.com, some rally good essays on there about the cult-like economic beliefs of today. Written by economists who’ve seen through the BS.
Thanks for the rec, I’ll check it out
But you repeat yourself :)
Infinite growth is cancer’s credo.
So we’re going with an ad hominem attack instead of engaging in good faith?
Pretending like capitalism is this new concept that needs to be fully explored and debated before we understand that it’s bad is a pretty bad faith framing of the issue. Infinite economic growth is literally impossible because Earth has finite resources and there is a finite number of humans. There is no necessity or imperative behind infinite economic growth other than to make the ruling class richer at everyone else’s expense.
This has nothing to do with capitalism. And my source explains how infinite growth is possible. Consuming the resources of a finite system is not the only factor that goes into economic growth.
In a finite system, infinite anything is an impossibility.
This sounds true on its face, but if you had read my source, you would see how that argument is refuted. The problem is that you are assuming the resources of the system must be used up for growth, but that is not true.
If the last 300 years are anything to go by, we clearly do need resources if we are to maintain growth at a rate high enough to barely keep pace with the needs of the market. Coal, steal, oil, cement, water, food, etc.
The reality is, we can’t replace the current demand on renewable energy sources alone. You seem to believe the system can pivot and adapt fast enough to fix itself. While I’m of the mindset the system will follow the path of least resistance even if that means killing itself.
People used to say this about energy as well, yet in the past 5-10 years, I’ve read several articles demonstrating that we appear to have decoupled energy growth from economic growth
We need resources, yes, of course! However, consuming those resources is not the only way to generate growth. My linked post lays it out fairly clearly, I think.
Whether or not I think we, currently, can pivot quickly enough to a model that doesn’t kill us all, I don’t know. I think it’s possible, but like you, I’m also pessimistic about it happening. In any case, that is not at all what I was suggesting. My only point was that infinite economic growth is feasible in general.
Do you have the text of that article you linked? I’ll confess I hit a login wall nearly immediately into the discussion and I never log in to any of that stuff. But I am curious to read more.
Apologies! I didn’t realize it was walled.
The Strange Necessity of Infinite Economic Growth
Nov 13, 2018
Despite intuitive claims to the contrary, infinite economic growth is not just possible — it’s essential for human flourishing.
In an article for Foreign Policy, the anthropologist Jason Hickel has recently called for an end to global economic growth, as the only way to avoid total ecological destruction. He argues that so called ‘green growth’ — the idea that we can decouple intensive resource use from economic growth — is a myth. George Monbiot has shared a similar concern, echoing previous warnings by influential writers Naomi Klein and Paul Ehrlich.
I’m going to focus on Hickel’s work, since it contains several related misconceptions that are nonetheless highly intuitive. In his article and across his other writings, Hickel makes three key basic claims:
There are hard physical limits to how efficiently we can use resources. It follows that infinite economic growth is impossible on our physically finite planet.
Empirical studies are showing that we cannot ‘decouple’ resource use from economic growth, meaning we will run out of resources if economic growth continues.
We can maintain high living standards even with zero global economic growth.
Let’s look at each claim in turn.
In his article, Hickel claims that there are strict physical limits to how efficiently we can use resources, which means pursuing economic growth in the form of rising GDP will eventually exhaust all resources on the planet. Hickel relies on conclusions from three empirical studies that purport to demonstrate this, which I will unpack in my response to his second claim. But here I just want to clarify what exactly economic growth is. By doing so we can understand why economic growth does not in principle depend on unsustainable resource depletion, before examining if such future growth is an empirical plausibility.
‘Economic growth’ refers to the increase in, and improvement of, goods and services that are useful to human beings. This is often conflated with what is called ‘extractivism’: which is the obviously finite process of extracting material resources from the Earth to sell on the market. The former is a necessary process for the continuous flourishing of humanity, the latter erroneously conceives of nature as, in Naomi Klein’s words, a ‘bottomless vending machine’.
Since the Earth consists only of a finite amount of matter and energy, we clearly cannot indefinitely consume its contents without eventually drowning in waste or starving to death. But even this obvious insight contains a misconception. We never actually ‘consume’ matter and energy in the first place. We are forever bound by the first law of thermodynamics, which dictates that matter and energy are never created or destroyed, only transformed.
This brings us back to economic growth. Fundamentally, it is the process of human beings transforming matter and energy into more valuable forms via the development of theoretical and practical knowledge. It is ‘economic value’ which increases exponentially, measured (very)roughly by GDP. The crucial point is that while the extraction of finite physical resources cannot increase indefinitely on a finite planet, economic growth actually can.
Steven Pinker describes the infinite potential of economic growth eloquently in his book Enlightenment Now:
‘…it’s a fallacy to think that people “need resources” in the first place. They need ways of growing food, moving around, lighting their homes, displaying information, and other sources of well-being. They satisfy these needs with ideas: with recipes, formulas, techniques, blueprints, and algorithms for manipulating the physical world to give them what they want. The human mind, with its recursive combinatorial power, can explore an infinite space of ideas, and is not limited by the quantity of any particular kind of stuff in the ground.’
Of course, it’s abundantly clear from history that most civilisations have failed miserably to generate and implement the requisite knowledge to provide for the needs and desires of their citizens. This brings us to Hickel’s empirical claim: that our own current trajectory is leading us to disaster.
That article is utterly unconvincing. It just handwaves the finite nature of our material reality with a very weak appeal to “infinite” human creativity. And then the conclusion is that infinite growth is necessary because there’s no way to change the status quo of wealth hoarding. It’s just apologism for the very worst aspects of capitalism without a single iota of serious thought.
I don’t think there is any hand waving. Consuming a resource is not the only factor that goes into economic growth. Can you address that point specifically?
No I won’t because it’s irrelevant if it is the only factor or not. It’s the limiting factor. Please don’t engage in red herrings.
Seems that you’re the one doing the hand waving.
You won’t because you don’t understand what you’re talking about.
Capitalism is unsustainable. We’re seeing what happens in late capitalism. The belts tighten, the workers get left in the dust, the products consumers actually want get the axe.
We don’t even have capitalism yet, what late stage are you talking about?
What are you defining capitalism as, and what word would you use to describe our current system?
No true Scotsman.
You can read about capitalism in Wikipedia.
Most countries today move towards economical fascism, where governments exercise control over private property but do not nationalize it. Lobbying, donor interest protection, cronyism, rise of oligarchy - you can see it in many countries. And then inevitable radicalisation of the public and scapegoating everything else as the core issue. Capitalism, migrants, ecology - everything is a problem but the government.
This Wikipedia article says that the US is a capitalist system.
Where are these things listed in the article as being incompatible with capitalism, and their presence meaning it’s some other system?
I guess that really depends on where you live. I can only speak on behalf of the US.
Where do you have capitalism in US? US is probably one of the most anti capitalist countries in the world right now.
Ok, buddy.
The entire USA financial system works on the basis of capital. What the fuck are you talking about? I cannot wait to read your conspiracy theory.
That’s not really true though and it’s anecdotal. The anti-capitalist mindset might be growing due to awareness and people suffering at the hands of capitalism (continued layoffs, increased cost of groceries and rent, union busting, worker exploitation), but that’s because of the ever-tightening squeeze of late capitalism. When you have a structure that requires infinite growth to exist, in a world with finite resources, you end up with the current state of the US.
I think it would be more accurate to say that the anti-capitalist mindset among the working class has definitely grown in the US, but at its core, the US is pro-capitalist.
Where’s US pro capitalist? It’s one of a few countries with legal corruption called lobbying, which helps big corps to shield themselves from competition. US today has a plethora of laws and regulations which create and sustain monopolies. US has whole industries created by lawmakers and completely stonewalled from anyone entering them. Capitalism my ass…
Also capitalism doesn’t require infinite growth. I don’t know where you people are getting that lunacy from.
Laws and regulations that allow capitalists to continue their pursuit of infinite growth. One of the definitions of capitalism is simply:
This is like a 1:1 definition of what we have in the US today, and our government enables, protects, and benefits from it. It’s “late” capitalism because it’s grown into a completely unsustainable system.
Late capitalism is the acceleration of growth and concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, with various crises being the result (layoffs, inflated prices, union busting, cuts in safety—e.g train derailments, etc).
That’s not capitalism, lol. Oh, you people…
Infinite growth is not a core part of capitalism. You’re right there. But do you know what is? Pursuit of profit. And do you know what leaves dollar signs in companies eyes? Pursuing infinite growth. Infinite growth results in infinite capital, in theory. Such growth is not a requirement of capitalism, but it is the logical conclusion when you throw sustainability out of the window. And boy, do we know that corps love doing that!
You summarized the infinite growth aspect better than I did. This is exactly what I was referring to. Thank you!
I’m not sure where they are getting their info or how the US isn’t a capitalist hellscape. The US in its current state is exactly what happens when capitalism reaches a boiling point because all of the people driving it pursue infinite growth with zero accountability.