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462 comments on Olduvai revisited 2008
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462 comments on Olduvai revisited 2008
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"we've developed no other way of generating the amount of wealth we have today."
As a programmer I find fault with this statement.
As a programmer I find fault with the idea that you find fault with that statement. A simple logical path will lead you to manufacturing no matter what industry you "program" for. Let's start with the manufactured machinery you work upon shall we? Then try and find any service industry that isn't intimately linked to some form of manufacturing. Real-estate would be close to the only one, and even it requires the wealth generated through manufacturing to raise prices (and dare I say it population), as well as the results of manufacturing to produce houses and farm machinery etc etc to make the land worth buying in the first place.
Without the mass-production, specialisation-facilitating society we live in there would be no need for computers, much less programmers.
""we've developed no other way of generating the amount of wealth we have today. As a programmer I find fault with this statement." As a programmer I find fault with the idea that you find fault with that statement. A simple logical path will lead you to manufacturing no matter what industry you "program" for. "
He said manufacturing isn't the only source of wealth, you said that manufacturing is an essential base. Both are true.
He's saying that programming, for instance, isn't manufacturing, yet it is a valuable, productive thing to do. You'd agree, right?
I call the idea that manufacturing (or farming, etc) is the most important thing, and the only source of value, the "garbageman fallacy". In NYC, sanitation workers used to say that they were the most important workers of all, because the city couldn't run without them. We can see the flaw in that, I hope...
Programming cannot be done (for any useful purpose) by just thinking about it. It needs computers and power. Power needs power plants and transmission lines. Ultimately, increasing wealth (economic growth) requires more resources for making stuff or doing stuff.
Hey us programmers need to eat or at least drink beer :)
Last I looked although I work at home don't drive much etc I still use a lot of resources.
Its just that programmers and support could be made pretty green with some work.
Also if programming itself would start advancing again then the number of programmers needed at any one given time could be fairly static or decline quite a bit overtime.
"Last I looked although I work at home don't drive much etc I still use a lot of resources."
That's an interesting question - how does one factor in people's consumption into their work?
My point is that the work itself doesn't require significant energy or materials - 10 cents of electricity per day, and $2/day for computer capital costs (a $1,500 laptop every 3 years).
Of course it depends on the life style but providing fore employees is a fairly static cost regardless of what they do. A large amount of middle class Americans are engaged in paper pushing because others are engaged in paper pushing.
I can see it in programming you have the huge convoluted mess that at its center is caused by a simple problem say one piece of information was not recorded or shared. Or the company has some stupid rule that wastes incredible amounts of time.
From what I've seen most productivity games are a myth. Things are outsourced and look better just because you have a simpler accounting schema. Real productivity is in the toilet. And trust me the overseas worker working for slave wages is not the most motivated person on the planet. All this is hidden in bad business loans in china and pumping debt in the US.
As with anything the shorter the chain of responsibility and the more a person is correctly rewarded for success or failure the better the business. Incorrect accounting practices have managed to hide this basic truth of business.
This rolls right back into energy/resource accounting to determine real profitability and gdp. True growth is increased ownership and no debt.
This give people the freedom to explore innovative business ventures.
Speculation on borrowed money/energy/resources is the root of collapse from the personal level all the way up.
"Programming cannot be done (for any useful purpose) by just thinking about it. It needs computers and power. "
Yes, but it needs very, very little compared to manufacturing. Think smelting, metal stamping, transportation of parts, assembly lines, transportation of finished products, etc. vs.....a laptop, using as little as 50 watts.
Without all that "smelting, metal stamping, transportation of parts, assembly lines, transportation of finished products, etc." there is no reason to have a computer. Computers are not an end in themeselves. They make it easier for people to do the "real" work of making things. Manufactured things are what drives any economy. Services, such as programming, make it easier to make those things and get them to where people can use them, but they aren't really required in the process.
Programming is an example of "services". Services aren't just support for manufacturing, they're a good thing in themselves.
Medical care, art & literature, entertainment, communication.
Arguably, manufacturing is a means to the end of enjoying services. They're certainly not a meaningless support function for manufacturing.
I have been having this discussion with sofistek for months. He is trying to prove that growth per se is bad. I have argued that it depends on the growth. That intellectual capital is different. He seems to deny that services are a real part of the economy even though they are becoming more and more dominant. This whole growth is bad topic is important but not very condusive to rational discussion. It is such an article of faith with that faction.
This isn't logical. It's important, but not useful? Logical impossibility, no? Growth is the very core of the problem you are discussing. If there were no growth, there would essentially be no problem. You'd have a great deal more time to find solutions. Hell, to go back further, neither you nor I would exist. No, we must discuss growth in order to find solutions that are sustainable. By definition, a solution that is sustainable within limits is not sustainable.
If you are going to redesign civilization as we know it, you'd darned sure better pay attention to the future.
Cheers
Sterling, I do not deny that services are a real part of the economy. I don't think you were saying that, anyway, so please don't misrepresent my position or the discussion we had. You were trying to say that parts of the economy that were represented by intellectual capital can grow without requiring more resources. I was pointing out that there is no real value in intellectual capital unless it is applied in some way. That application uses resources and so even that part of the economy would require more resources, if it was to grow in any meaningful way. I was also saying that parts of the economy don't represent the whole economy so, even if you could find part of the economy that can grow without using more resources, it would not the the same as sustainable economic growth overall.
You now try to portray services as the saviour that can allow the economy to grow indefinitely. What services are you talking about? Which ones use no energy or resources in their set up or delivery?
Why is it so hard to let go of economic growth? Growth in the use of resources cannot be sustained. It is not really hard to understand but it sure is hard to accept.
Because your formulation is too simplistic to be useful. Because you lump all kinds of economic growth together, kinds that are physical resource intensive and kinds that are not, you are targeting the wrong issue.
One can easily imagine a situation where you have strong economic growth but declining resource utilization, which is probably what would be best for the world. Let say I write some software that allows people to work at home two days a week and let's say people love it and are willing to pay more for it than they save in gas, etc. You rule that out it because it increases the economic. It is economic growth.
As long as we have people in the world, they have to do something. If the value of what they do increases in value, you have economic growth. Do you just want people to do nothing? They cannot think, write music and imagine?
Sustainablity is another too simplistic concept but I have to go out now. I hope to get back to that later.
Too simplistic? What matters to today's societies is economic growth as a whole. What does it matter that some parts of the economy are less resource intensive than others, if the other parts of the economy are needed for our survival and well-being, or at least perceived as being so? If we eliminate all parts of the economy except those where thought alone is necessary, do you think people would be happy with that?
I don't rule out efficiency gains but you seem to think that if we can be realise economic growth for some short period without more resource use, that means that economic growth can continue indefinitely without using more resources. If we can improve efficiency, that's great, but what is the long term sustainability plan? Without that, we would just be delaying an inevitable collapse.
However, even if you can imagine a fabulous future where no-one uses any more resources than they do now, and population is stable, do you think that would be a society that is remotely like what we have now?
Sustainability is certainly a simple concept but few people seem to realise what it means. Try reading Richard Heinberg's Five Axioms of Sustainability. But there is nothing simplistic about it; if a society is not sustainable, then it will end. Why is that so hard to understand?
Yes, but it matters if it would end before or after the earth is consumed by the sun.
The only level of consumption of a limited resource that is completely sustainable is 0. At current rates of consumption, it is not clear if fission fuel would run out before the Earth becomes unlivable for reasons that have nothing to do with people. So is that sustainable by any reasonable definition of the word? And if we increase the use of nuclear power and I am wrong and Uranium runs out in 5,000 to 10,000 years is that a problem if before that happens we harness fusion?
There is nothing magic about the level of how we currently value everything that people do (the world GDP). There is no reason to think that the current level of consumption of limited resource is OK and that a little more is impossible. It might be that the only way the world can survive is that we reduce our consumption of limited physical resources and that the only way we can do this is to increase the production of intellectual capital in figuring out how to do it. In other words, it might be that we count the value of everything that people do as rising (ie economic growth) but we reduce the things that impact the world in ways that threaten our survival.
Your idea that economic growth of any kind is bad puts you in the position of insisting that someone write a really shitty song instead of a really good one because the really good one would have too much economic value and therefore increase the economic value of everything too much (ie economic growth). Your fixation that the market value of everything that people do has to stay the same undermines the legitimate case that you are trying to make. We should limit the consumption of limited resources, including environmental quality, wild lands and other such intangibles. But economic growth is not a useful measure of how well or poorly we are treating the earth because it mixes high impact activities with low impact ones and people have to do something.
Of course it's not clear, but the reverse is also not clear. Unless one has certain beliefs.
That's a couple of "if"s in there. Which is part of my point.
Of course there are reasons. A good reason would be if the current level can be sustained for, let's say, several centuries without it causing problems, whilst a little more might not be sustained for a century. If we just assume that all of the resources we now consider vital are abundant enough and accessible enough to not worry about it for now, then that could turn out to be a fatal assumption.
That sounds good. I can't see how that could happen without our society becoming very different from what we know today. Do you know if anyone has done any work on how this might play out?
You're caught in the economic growth paradigm, with that analogy. Economic growth is bad because it uses increasing resources and, thus, is unsustainable. If we level out our use, as you suggest earlier, that would be a good starting point and it wouldn't be economic growth.
Again, you are using the paradigm that we currently have. Why must everything have a "market value"? What has to, at least, stay the same is our level of resource consumption. Do you have any comments on the axioms of sustainability that I linked to earlier?
Like I said, there is nothing magic about the current rate of economic growth where the outlook would suddenly change, like in your example, if we increased it by say .1% per year.
So I am in favor of our society becoming different than it is today. Less resouce consumptive. More intellectual capital.
You are the one who is obsessed with market value. The way you measure economic growth is to total up the market value of everything that people do in a year and compare it to the market value of the prior year. If it is greater, then you have “economic growth”. The reason that market value comes into play is that your measure is “economic” instead of “physical” or maybe “destructive”. That is my point.
OK then make that argument. Do not say economic growth has to stay the same. Say resource consumption has to say the same. Or limited resource consumption has to stay the same. I will debate that one with you too but at least there you are starting from a more defensible position.
I have never said that. Nor am I obsessed with market value. What I'd like is to achieve indefinite sustainability.
You appear to be claiming that economic growth (which people appear to need in order to have aspirations) can continue by only growing intellectual capital. I don't believe it, but that would be great because that increasing intellectual capital would never result in anything tangible.
Resource consumption must not exceed the renewal capacity of those resources. This is not the same as saying resource consumption must stay the same, though we will need to get to that point, at a lower rate of consumption for at least some resources. The five axioms described by Heinberg gives more details. That would be a good place to start from.
OK. I am with you for that with indefinately meaning a long time but not forever. I think we can achieve that by switching to a fission, wind and solar infrastructure and have contining economic growth as the economy shifts more to intellectual goods like arts, software and services. There are at least millions of years of fission fuel where the consumption rate is twenty times what it is now and fission supplies 60% of all energy. Well before that the world will almost certainly switch to fusion power, which would be sustainable at least through the time the Earth is consumed by the Sun.
For other limited resources we may have to have rising consumption until we can stabilize the world population since we know that development in the only thing that reliably stops population growth. At that point we will have to reduce consumption of scarce resources to maintain long term viability. But the world economy will continue to grow through changes to low physical resource consumption activities as noted above.
Sterling
Ha, ha, ha ,ha, cough, splutter..........
Verbal sewerage that's all you write!
You are one mentally deluded Richard Cranium.
I think Engineer-Poet would be the only person who would fall for your garbage, why don't you look him up, you can give each other some blog fellatio.
Thanks for the reasoned critique.
Well, there are some whose research shows uranium reserves may only sustain current fission for a few decades. Other fissionable fuel may be available for longer but, at least to some degree, it is wishful thinking that it will enable nuclear generation for centuries, never mind millions of years. That may turn out to be correct but it's a gamble.
Do you honestly think that the world can shift most of its economy to those things that use very little resources? Again, that would be wishful thinking, in my book. The only one of arts, software and services that uses few resources is arts (since anything to hand can be made into art). Software is not an end in itself and there are all sorts of services, with the meaningful ones either being resource hungry themselves (e.g. building services or freight services) or leading to the manufacture of resource-using goods (like houses). Manufacturing and agricultural industries will continue to be very large, especially as we are heading for billions more people.
Your hope that the consumption other limited resources can continue to rise until they don't need to is, again, wishful thinking. It seems that you hope that business as usual (more or less) can continue until nature takes its course, population stabilises and business no longer see profits as a reason to do business.
That takes a lot of believing.
You seem to be arguing something thats entirely academic. The end of sustainability happens well after we've consumed the entire solar system.
Not exactly something thats topical today.
No, we are already unsustainable. That will become obvious not when we have consumed the entire solar system (which is an impossibility) but as soon as the supply of some vital resource can no longer meet the demand. There must be many resources that are vital to our societies, so the chances are quite good that scarcity will hit before too long.
The problem now is that growth itself is a goal. Economic growth for the sake of economic growth is a problem. Economic growth borne of need/survival is going to follow natural cycles. Slowing things down to a non-growth oriented paradigm will reduce the rate of use of resources. This should provide more time for development of technologies that aid this process.
Cheers
Only if the way you reduce economic growth slows down resource consumption. Since economic growth includes both high consumptive activities and low consumptive ones, it matters how you slow down growth. If you killed off all the low consumptive activities you could reduce overall economic growth while still increasing the use of limited physical resources.
People have to do something (unless you want to kill them all off). The economic level is just the market value of everything they do. It is possible to have an increasing market value of all that we do (economic growth) while at the same time that we reduce resource consumption. People just need to do more smart, creative, low resource consumptive things and less of the opposite.
Precisely. Of course certain parts of the economy need to grow. We need growth in energy efficient housing, renewable energy, walkable/ bikeable urban spaces, public transportation, food production systems which preserve topsoil and recycle nutrients, etc. In purely physical terms the growth of this important, sustainable infrastructure could proceed much faster if we shrunk those parts of the economy which are wasteful and necessary (e.g. SUVs, jet skis, plasma screen televisions, etc). We could also free up production resources by putting emphasis on manufacturing long-lived repairable products and eliminating planned obsolescence. We need an economic system which can grow those parts of the economy which need to be grown, shrink those parts which need to shrunk, and maintain with maximum efficiency (i.e. without concern for sales volumes) those parts of the economy which only need maintenance. Instead we have a system of production in which every sector of the economy is striving to grow as fast a possible without any concern for long term consequences.
If it needs resources, then it needs resources. It's pointless wishing that resource use away or saying that it's tiny, compared with some other part of the economy. In any case, programming was just an example and it doesn't happen in isolation, it is done for a purpose and that other purpose may use more resources.
We just can't do stuff without using resources. The more stuff we do, and the more stuff we use, the more resources we use. The key is to figure out how to use resources sustainably and that can't be done with growth.
"If it needs resources, then it needs resources. It's pointless wishing that resource use away or saying that it's tiny, compared with some other part of the economy. "
Umm, no. If something takes very little resources, that's important. If a programmer/artist/writer/entertainer/medical researcher/doctor/poet/therapist/engineer/lawyer can do his/her work with only a laptop that lasts pretty much as long as you want it to, and can be powered by a $200 solar panel, that sounds pretty sustainable to me.
No it's not, because it is within the context of an unsustainable society. Programmers, medical researchers, doctors, engineers and lawyers don't do their work for no end. Artists, writers, poets and engineers do their work to be enjoyed by others, who can afford to enjoy them because of the rest of the economy. And all aspects of our society need to be taken as a whole. Even the aspects you mention add to resource use. Maybe if all parts of the economy could be as frugal in resource use, then our problems would be less. But that is wishful thinking and there is no reason to suppose that any pursuit, just because it is a low resource hog, can continue unchanged in a society that is suffering from being unsustainable as a whole.
There is a large tendency, even among the posters here, to treat aspects of the society in which they live as completely separate. Even the energy issue isn't the sum total of the problems we've accumulated by living unsustainably.