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394 comments on From a Failed Growth Economy to a Steady-State Economy
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394 comments on From a Failed Growth Economy to a Steady-State Economy
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Further down in the comments i mak the point that there are 3 types of resources, non sustainable resources, renewable resources, and resources that are sustainable but not renewable. I classify energy in the form of uranium and thorium as sustainable but not renewable, because they are recoverable with a favorable ERoEI, at average crustal levels of concentration. Given this potential, many minerals are recoverable at crustal concentration levels as a byproduct of thorium and uranium mining. Thus the case for growth limitations is far weaker than Daly suggests. The entire argument rests on a set of cognitive errors. The first is the untested assumption that peak oil is typical of all resources, and that peak oil is really peak everything. This is an example of the fallacy of composition, the belief that what is true of a part is true of the whole.
In fact some non-sustainable resources will still be available for a long time to come. Sustainable resources can in many cases be substituted for non-sustainable resources, while non-sustainable resources cn be supplied by recycling. Small amounts of non-sustainable resources can be obtained through the nuclear transmutation produced by nuclear fission, while even smaller amounts of resources can be obtained through the nuclear transmutations of sustainable materials in transmutation technologies.
A bit more to add too my point about voluntary population control. Once voluntary control has eliminated all the decent people and left the future of the human race in the incompetent hands of the don't-give-a-damn scum, then that fast-breeding remnant of humanity will of course fast forward to a new and worse overpopulation problem anyway. So all the more utter b.s..
Nobel - don't make me laugh. (No one has ever published the slightest fault of reasoning or evidence in any of my own four published theories, but then I'm not a professor so I presumably don't qualify.)
Fast breeding as in Catholics?
Sometimes yes Catholics (mainly in the past), but even more another theo-ideology that I hardly need to name.
Pentecostals?
On May 5, 2009, some began taking population control into their own hands:
I hear Oprah is back on the eatin' wagon...I can just hear her now, "mmmmmm....Soylent Green."
1. The pollution of the environment may eventually affect the birth rate. Estrogen mimic chemicals have an impact on the sexing of trout to aligators. So the problem may be self correcting.
2. In terms of biological evolution when single cells got together and produced multicelluar organisms, there developed a way to control the type and number of cells in a this more complicated organism. Uncontrolled growth is generally seen as cancer. In that sense the human race may be acting as a cancer in gaia. Since we as a species are aware of this, there seems to be the possibility that a self regulation of the numbers of our species on earth may be possible. It would seem that an arrangement for people to control the number of offspring should enable them to become members of a society where everyone is cared for. This goes to the control of the borders preventing uncontrolled immigration. The operation of the social insects could give some insight on how this might be organized, as per "Brave New World" by A. Huxley. Freedom to breed seems to be something not possible in the new world order.
What is not mentioned a lot here:
http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse
...and in the above piece are FEEDBACK MECHANISMS?
These are not the kind that are forced or written into law...they occur as rational consequences related to human endeavours and expectations.
In other words...humans do their stuff...and the "real world" reacts and forces humans onto a non-planned path.
My personal opinion is that while some humans might see what's here and on the way....and try to change to avoid a precarious future...I doubt that they will manage to actually do things all that much differently...thus God or Gaia...or just plain reality is gonna bite.
As far as overpopulation...when we still have several major religions promoting overpopulation...apparently in a contest to see who will "win"...we should be prepared to meet the FEEDBACK MECHANISMS or the 3 horsemen?
Not to mention nations competing for remaining resources...and polluting like there is no tomorrow to build economies to sell more stuff to more and more people.
I can only laugh.
LDS?
I was thinking rather of a certain theo-ideology whose members conspicuously "need" to migrate in large numbers to others' countries due to running out of space in all their own lands. Not clear what the LDS is, any enlightenment?
Robin,
I expect LDS is the tla for the Later Day Saints ,better known as The Mormons.There are quite a few of them in Utah,and a few scattered around here and there else where.
Old Farmer,
From http://www.quiverfull.com/
They quote:
And use as an example:
These delusional folks advocate family size of around 12 - "a quiver full".
Why does a rational society provide tax deductions for these criminals?
That post [...delusional folks.....these criminals...] if written about Mohammed-followers in the uk would be considered by them to rate prosecution as religious hatred (even though the Qur'an would qualify infinitely more, notwithstanding Obama's latest lies), though in practice that law was only introduced to pacify the Muslim lobby and the Attorney General has not yet been coaxed into actually starting any prosecutions.
Hi RobinPC,
You're right that "criminal" was a poor choice of words - I should be more thoughtful. Selfish and inconsiderate is more the idea. But it is selfishness to the point of not caring how having a dozen children in a affluent country like the US stresses the lives of other people around the globe. Our consumption and polution footprints have a direct bearing on the well being of people in much poorer nations. In some context, the idea of "justice" ought to be considered for this type of reproduction. I am sure that there are nations in the world that take a dim view of Americans having 13 well fed children while they struggle with subsistence living conditions.
Thinking about other countries - I wonder how the authorities would treat a couple in China who deliberately create 13 children? How would they view this in terms of justice and prosecution? I really don't know the answer to this question, but I'd guess they would take a very dim view. While in the US we generally encourage larger families and provide tax deductions.
I was merely indicating the uk law of "religious hatred", not saying I agreed with it!
Dave,
Why,indeed,do we still give tax deductions for large families?I don't expect there is any need to go into that,it's just one more example of all the other irrational things we do as a society.
As far as the Mormons themselves are concerned,a population biologist would probably say that the strategy of having very large families is and has been a successful strategy for the Mormons as a social group/clan/tribe(whatever terms are currently in vogue).
Of course such high birthrates lead to population overload quickly if sustained,but if the Mormons raise enough kids successfully,thier genes inherit the earth-or at least whatever is left of it,if anything,for a while.
When humans were scarce,we had to cooperate to compete with the other animals that ate the same foods in the same environment,and to protect ourselves from the animals that would otherwise eat us.
Nowadays we compete as "us" groups against "them" groups of other humans.Packs of wolves,prides of lions,and bands of chimps compete in the same way.
If there were such a thing as an evolutionary scorecard,the winning group would be the most numerous group.
But the top of the evolutionary hill is a very slippery place and no group of individuals or speices manages to stay there very long in evolutionary time.The Mormons may be clawing thier way toward the top,but I expect our speices as a whole is headed for a serious(to us) crash.
Mother Nature is an entirely heartless bitch and she could (not) care less.Out here on the farm when we are not spraying some nasty chemical to get rid of some particular bug,and killing a dozen useful bugs at the same time,we are used to seeing the age old game played out between the foxes and the rabbits.When the rabbits have a good year,the foxes have a very good year,the following year the rabbits have a very poor year as the result of the foxes good year,the following year the foxes have an extremely bad year as a result of what they did to the rabbits the previous year.
I paint with a broad brush of course,nothing in nature is quite so simple.
My personal opinion of the Mormons is that the ninety percent or so of them living under the heel of the other ten percent need to wake up and get the hell out of Utah,but you do have to admit that the old bulls in charge have done a good job of running things,from thier pov.Not many old men in this world can have a nubile young wife simply for the asking of an old buddy-knowing that of course he will be coming around for the same favor later.
As far as abortion is concerned,I am strenously opposed to it as a default method of birth control,but otherwise if a woman finds herself preggo and after serious soul searching on her part wants an abortion,I cannot see that it really is anyone else's business-although the potential father might righteously feel differently.
The soul searching is important,because some women later bitterly regret thier decision to abort.
The Republican party has shot itself in the foot by buying the antiabortion vote in violation of true conservative principles of personal liberty, self determination, and limited government.This tactical decision helped win some elections in the past,but is is nowadays an electoral loser on the national level,and I expect the next generation of republican leadership will quietly drop the issue.
Otoh,I don't see how anybody can look at a six month fetus and not see a human being.Personally I maintain the necessary cognitive dissonance that allows me to support limited abortions by not looking and not thinking,otherwise I feel the bile rising and the whole idea makes me ill.
I do not find it at all hard to understand why some people hold such strong beliefs in this respect that they are willing to resort to murder to stop what is after all to them,not only murder but murder of the powerless and helpless.
Life is a real bitch in some respects,is it not?
could (not) care less.
H'a'h. You Yanks may yet properly learn the language of England.
Later Day Saints (Mormons). They do have large families and migrate to Utah.
You keep citing that as evidence of the strength of your theories, but if anything it's the opposite: if everyone in the world is completely ignoring your theories, that's not a good sign.
If your theories are valuable, they will have inspired follow-on work. Have they?
Pitt, I have previously pointed out the utter ridiculousness of your thesis that a theory being ignored is justification for dismissing it. I linked to the published evidence about some of the greatest of discoveries being ignored by so-called peers. I also pointed out that it has not been a case of "the world is completely ignoring" my theories anyway. I haven't come here for the purpose of trying to persuade you on this point. If you also don't have any fault of reasoning or evidence to show in my highly praised theories, I suggest you move on from your unflattering exhibition of presumption.
So bye.
"I am getting more and more depressed about the inability of scientists to step outside the narrowest of confines to lift their eyes to novel concepts"--Prof David Horrobin (self-made multimillionaire).
"Well worth publishing"--HJ Eysenck, most cited ever scientist (only the second theory to be accepted for publication by him)
"Robin P Clarke is one of those rare souls..." -- Bernard Rimland, "A titan of autism research" -- whereas quite who is "Pitt the Elder"? What's s/he achieved, other than making an arse of himself above?
No, you've simply claim that, as if claiming made it true.
By contrast, citation count and impact factor are widely-recognized figures of merit in research (see, for example, here, here, or here). If you want to make the claim that the research community has been wrong for the last 50 years in using citations as a figure of merit, please provide some evidence.
Or, at the very least, please stop pimping your article in irrelevant contexts. It's like spamming a blog link - tacky.
Very nice, but completely irrelevant.
I'm not saying your research is bad; I'm saying your implication - that "not refuted implies correct" - is nonsense. There's plenty of flawed research in tiny, irrelevant publications that nobody bothers to refute, because everyone simply ignores it.
Is your paper different? Maybe; I neither know nor care. But you keep pushing the idea that a piece of research should be regarded as good simply because nobody's refuted it yet, and that's absurd. It's the equivalent of saying "nobody's proven I'm not Elvis, so I must be". It's putting the burden of proof in entirely the wrong place.
It's not up to the world to disprove a theory; it's up to the author to prove it.
If you're trying to make the argument that you're a well-respected researcher, resorting to childish insults is perhaps not the optimal approach.
"No, you've simply claim that, as if claiming made it true"
That's simply not true. I provided a load of solid evidence.
Citation ranking is widely understood to be greatly flawed, I don't need to prove it to you if you really want to be a dead horse about it.
Thanks for finding my citations nice but their relevance arises as responses to your own.
The author has already proved it. As already pointed out sci history is full of great well-proven works which the establishment charlatans "prove" to be no good by uniformly ignoring them.
Your fallacious notion that others do not have a burden of disproof has already been debunked by some other commenters. I guess this subthread is past its bedtime now.
"Everyone in the world" (more accurately the controlling academic establishment) is also completely ignoring the ARI's proof of cure of autism by chelation, as they previously ignored six solid studies of the value of vitamin B6 for autism. And these neo-Lysenko charlatans don't just "completely ignore" my work, rather they go out of their way to avoid responding to questions, and avoid answering the sound critiques of the claptrap which they themselves publish as supposedly the work of "distinguished", "leading" "experts".
As for inspiring follow-on work, that requires that there is a reasonably decent academic world out there to be up to the job.
And yes my autism theory at least inspired my own follow-on work which I may eventually have the time/energy to publish. My update shows inter alia four confirmed predictions (body symmetry correl with IQ; binding to dna causing autism; shared causality of iq and autism; increased rationality/reduced gut intuition in autism; plus a new prediction of the update, that lack of ventilation contributes to autism, is doubly confirmed already.
By contrast you don't even know what you are talking about re the basics of scientific history's abysmal record of ignoring, deriding, and persecuting great discoveries.
There are some ideas here that are much wackier than Daly's, and feed into the "growth is forever" mantra all too neatly.
Go ahead and solve the nuclear waste conundrum, and keep from polluting the Earth with radioactive energy that is way above background, and deal with the very real economic problems of the expense of the technology and of the de-commissioning of old plants, and then talk about growth forever based on alchemy. Even more fun than carbon capture and sequestration...
Using social and political concerns to dismiss Daly's work as well merely says, "It is difficult to make a change." and leaves the debate hanging. Much of current economic "thought" has been pushed at us since the early '80's, and yet we behave as if it is law. There simply are other ways for us to use our clever minds to be... clever. As to the hold that our belief systems have over us, and the hold that those in power have, well, this too shall have to change, one way or the other.
We live in what is practically speaking a finite system - well, not quite, but the contributions of the odd asteroid, while possibly very significant in the past, can hardly be counted upon to feed more and more. The major input that we can count on to spur growth is solar power, which is added to the Earth's system every day.
It is funny that "grow, grow, grow" is pushed at us every day, that we really hope and believe that it is possible, and yet the markets can reliably provide for between 3 and 5% per year, which, coincidentally enough, is the rate of natural growth in natural systems, and the rate of growth in sustainable yield agriculture.
And there is plenty of work to show that most resources, as they are used by humans, do follow a bell curve. Note as well that the majority of resources are not used up before we pass them over for something that is better. In the case of oil, tho' we still have plenty in the earth, we simply cannot afford to burn it all. There are huge technical problems to be overcome so that we can leave oil behind, and many who argue quite convincingly that we cannot, or cannot do so in time. But at this point, I become a bit of an eco-fascist and say: Be positive. Lead. Follow. Or get the hell out of the way.
Cheers.