[cjfd]

Well, this response sounds a bit more measured than what you originally wrote but it is still seems a bit weird. For one thing, sometimes people consume less just because they do not need as much in a particular year. E.g., a person might buy a new car every ten years. Is he poorer in the nine years that he did not buy a car than in the one year that he did? That the amount that a person consumes may fluctuate is not very important nor should anyone start panicking about it nor as a signal that it is necessary to go into some fierce kind of competition.

[duxut_staglatz]

Durable goods obfuscate the issue, but let's take your example.

Let's say I want to have both an all-terrain car for the weekend and my regular car on the weekdays. I now consume two new cars very ten years instead of one. The same number of car has been produced in those ten years (no growth). Where does my extra car come from?

[cjfd]

Let us tell a bit of a story. You bought your two cars because your all-terrain car hobby is very important to you. This was a bit of a financial squeeze and you could not go on holidays as often as you liked. But since the car hobby is more important to you, you think you made the right decision and are happy about it. There is another person who thinks going on holiday is the greatest thing ever. He went on holidays five times last year. This was a bit costly but he decided he did not need a car that badly and could use public transport instead. This was a bit less comfortable but he thought the great experience of going on holidays five times was well worth the inconvenience. So, where did your car come from? It did come from the other person who did not buy a car but went on holidays instead. But both of you were happy with your decisions. No crisis situation or fierce competition is needed in situations where not everybody gets what they want. In fact, both persons might choose to forego a promotion that was offered to them and which would have contributed to economic growth because it would leave the one person with too little time for his car hobby and the other with too little time for this travels.

[duxut_staglatz]

Ok, so you are agreeing with the comment you said you were disagreeing with (zero sum economy means if someone increases their amount of stuff, someone else must have less stuff, otherwise the amount of stuff would not stay constant).

You are making a different point, which is that more stuff does not equal happiness, so we should not care about it.

[cjfd]

Your original comment talked about this zero-sum game being a very grim circumstance. It talks about 'plunder' and the like. This is in part what I was commenting about, noting that it is not necessarily a grim thing. The other thing is that your talking about 'stuff' and zero-sum games still sounds a bit off. I am wondering if you are not using the term 'zero sum economy' in one meaning while at the same time evoking associations with another meaning of that same term. The 'zero sum economy' (the one with constant GDP) is still an economy where everybody is enjoying the benefits of trade and specialization. In that sense it is still a positive sum economy and if you start doing the 'plunder' that your first post talks about and lose the benefits of trade because you now have bad relationships between people and everybody will get poorer. Hence the 'zero sum economy' cannot be one of 'taking things' and 'plunder'. Also, the comments about 'stuff' still sound off. In fact in the 'zero sum economy' the amount of stuff gets increased every year by an amount that is exactly equal to GDP. That is the definition of GDP. There is also stuff that breaks down but it is not the case that other people take that stuff from you, just the forces of entropy. Maybe you mean to say things that are all correct but it just sounds a bit off to me. I can't shake the impression that you are confusing yourself by talking about one thing while thinking about another and/or evoking associations with it. For one thing, It is still quite unclear to me why you paint a very grim picture of the zero sum economy in your first post.

[weeksie]

Oh why not. Normally I don't get involved in these, but since you thought it was me replying to you all along I feel like I should at least reply :)

What I said is not theoretical. We have examples of zero sum economies, in fact that's how the world was everywhere right up until the industrial revolution.

I would urge you to re-read my original comment, since I address the very point you're making about cooperation inside a zero productivity growth environment. You can pay positive sum games! That's great! However any wealth generated by a positive sum game is, by definition, growth. I'm suspicious that it could be enough to matter. Productivity growth is a big deal.

In any case I am not convinced that zero productivity growth + positive sum games are a stable equilibrium.

Perhaps you could have a zero growth society where frequent jubilees reset everybody's wealth at regular intervals, but I'm not sure how that would work in practice and I'm also not sure it wouldn't be just as bloody as a zero sum land rush after the reset. You could do this with very high inflation levels, perhaps. Might make a fun science fiction short.

I'm hoping you give me a generous reading here, since I have neither the time nor inclination to deep-dive on a lot of my points, and I'm afraid I'd be boring as batshit if I did.

[cjfd]

This sounds like a legitimate fear that one could have. I can't really say I share it, tough. Also, at some point one does have to note that economic growth cannot go on indefinitely, although it is quite clear that it still can go on for quite a while, hopefully in a way that is more environmentally sustainable than the current way things are going.

Another thing to note is that current world GDP certainly is not enough because it leaves many people quite impoverished so we certainly still have some growing to do.