[jolux]

The problem is that economic growth is extremely important to developing economies as well. It’s one thing to say we should limit growth, or deprioritize it, or whatever, but in practice this means forcing poor countries to accept lower standards of living. That’s the real trade-off here.

[phkahler]

Growth can't continue indefinitely. In fact a lot of growth today is actually fudging the numbers to make them look good.

[chii]

> Growth can't continue indefinitely.

no it can't continue indefinitely, but there's still a tonne of room left for humans to grow. I dont believe we are near the limit yet. And that's only this planet. There's at least a few more in the solar system, and hopefully, propulsion tech will improve at some point to allow other star systems to be taken over by humans.

[0xffff2]

>I dont believe we are near the limit yet.

On what basis? We are already objectively destroying this planet with absolutely no meaningful action being taken to change, much less reverse course. At this point we will be incredibly lucky if we even manage to sustain a technological civilization long enough to settle other planets.

[dustingetz]

innovation can?

[phkahler]

Nope. One of the fudges is saying that a computer based on today's technology is more valuable than on from a couple years ago. I forget what this is called. But it's stupid and could be really abused to say a cellphone is a trillion dollar device, since that's what the processing power would have cost in 1980.

Maybe we should measure GDP via wages. Since all spending has to come from that anyway... not sure how to classify B2B transactions though, just thinking out loud.

[bryanlarsen]

An iPhone 12 uses less material than an iPhone 11 yet is more valuable than an iPhone 11.

A Tesla uses about 25 tons less fossil fuels than a gasoline car, even if its electricity is powered by a natgas generating station. The Tesla uses about the same amount of fossil fuels as the trucks transporting the fuel to the filling station.

Software of course, is special. New software is better than old software otherwise nobody would buy it. Yet the material usage is roughly equivalent at roughly $0.

These three types of progress can continue indefinitely.

[nradov]

You are referring to the hedonic quality adjustment factor that the BLS applies to CPI calculations. It's not at all stupid and it doesn't result in trillion dollar cellphones. You should really read up on the basics instead of making ignorant comments about things you don't understand.

https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/questions-and-ans...

[inawarminister]

There were proposals for labor-backed currency, where the basic unit is one hourly work of the worker. So B2B transactions will be valued from the man-hours that went to it.

Of course this approach breaks when the gigantic corpocracies are able to bloat into larger and larger sizes. But it might be an interesting research topic.

[collegeburner]

There are a lot of reasons why this wouldn't work but fundamentally the LTV is an interesting toy but crap economics. Bottom line is utility to people does not depend on person hours involved in production.

Think about it this way: I can have somebody skilled or unskilled do a job. Assume that they make the same output but it takes unskilled 2x the time, let us say maybe producing some leathercraft. Their output is not worth 2x the skilled, it's the same thing. Now assume that they take the same time but the skilled produces an output of 2x quality, maybe they are cooking something and the skilled makes a dish 2x as good. Neither are they worth the same. It may actually be worth less because they produce it slower so consumer has to wait 2x as long.

[throwawaymaths]

It can even get worse. Fundamentally LTV is subject to a very dangerous question of "who gets to define what is labour"? Is sitting around playing video games labour? Well what if you're at a video games company? Is smearing feces on a canvas labour? What if it's a commissioned art piece? What if it's an uncomissioned art piece that the artist knows will fetch a price? What if the artist is a chimpanzee? Etc.

[bluGill]

Labor hours fails because some jobs need more incentive to get into. Why would I study in school when I could make just as much doing basic unskilled labor, with careful savings the unskilled laborer can retire earlier since he starts sooner (also likely doesn't have to pay off student debt)

[White_Wolf]

You'd have to implement a coeficient based on the average time needed to aquire said skill for a person with average IQ and EQ, performance, number of base skills required to learn said skill, so on. This formula would be a bit more complex than this but you get the jist of it.

It wouldn't be impossible to quantify it for all but edge cases.

[Infernal]

I think a lot of the sibling comments here misunderstand the concept of labor-backed money (rather than debt-backed money, which we have in the United States today).

First - currency is the physical note, coin, IOU, etc. Money is the concept.

With debt-backed money like the US dollar, the money is created by a private bank (the Federal Reserve) in exchange for US Treasury bonds - debt.

The currency supply is controlled by the US Treasury, but the money supply is controlled by the Federal Reserve.

Labor-backed money as I understand it, would be created by the Treasury in exchange for labor. The Treasury would control the supply of both money and currency. Crucially, to create money, labor must be performed. Similar to debt-based money, where debt is created by the government as the basis of money - in this case, labor would be "created" by the price (in new money) offered for it.

There is no need to have some centrally-planned, mandated valuation of a certain tradesman's time vs another trade or profession - the government puts out lots of contracts for bid today with no such mechanism in place, and it wouldn't need to change.

[inter_netuser]

why, because we ran out of habitable planets in the galaxy?

[Ambolia]

Depends what "poverty" means. A lot of poor people were subsistance farmers, able to hold property and carve a space for themselves and their families in the world. That's something that will be out of reach for many "rich" people in the upcoming decades.

[jolux]

Subsistence farming is a nightmare, I can all but guarantee that no living subsistence farmer would choose that life over renting an apartment and having disposable income.

[Ambolia]

It's not that bad, and a lot of people like to own their own land rather than never get to own anything.

[rayiner]

Dude. Go move to my dad’s village in Bangladesh for a year, so what they do, then come back and post on HN.

[SkyMarshal]

Let’s assume all of us are curious about what we would learn doing that, but none of us are probably willing or able to actually do that. What would we learn if we did?

[rayiner]

Being a subsistence farmer is really hard. When my dad was growing up, 1 out of 4 kids died before age 5. Getting in boats to go to school was a thing during monsoon season. Moreover, most people don’t own their land—they’re what Americans would call share croppers or what Europeans would call peasants.

There’s certain benefits, of course. The communities are tightly knit and there is a predictable social hierarchy. But it’s a rigid one, and the rigidity is driven by the realities of subsistence farming. It’s pretty great if you’re a landowner, but if you’re not born into one of those families then you can’t “work your way up.” Indeed, a lot of the things we think of as “more enlightened” attitudes in the modern west are really the product of us being free from the constraints of subsistence farming. You don’t get to be “child free” (or openly gay) in an economy where having lots of kids and hoping enough survive to take care of you in your old age is the only retirement plan.

Men’s dominance over women, likewise, arises naturally in an economy where people are at the edge of survival and doing extremely physically demanding work keeps the community alive. My mom grew up reading Russian literature and got a master’s degree in chemistry and edited a history of the Bangladeshi independence movement. Not because her father was enlightened, though he was, but because he was a wealthy landowner and didn’t need his daughters to be in the fields harvesting rice, or to get married off quickly so some other man could support them.

[mardifoufs]

Yeah wow, I always cringe whenever I hear people unashamedly talking about "degrowth" in poor countries because hey they like it anyways! I mean they are alive so it can't be too bad? As if there's no reason why those subsistence farmers do everything they can to either get themselves out of that situation if they get the chance or at least sacrifice everything to make sure their kids don't have to live the same life. They should've just read about the virtues of minimalist living online and like, reconnect with nature bro.

This is one of the reason why i just can't get into most modern western environmentalist movements , it actually gets uncomfortable how they fetishise misery and stagnation knowing damn well that they themselves won't ever have to experience any major deprivation. Because let's be honest, even if western countries make concessions of course they will never sacrifice more than comforts/superfluous things. abject poverty farming for thee, and at the very very worse "degrowing" a few percentage of GDP for me.

[prasadjoglekar]

Not really. China and India grew even during the 1990s when $ interest rates were not 0 and quite high. Single largest removal of poverty in the world.

Growth in both those countries was due to them opening up economies to internal and external entrepreneurialism and capital.