| Thanks for taking the time to write such a large and thorough reply. Unfortunately, there's so much in there and multiple of the things I want to express touch on multiple of the points you made, any reply I make is going to be rambling and possibly hard to consume, but I'll make an attempt. > One of the counterarguments to exponential growth, particularly in the context of limits, is that growth rises to some constraint. This is an interesting concept, and depending on what we believe fuels growth is obviously true to a greater or lesser extent (mostly greater, in my opinion). It's obvious that resources fuel growth, and different countries have different kinds and amounts of resources, so those eventually being tapped means loss of at least one fuel of growth. Population also fuels growth, but there are obviously limits there (even if people often can't agree on how and when they will express themselves), such as living space and ability to source food. At the same time, there are things that fuel growth (in this case whether we're talking about GDP or some more holistic metrics of citizen wealth or well-being) such as new technology, whether it be spurred advances in the hard sciences or soft. Political, organizational and social technologies are not to be underestimated here I think. A change on society that causes a marked decrease in psychological problems such as depression, or increase in happiness in some other way, would be immensely important. In the end though, the technological changes are probably hard to hoard for the benefit of one nation over the other (even if adoption of something that seems extremely beneficial doesn't often happen on short time frames), so the things that cause growth that are limited resources at likely the important thing to focus on. It seems fairly obvious to me that different nations already have different amounts of these resources or the ability to grow them, and will hit those limits at different times. In the end though, it may not be what matters, as while there are countries of different relative potential, there's also growth through current relative power. Powerful countries can achieve better terms in trade with others by leveraging that power, so the more powerful you are, and the sooner you can bring that power to bear, the more benefit it brings you. In this way, being economically more powerful than others is itself is a form resource to be tapped for more growth. > ere is a history of countries burning through growth potential with immense rapidity, most especially in the case of natural resources extraction. To be clear, my argument is not necessarily to grow as quickly as possible (I think that's obviously non-optimal given the negative repercussions and the unknown time at which growth becomes capped), but to continue to try to leverage resources into growth when still possible as fast as is safe (which is obciously complex and hard to do and a moving target). In large I think that means countries should keep doing what they're doing. IU also think ecological sustainability should be more emphasized, but I don't think that is antithetical to what I just said. We should attempt to grow as much as we can, but pay close attention to the consequences and try to minimize the negative ones. Hopefully that means we're also paying attention to any eventual slowing of cessation of a lot of growth drivers and planning for what that entails as we near it. > My final argument is that much of the advantages attributed to economic growth can be had at relatively low levels of same. ... Invest in infrastructure, healthcare ... That investment is where I would like to see a lot of the growth funneled into. The quicker we grow in ways which do not exacerbate those problems, the more resources we'll have to put towards solving them. Ultimately, in a perfect world that might mean picking the areas of growth that have the most bang-for-the-buck to leverage that towards actual problems for people (because it's easy to abstract this away to countries and just say let's get more people which will drive more growth), to make individuals happier, because otherwise why are we bothering. That most of these decisions are made by large machines that often work through emergent behavior that is hard to steer is not lost on me, and I understand most my arguments are academic and ivory tower in nature. Finally, thanks for including a large supplementary comment of sources. I'll be adding them to the stack of things I should read (but unfortunately rarely allow myself time for). I truly appreciate it. |
The first time I'd run into the notion that high metabolic systems burn out faster was reading Asimov's book on black holes, The Collapsing Universe, when I was a young boy, and learning that the hotter and brighter a star, the shorter its life. The very largest known star, CY Canis Majoris, is a red supergiant, near the end of its life, and is thought to have formed 8.2 Mya, roughly the same time h. sapiens and chimpanzees diverged on the evolutionary tree. Contrast the birth of our own Sun at about 4.5 Bya.
The notion that human civilisations might be somewhat akin to stars, burning through their metabolic and resource foundations, has a symmetry to this concept, though there are more confounding factors to cultures than there are to starts, where metallicity, mass, and the presence or absence of stellar companions are about the only relevant factors affecting lifespan.
The idea that civilisations are bounded by limits and that growth only reaches those limits more quickly also punches some gaping holes in the notion of long-termism, which argues for maximal growth and growth rates. That makes sense if ultimate growth and all stages along the pathway are both unlimited. If, however, there are both local and global maxima, that is, ceilings to growth and sustainability, and most especially if reaching those limits is a high-risk event, then rather than argue for maximal growth at all times, a more reserved approach is called for.
The question of two species or cultures competing for the same resources is another point, and it's been raised several times in this thread. I'd look to actual ecosystems where fast- and slow-growing species (including r/K selection theory: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory>) exist. If the slower-growing species is also the more resilient for other reasons, then its slow growth need not be an ultimate handicap. That of course isn't a given, but depends very much on both the fitness landscape (selective pressure) and specific species adaptations. Human cultures are not identical to biological species, though they share some resemblances. Most especially, cultures are malleable, individuals can move between cultures, and the practices and knowledge of cultures can be shared, adopted, and transmitted to a much greater extent than biological species' genetic code is.
(I'd also like to make as painfully clear as I can that I am NOT equating "human culture" with any specific ethnic or geneological line, but rather the knowledge, practices, language, geographical distribution, and activities of groups of people, whether of common or diverse ancestry. Rather I'm focusing on both as persistent patterns which share the characteristics of inheritance, variability, and selection, and are thus evolutionary phenomena.)
As discussed in another comment, alliances matter far more for cultural protection than measures of wealth (collective or per-capita GDP, say): <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37400918>.
I'm not saying that national capability as expressed in defensive capabilities doesn't matter at all, but suggest that it matters far less than one might generally think. Even at times where marauding empires were fashionable, the empires they created rarely survived long: Alexander, Rome, Napoleon, and Hitler all made tremendous conquests, but in three of those four instances, lost control within a few years, decades at the outside. Rome itself held at maximum extent with no peer in capabilities for a few centuries.
Common interest and fraternal bonds seem far more effective than military might. Certainly less costly. And one could argue that both Pax Romana and Pax Americana were based more on economic than military factors.
On the 2nd and 3rd points: Certain forms of growth, most especially those based on fossil fuels, must end in the very near future to avoid absolute catastrophe. The political and economic opposition to this remains strong, unfortunately. As for channeling growth into basic infrastructure and safety nets, amen!
Glad you're getting something from this.