[pg]

People who think it's bad to want the world economy to grow probably haven't stopped to think about what economic growth consists of. Economic growth isn't just fat Americans buying bigger SUVs. It's also people in poor countries increasing their standard of living, and advances in medical care.

[guelo]

That was an ad hominem response to the question of can we continue using resources at an ever increasing rate. That includes asking if the world can afford to bring the poor up to western living standards. They are ugly questions but it doesn't make sense to burry our heads in the sand about them.

[pg]

I don't think ad hominem is the phrase you want here. I think what you mean is, the more important question is whether we can continue to consume resources at the rate we do. And my reply to that is that creating more wealth doesn't necessarily imply consuming more resources. For example, new versions of machines often consume less power, not more.

[chacham15]

To further your point, it doesn't even necessarily imply consuming resources at all: a person using his wrench to fix a car is creating wealth without using any resources.

[mseebach]

I don't think anyone is burying their heads over this. The answer is "maybe not", but the followup is that there is absolutely no moral compass on which is would be even remotely acceptable to take even the smallest step to prevent the global poor to become as rich as we are.

[rohern]

"The answer is "maybe not", but the followup is that there is absolutely no moral compass on which is would be even remotely acceptable to take even the smallest step to prevent the global poor to become as rich as we are."

The argument -- as far as I have witnessed it -- is not about preventing the poor from becoming rich. The argument is should richer people need to suffer to effect the enrichment of the poor. Acting to prevent is not the same thing as not acting to effect.

[mseebach]

That's not very different. It implies a level of wealth that can't be made available to the poor, regardless of the fact that we have in our selflessness given it up.

The answer to "we can't afford it" is the same to many other scenarios where you can't afford something but need to get it anyway: Figure out how to make it work. Inventing non-fossil liquid fuels would make a very good start.

[illuminate]

Criticizing globalism and the externalities of "wanting the world economy to grow" is not an argument against increasing the standards of living worldwide, and I'm not sure why you're conflating the two.

[rohern]

His point is that one of the main avenues for the poor to leave poverty is through capitalistic action. If you are arguing for the restriction of that behavior, you are arguing for the restriction of opportunities to leave behind poverty.

As pathetic as it is to see people camping out at Wal-mart to buy products they do not particularly need (indeed, many of them would be better off if they saved the money that they will spend today), one of the results of that behavior is additional economic opportunity for poor countries and poor people.

You could state a case that the net gain from this behavior makes it not worth having, as the social and environmental costs of using natural and human resources to produce unneeded products obfuscates the value of the resultant economic growth, but then you would need to present data and math.

[illuminate]

"If you are arguing for the restriction of that behavior, you are arguing for the restriction of opportunities to leave behind poverty."

That doesn't follow. Laissez-faire capitalism does not necessarily lead to greater class mobility. The idea that one must abandon "restriction" of capitalism to offer the greatest benefit to any individual is ridiculous.

[mseebach]

There are bucketloads of empirical evidence for "one of the main avenues for the poor to leave poverty is through capitalistic action". GP didn't appear to argue against any and all restriction on capitalism, but that those (like AdBusters and Occupy[1]) who argue broadly against capitalism (rather than specific shortcomings), implicitly (and probably involuntarily) argue against "opportunities to leave behind poverty".

1: At least many of them

[rohern]

We are talking about different things. I am not talking about class mobility. I am talking about the wealth of nations.

[illuminate]

Why are you stating that Capitalism must not be restricted or impeded if the wealth of a nation is to increase?

[rohern]

I never made that statement. I did, however, claim that a major cause of the increase in the wealth of nations is capitalism. I made this claim because I have studied economics and history and I have read and heard multiple compelling arguments supporting this claim.

[pg]

The site specifically says we have to challenge the idea "that the economy must always keep growing."

[clobber]

We should question the idea of "growth" especially if its leaving a net negative on other aspects of humanity.

[rohern]

Do you have any data to support that statement? You are going to need a pretty massive data set and significant argument to demonstrate both the cause and the negative aspect of the effect.

[clobber]

That's cute.

[krisc]

You're right, but I think the main point of the campaign is to show that the way the world economy is growing is harmful to our planet.

[balsam]

could there be a case however against economic growth being too fast? an example of too fast would be building a chernobyl before the safety infrastructure was up.

[rohern]

I am not sure how shoddy engineering equates with too fast economic growth. That seems like defining your terms so generally that they can refer to almost anything.

I also think it is ironic that you chose as an example an infrastructure project not built as the result of capitalism.

[mseebach]

As others have pointed out, Chernobyl is a terribly example for the point you're trying to make.

Growth can probably be too fast - China has some problems in this regard, infrastructure, basic services, environmental concerns, the political system etc. can't quite keep up with the reasonable demands of a rapidly growing new middle class.

The growth rates attainable for the US and Europe, however, are unlikely to be dangerous.

[orijing]

I wouldn't consider that growth, though.

[balsam]

Web.py is arguably an example of shoddy engineering in explosive software startups that did not become a medical experiment.

"The results show that foremost among the causes of growth in U.S., German and Japanese manufacturing value added is electric power consumption."[1] Now I wouldn't pay too much attention to the word "causes" in there, but...

Define your terms too precisely and there would be nothing to think about.

[1]"Engineering and Economic Growth" http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0954349X04...

[creatrixcordis]

Yeah right!!! Nice spin on it dude. Increasing their standard of living while being subject to poor environmental conditions because of their corrupt officials who are pushed to be corrupt by our corrupt politicians, and so on. It's easy for you to say that while living in the land of the plenty and the so called free. Why dont you focus exclusively on startups with a whole-world(env-friendly) minded approach, because you my friend are in a position to impact the world for the good more than other people. Im sure the over consumption could be regulated a bit by a buy nothing day, its no different than a turn off your lights day, it's actually better than that, it forces us to ask why do we buy? And if your answer to that is "to be happy" oh man you have swallowed the wrong pill when given the choice. -a person that will never kiss your ass

[MSM]

I buy plenty of things to make me happy.

I don't need the internet. Either do you. I also don't need to eat anything other than bean tortillas, but I will. I could probably get through my life wiping with single ply, but I'd rather have double.

If that makes me a bad guy in your eyes, ah well. I'm sure a few of the beers I went out my way to purchase will ease the pain.

[creatrixcordis]

I guess moderation in peoples consumption levels and the types of consumption are relative, but i'm sure there is a line where they become dangerous for the rest of the people living on the planet, but we in the 1st world really don't understand where that line is since we are not faced with the issues other people in the world are, so we look down and say who cares that i have enough while you don't, that's just how things are, hurry up and get over here too so you can have this too, what happens when all the people do? what then?

We will just wait for someone else to figure it out while we comment on hacker news and have a beer and use the internet all at the same time and eat 1st world burritos and post on facebook with our 9 billion cell phones, all at the same time, hopefully we can all do this all at the same time, and in the process of figuring it out some of us are just unlucky to be born in a different vantage point, where we don't have cell phones, barely can carry water to drink to our families, try to fish in waters that are not polluted, education is scarce, all this because the ones born into the more favorable vantage point wait for others to fix the problems while they fat on their couches and complain that obesity is a problem because the corporations feed us fat food, and to think that we can actually help those people if we just want to? if we just approached the problem with the same vigor as we approach securing our oil-reserves, but who gives a fuck, all we do is just sit here on hacker news and complain and bitch and comment and feel good because we get points and we are on the main page but it all equates to nothing and i am guilty for it, so i'm going to go out and get breakfast at one of the many places available to me, happy thanksgiving

[MSM]

My point was, it's all relative.

Even poor people spend money on non-necessities. I watched a documentary on how being able to afford a Coke is a sign of status in many third world countries. They obviously don't need Coke, but having it seems to make them happy (I can't complain, I love it as well). Even though they might not be able to afford many of things we deem important, they manage to get enough change together to buy a soft drink.

There is little we can do to help those in the poorest countries. We can give our time or our money, but rarely are either of those things given. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you've never taken time away from your job to spend a week in Liberia or Eritrea. Is it a problem? Probably. Is it something that is going to be solved by not buying anything today? Of course not.

[creatrixcordis]

I agree it's relative, but the major reason those people like this "Coke" was because they've been fed images from the west about how they should be, don't you find it odd that most countries you go to, have some of the same things you have here? Coke, McDonalds, Marlboro, Burger King

That doesn't mean those things are good. If our society here in the west was focused on exporting things for the good of the people around the world, maybe we would export good education?

But you just cant export good things when everything is money driven, someone has to suffer, someone has to get the short stick from the bunch and in this case it is the poor people because they don't have enough power to do anything about it. They're problems are real, food, clean water, electricity, education so they accept our so called sharp toothed help because it alleviates some of their problems in the short term, but they don't have the right organization to stop us and say "no, you can't dump your shit(chemical waste, etc) here man", no if you can't find cheap labor in your country "we wont work for you here either unless you pay us the right amount" So the west knows this, corporations know this, so they go and exploit and keep it hidden from us because they want us to be at ease when we pay for their products at the cash register.

When you say there is little we can do, we can also abstain from putting forward idiotic ideals into their television sets so they go buy our shit because they think that is the thing to do, since television and ads are the only major exposure they get from the 1st world countries they look up to it because of their ignorance that there are problems there too.

We can also abstain from going over there and exploiting them because they haven't had the proper education to judge our causes in a equal light.

Yes there are things we can do, and yes not shopping one day is a start, i didn't say not shopping at all, but not shopping on one major day out of 365 days is not too much to ask, because if you want to make a impact it has to be substantial, its the same mindset corporations have when they go look for cheap labor, we need a place to make shit that will ensure us with substantial profits.

I've lived in a 3rd world country before so i know that you can make do with less and even here i make do with way less than the average hard-working american(including immigrants), even though i can live a life that includes many more material things, for me those things don't increase my happiness, so i choose not to.

And this western way of going about things assuming that the major problems of earth will be solved by the people who currently are in the have, is faulty thinking as well, no one can say that the person who can contribute most to this world can't be born somewhere in a very unfortunate environment but with the right treatment can grow up and cure cancer, develop clean energy, produce more efficient systems, for us to sit here in the west and pretend we are the only ones that can even deal with and attempt to solve these problems just because we are in the have category is ignorant.

On some level not providing the right education to all of the worlds population is shooting ourselves in the foot at a global level, because you never know where the major game-changer will be born and by not providing a good eco-system for those people to grow in, you are negating this so called progress ideal which is so feverishly rooted in our future