Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet
October 24, 2022 7:05 PM Subscribe
“At a 2.3% [economic] growth rate, [earth's surface] would reach boiling temperature in about 400 years. And this statement is independent of technology. Even if we don’t have a name for the energy source yet, as long as it obeys thermodynamics, we cook ourselves with perpetual energy increase.”
— Tom Murphy (Do The Math), “Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist” / “Limits to economic growth” [PDF]
Although the quote dates from 2012 before his long blog hiatus, Tom Murphy's recent entries at Do The Math remain as astute as ever, with two nice concise entries being The Cult of Civilization and Caught Up in Complexity.
See also his book. Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet, and Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: Developing a PLAN for the future,
Interviews by Nate Hagens and Crazy Town (post-carbon institute)
Although the quote dates from 2012 before his long blog hiatus, Tom Murphy's recent entries at Do The Math remain as astute as ever, with two nice concise entries being The Cult of Civilization and Caught Up in Complexity.
See also his book. Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet, and Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: Developing a PLAN for the future,
Interviews by Nate Hagens and Crazy Town (post-carbon institute)
Exponentials blow everything out rapidly. He does concede at the end:
The surface of the earth will be glowing like a cosmic light-bulb in short order.
posted by teppic at 9:02 PM on October 24, 2022 [4 favorites]
The conversation recreated here did challenge my own understanding as well. I spent the rest of the evening pondering the question: “Under a model in which GDP is fixed—under conditions of stable energy, stable population, steady-state economy: if we accumulate knowledge, improve the quality of life, and thus create an unambiguously more desirable world within which to live, doesn’t this constitute a form of economic growth?"But that doesn't help. If you want to accumulate knowledge you have to shuffle around atoms; move something to a lower state of entropy at the cost of moving something else to a higher state of entropy.
The surface of the earth will be glowing like a cosmic light-bulb in short order.
posted by teppic at 9:02 PM on October 24, 2022 [4 favorites]
I think (hope) that acceptable growth can continue with increasing energy expenditures by moving activities off of the Earth's surface.
posted by coberh at 9:07 PM on October 24, 2022
posted by coberh at 9:07 PM on October 24, 2022
This should really come with a content warning. If one accepts all his premises uncritically, as given, existential dread leading to suicidal thoughts is perfectly reasonable. Preemptively, I'll link this for future visitors: https://mefiwiki.com/wiki/ThereIsHelp#Lists_of_Suicide_and_Mental_Health_Crisis_Hotlines.2C_Local_and_National_Resources
I consider this kind of exercise a natural evolution of the thought of Ted Kaczynski, given a moderate face, and would not engage with it while in distress of any kind.
posted by StrikeTheViol at 9:15 PM on October 24, 2022 [7 favorites]
I consider this kind of exercise a natural evolution of the thought of Ted Kaczynski, given a moderate face, and would not engage with it while in distress of any kind.
posted by StrikeTheViol at 9:15 PM on October 24, 2022 [7 favorites]
I heard the other day, a good way to think about this.
Failing to scale back energy and polllution for the benefit of a few has made the production and distribution of food radically unstable.
As long as we have an economic system focused on churning out more Vladimir Putins, Elon Musks, and Donald Trumps, we are planning on destabilizing the basic human needs for most of the species
posted by eustatic at 9:18 PM on October 24, 2022 [6 favorites]
Failing to scale back energy and polllution for the benefit of a few has made the production and distribution of food radically unstable.
As long as we have an economic system focused on churning out more Vladimir Putins, Elon Musks, and Donald Trumps, we are planning on destabilizing the basic human needs for most of the species
posted by eustatic at 9:18 PM on October 24, 2022 [6 favorites]
Imagine a world where everybody is either a hairstylist or plays the banjo. If the price of haircuts and banjo playing goes up with the products remain the same, that's just inflation. But if everybody learns how to play the banjo better, and to cut hair better, and switches from $10 haircuts and banjo concerts to $100 haircuts, then there's been economic growth, without necessarily any increase in energy or population.
If the haircuts and banjo playing increase in quality, does it matter, economically speaking, if the price goes up or not? More value for money would still be more value.
In fact it's easy to think of classes of manufactured goods or services that became both better and cheaper over time. Would an economist say that was shrinkage, the opposite of growth?
posted by Western Infidels at 9:25 PM on October 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
If the haircuts and banjo playing increase in quality, does it matter, economically speaking, if the price goes up or not? More value for money would still be more value.
In fact it's easy to think of classes of manufactured goods or services that became both better and cheaper over time. Would an economist say that was shrinkage, the opposite of growth?
posted by Western Infidels at 9:25 PM on October 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
The thought experiment about growth of energy consumption and waste heat production reminds me of an idea from Larry Niven's Ringworld. In it, there's an advanced alien species that engaged in a massive astroengineering project to eject their homeworld from its parent star system, in part to address the waste heat problem from their civilization's energy usage (no heat due to light from the star means they can produce more waste heat).
I enjoyed the dialogue format of the "Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist" article. I've been thinking more and more recently that it's an underused technique for communicating complex ideas.
posted by biogeo at 9:26 PM on October 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
I enjoyed the dialogue format of the "Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist" article. I've been thinking more and more recently that it's an underused technique for communicating complex ideas.
posted by biogeo at 9:26 PM on October 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
Value is basically down to the perception of buyers as to what something is worth, as long as they're willing to back that perception with money. Is a $100 haircut ten times more valuable than a $10 haircut? Yes, by definition, according to economists. If you pay $100 to see a musician is she ten times better than a $10 musician? Yep (to an economist).
Imagine a world where everybody is either a hairstylist or plays the banjo. If the price of haircuts and banjo playing goes up with the products remain the same, that's just inflation. But if everybody learns how to play the banjo better, and to cut hair better, and switches from $10 haircuts and banjo concerts to $100 haircuts, then there's been economic growth, without necessarily any increase in energy or population.
How do you distinguish between everything going up in nominal price because of inflation, vs. everything going up in nominal price because of quality improvements? It seems to me you're stuck between the Scylla of denying the possibility of inflation and the Charybdis of admitting that the state of an economy cannot be measured from price information alone.
posted by Pyry at 9:26 PM on October 24, 2022 [8 favorites]
Imagine a world where everybody is either a hairstylist or plays the banjo. If the price of haircuts and banjo playing goes up with the products remain the same, that's just inflation. But if everybody learns how to play the banjo better, and to cut hair better, and switches from $10 haircuts and banjo concerts to $100 haircuts, then there's been economic growth, without necessarily any increase in energy or population.
How do you distinguish between everything going up in nominal price because of inflation, vs. everything going up in nominal price because of quality improvements? It seems to me you're stuck between the Scylla of denying the possibility of inflation and the Charybdis of admitting that the state of an economy cannot be measured from price information alone.
posted by Pyry at 9:26 PM on October 24, 2022 [8 favorites]
TheophileEscargot
Well if you want a summary of it, I am able to read the article.
1. Historical energy use over the past century has been exponential, with a 2-3% growth rate per year.
2. Energy intensity (energy used per constant dollar output) shows a persistent 1.1% decline.
"(the 2.3% growth path) is in no way meant to be taken as a prediction of our future path, merely as an illustration of the absurdity of blind extrapolation of historical growth rates into the future."
The author then states 3 points explaining why growth of energy use will cease - population will not rise as rapidly, easy to mine fossil fuels have been extracted and will decline, and growth of energy use has been tapering in the past 50 years due to those two factors and improvements in efficiency.
For infinite growth to occur, we need decoupling. To some degree (the 1.1% decline in energy intensity per dollar) matches our expected improvements in efficiency - shows graph of energy efficiency improvement from candles to gas lamps to incandescent bulbs to LED bulbs. But we are approaching the theoretical efficiency limit for many applications so we can't extrapolate infinite efficiency gains either.
The interesting concept the author talks about is if decoupling continues for infinite growth to occur, then the non-physical part of the economy has to be the portion that grows while the physical portion - food, shelter, energy - becomes smaller and smaller and ends up a trivial percent of the world's economy. This means food shelter and energy become essentially free ** and most value in the economy is in services / data / entertainment.
One of the points in the conclusion that seem quite relevant is the fact that the people in power have always sidestepped the elephant in the room (equality) by saying their main focus is growing the overall economy, so even the poor people benefit. We don't need redistribution of resources, growing the whole pie is better. It's a lie, in some sense, like the trickle down economy is, but when growth stops everyone will have no choice but to grapple head on with redistribution.
** My own notes - Reading this makes me think of the "food" production proportion - In today's developed economies, something like 97% of all humans were engaged in food production in the year 1800, and after 200 years of advancement it's the inverse, it's something like 3%. So food was 97% of the economy before, and now it's just 3%. In relative terms, food is "kind of free" today compared to the 1800s, but food insecurity is still a thing even in developed economies, or, even replaced by a problems of food quality leading to the obesity crisis.
posted by xdvesper at 9:28 PM on October 24, 2022 [18 favorites]
Well if you want a summary of it, I am able to read the article.
1. Historical energy use over the past century has been exponential, with a 2-3% growth rate per year.
2. Energy intensity (energy used per constant dollar output) shows a persistent 1.1% decline.
"(the 2.3% growth path) is in no way meant to be taken as a prediction of our future path, merely as an illustration of the absurdity of blind extrapolation of historical growth rates into the future."
The author then states 3 points explaining why growth of energy use will cease - population will not rise as rapidly, easy to mine fossil fuels have been extracted and will decline, and growth of energy use has been tapering in the past 50 years due to those two factors and improvements in efficiency.
For infinite growth to occur, we need decoupling. To some degree (the 1.1% decline in energy intensity per dollar) matches our expected improvements in efficiency - shows graph of energy efficiency improvement from candles to gas lamps to incandescent bulbs to LED bulbs. But we are approaching the theoretical efficiency limit for many applications so we can't extrapolate infinite efficiency gains either.
The interesting concept the author talks about is if decoupling continues for infinite growth to occur, then the non-physical part of the economy has to be the portion that grows while the physical portion - food, shelter, energy - becomes smaller and smaller and ends up a trivial percent of the world's economy. This means food shelter and energy become essentially free ** and most value in the economy is in services / data / entertainment.
One of the points in the conclusion that seem quite relevant is the fact that the people in power have always sidestepped the elephant in the room (equality) by saying their main focus is growing the overall economy, so even the poor people benefit. We don't need redistribution of resources, growing the whole pie is better. It's a lie, in some sense, like the trickle down economy is, but when growth stops everyone will have no choice but to grapple head on with redistribution.
** My own notes - Reading this makes me think of the "food" production proportion - In today's developed economies, something like 97% of all humans were engaged in food production in the year 1800, and after 200 years of advancement it's the inverse, it's something like 3%. So food was 97% of the economy before, and now it's just 3%. In relative terms, food is "kind of free" today compared to the 1800s, but food insecurity is still a thing even in developed economies, or, even replaced by a problems of food quality leading to the obesity crisis.
posted by xdvesper at 9:28 PM on October 24, 2022 [18 favorites]
I guess I'm going to preface this by saying that I understand the point about exponential growth. I think there are probably some unimagined paths humans might take that will change the trajectory of that growth, e.g. brain uploading, but there are still limits. The universe itself is finite - if we assume 1% growth per year forever it's really a very short time from consuming all the energy of a planet, to all the energy of a star, to galaxy, to universe. So like, yes there is a physical basis for our existence that have limitations in a finite planet and/or universe.
(Mefi's own) Charles Stross has a fascinating novella, Palimpsest, which sets this question as the backdrop - what should humans do with this finite universe? Should we try to survive for as long as possible? Should we spread as widely as possible? Something else entirely? Other fun sci-fi engaging on this topic, we have The Last Question by Asimov. Or, The Last-But-One Question by qntm.
Anyway, as I was looking at some of the essays on the site, I came across this:
I think the question of humanity expanding into space has a lot of nuance. We do not have the technology for year-long duration closed-loop life support, let alone indefinite, and to do that will require probably a few orders of magnitude greater understanding of our biology and that of the other organisms we depend upon. There may yet be technology to deliver stuff to space with greater efficiency than chemical rockets - think laser propulsion, slingatron, centrifuge launchers, etc. Better robotics may enable space resource utilization without needing to keep delicate humans alive in space - maybe someday almost everyone still lives on Earth, but most industrial/agricultural activity happens via automated farms and factories in space.
After this I feel like we start getting into philosophical thought experiment territory. Like, if humanity were living in balance with nature, it might be bad to cure cancer, because it would lead to overpopulation. And similarly we could ask, if we could magically save a life by making say, bald eagles go extinct, would it be moral to do that? Would it be moral not to? What if it were ten lives, or a billion? This is sorta lifeboat ethics / utilitarianism all over again.
posted by rustcrumb at 10:09 PM on October 24, 2022 [5 favorites]
(Mefi's own) Charles Stross has a fascinating novella, Palimpsest, which sets this question as the backdrop - what should humans do with this finite universe? Should we try to survive for as long as possible? Should we spread as widely as possible? Something else entirely? Other fun sci-fi engaging on this topic, we have The Last Question by Asimov. Or, The Last-But-One Question by qntm.
Anyway, as I was looking at some of the essays on the site, I came across this:
A Planetary Limits perspective steps to the side and starts by acknowledging a non-negotiable physical basis to everything.I think I am on board with the idea that there are some "abstract" things like uh, "the legal system" that could be distinguished from physical reality - you cannot sue a hurricane, after all. But it is just immediately bizarre to categorize "agriculture", "cities", and "industry" as abstract things. I suppose one could argue that something like Second Life or World of Warcraft might be compared to "London" in some abstract way. We might say that delineating a firm boundary of what is London is some sort of abstraction that has legal consequences but not physical ones, but also London is a physical place with lots of useful buildings, its location on the Thames is useful for human activities and creates risk, opportunities, cost and benefits for the people and wildlife there, as a physical object. Similarly "agriculture" or "industry", while they have laws, customs, regulations, etc, surrounding them, they are also both defined by having large, immediate, real impacts on the physical world. Humans reshape landscapes and ecosystems in doing agriculture. We divert rivers, build immense factories, and literally move mountains doing industry.
In this view, we have created and prioritized an artificial world atop the real physical world, full of constructs that are malleable and in some senses arbitrary. Perhaps because the elements of this attention-dominating artificial world are of our own creation—agriculture, cities, political and legal systems, economies, industry, gadgets, entertainment, etc.
Another common focus of how we might fix many of the world’s ills is redistributing the wealth of billionaires. But perversely, perhaps locking up the wealth without physical expression is doing more good than harm, in Earth’s eyes. If a multi-billionaire released, say, $30k each to 1 million people, we might expect 1 million car purchases, or the equivalent. Yet billionaires don’t have million-car garages.Actually, billionaires are good? mmm dunno about that one. What if those people freed themselves from the artificial constraints that were denying them a share in the future, like paying off debts, or investing in education? With a share in the future, they might be better inclined to be good stewards of our shared prosperity? What if we didn't even give $30,000 to a million people, but just burned $30bn of billionaire money so they didn't have it to continue slanting our politics towards unsustainable extractive modes of being?
I think the question of humanity expanding into space has a lot of nuance. We do not have the technology for year-long duration closed-loop life support, let alone indefinite, and to do that will require probably a few orders of magnitude greater understanding of our biology and that of the other organisms we depend upon. There may yet be technology to deliver stuff to space with greater efficiency than chemical rockets - think laser propulsion, slingatron, centrifuge launchers, etc. Better robotics may enable space resource utilization without needing to keep delicate humans alive in space - maybe someday almost everyone still lives on Earth, but most industrial/agricultural activity happens via automated farms and factories in space.
After this I feel like we start getting into philosophical thought experiment territory. Like, if humanity were living in balance with nature, it might be bad to cure cancer, because it would lead to overpopulation. And similarly we could ask, if we could magically save a life by making say, bald eagles go extinct, would it be moral to do that? Would it be moral not to? What if it were ten lives, or a billion? This is sorta lifeboat ethics / utilitarianism all over again.
posted by rustcrumb at 10:09 PM on October 24, 2022 [5 favorites]
I didn't realize Murphy was updating this blog again! The first time around really helped shape my current views and I refer to the blog frequently in discussions. So thanks, looks like I have some reading to catch up on.
posted by St. Oops at 10:16 PM on October 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by St. Oops at 10:16 PM on October 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
The marginalist/decoupling critique to economic limits doesn't actually rescue the limitless growth economy - on a starving planet your haircut won't save the economy.
Pretending that limitless growth can occur because in a few special circumstances there are no direct physical constraints ignores that the entire rest of your economy, including all the bits that make human life possible, are physical and limited and that our trajectory is undermining and destroying all that life support stuff.
Monetizing a circle jerk and expanding the number of participants doesnt actually stimulate the economy, or solve resource scaricty. It just means you've reproduced one of Americas two political parties.
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 1:01 AM on October 25, 2022 [8 favorites]
Pretending that limitless growth can occur because in a few special circumstances there are no direct physical constraints ignores that the entire rest of your economy, including all the bits that make human life possible, are physical and limited and that our trajectory is undermining and destroying all that life support stuff.
Monetizing a circle jerk and expanding the number of participants doesnt actually stimulate the economy, or solve resource scaricty. It just means you've reproduced one of Americas two political parties.
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 1:01 AM on October 25, 2022 [8 favorites]
Tom Murphys work is worth reading. In other posts he covers gravity wells and the resource barriers to any major space stuff. Space is unavoidably energetically prohibitive for anything but small trivial excursions.
I would add - space is the most expensive and most challenging environment to try to do anything The fact that it is also resource poor, makes the space fantasies dangerous mental escape clauses for otherwise serious minds. Space colonies would be expensive, dependent little luxury ornaments for a world that can ill afford to squander resources on the whims of unelected billionaires
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 1:03 AM on October 25, 2022 [9 favorites]
I would add - space is the most expensive and most challenging environment to try to do anything The fact that it is also resource poor, makes the space fantasies dangerous mental escape clauses for otherwise serious minds. Space colonies would be expensive, dependent little luxury ornaments for a world that can ill afford to squander resources on the whims of unelected billionaires
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 1:03 AM on October 25, 2022 [9 favorites]
I neglected to link his pdf for his Limit to Growth article in Nature Physics.
All services need energy too, including because the people providing them live, so at some point the marginalist theory of value becomes nothing but inflation, TheophileEscargot, so actually yeah Tom knows enough economics here.
As discussed by Steve Keen, we've the opposite problem that economists say outright bullshit about the physical world all the time.
We know energy can be decoupled from CO2 emissions because plants do so, and solar likely does so. We cannot decouple economic indicators like GWP from energy, see Lotka's wheel and the long arm of history by Keen, Garret, and Grasselli.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:02 AM on October 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
All services need energy too, including because the people providing them live, so at some point the marginalist theory of value becomes nothing but inflation, TheophileEscargot, so actually yeah Tom knows enough economics here.
As discussed by Steve Keen, we've the opposite problem that economists say outright bullshit about the physical world all the time.
We know energy can be decoupled from CO2 emissions because plants do so, and solar likely does so. We cannot decouple economic indicators like GWP from energy, see Lotka's wheel and the long arm of history by Keen, Garret, and Grasselli.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:02 AM on October 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
This essay always struck me as a silly gotcha. "Oh, you think the economy might grow forever, do you?" To which the economist says no, and the physicist steamrolls right over him: "Yes, did you say yes? You'll boil ALIVE!"
The really huge growth numbers, whether we're talking GDP or energy, are from the rest of the world catching up to the richer nations, but that growth--surprise!--isn't some sort of permanently built-in feature, and in fact was very shaky, as we just learned over the past few years--years where energy consumption stuttered, shrank, grew again. Assuming growth gets back on track, we will hit plenty of other limits long before the physicist gets to dance around the cauldron in which we boil, and there are a number of subfields in economic thought that want to deal with how we slow down before we hit those limits. They just don't all get to sit next to the physicist at dinner.
posted by mittens at 3:11 AM on October 25, 2022 [5 favorites]
The really huge growth numbers, whether we're talking GDP or energy, are from the rest of the world catching up to the richer nations, but that growth--surprise!--isn't some sort of permanently built-in feature, and in fact was very shaky, as we just learned over the past few years--years where energy consumption stuttered, shrank, grew again. Assuming growth gets back on track, we will hit plenty of other limits long before the physicist gets to dance around the cauldron in which we boil, and there are a number of subfields in economic thought that want to deal with how we slow down before we hit those limits. They just don't all get to sit next to the physicist at dinner.
posted by mittens at 3:11 AM on October 25, 2022 [5 favorites]
The point is to discredit the economists arguments right now, mittens. And Steve Keen gives more immediate reasons.
As for sci-fi scenarios..
We need 1-3 GWh to train a GPT-3 model, rustcrumb, so each billionaire who uploads themselves would continually consume massive amount of energy, which de facto reduces the world production of fertilizer, and thus reducing human population by massively more than the upload population.
We do know cheaper ways exist since our own brains provide an example, but actually we mostly solve problems by throwing more energy at them. We do engineer for efficiency too, but it's typically a long slow optimization process, not how invention works. At the cost of starving millions or billions, we could perhaps maintain a terrestrial upload civilization of the ultra rich, which then creates the economic pressure for optimizing the chips on which they run.
Afaik there is nothing wrong with a upload civilization living in space off the vast energy released by the sun, but actually reaching space is extremely expensive, so forget about trade with earth. Are we really going to birth some child upload species in space if trade stays prohibitively expensive? I'd vote yes of course, but others maybe no..
We've attempted to build detached biospheres on earth like three times, with the American project Biosphere 2 going poorly, but supposedly the Russian and Chinese projects both fared better, so actual humans living on Mars becomes incredibly hard once you give up trade with earth.
“No civilization can possibly survive to an interstellar spacefaring phase unless it limits its numbers” (and consumption) ― Carl Sagan
posted by jeffburdges at 3:12 AM on October 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
As for sci-fi scenarios..
We need 1-3 GWh to train a GPT-3 model, rustcrumb, so each billionaire who uploads themselves would continually consume massive amount of energy, which de facto reduces the world production of fertilizer, and thus reducing human population by massively more than the upload population.
We do know cheaper ways exist since our own brains provide an example, but actually we mostly solve problems by throwing more energy at them. We do engineer for efficiency too, but it's typically a long slow optimization process, not how invention works. At the cost of starving millions or billions, we could perhaps maintain a terrestrial upload civilization of the ultra rich, which then creates the economic pressure for optimizing the chips on which they run.
Afaik there is nothing wrong with a upload civilization living in space off the vast energy released by the sun, but actually reaching space is extremely expensive, so forget about trade with earth. Are we really going to birth some child upload species in space if trade stays prohibitively expensive? I'd vote yes of course, but others maybe no..
We've attempted to build detached biospheres on earth like three times, with the American project Biosphere 2 going poorly, but supposedly the Russian and Chinese projects both fared better, so actual humans living on Mars becomes incredibly hard once you give up trade with earth.
“No civilization can possibly survive to an interstellar spacefaring phase unless it limits its numbers” (and consumption) ― Carl Sagan
posted by jeffburdges at 3:12 AM on October 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
If the haircuts and banjo playing increase in quality, does it matter, economically speaking, if the price goes up or not?
I wish I hadn't mentioned inflation now as that complicates things. In modern, marginalist economics, value is variable, and inflation is variable, but they are different things.
Imagine you have a houseplant that's growing. But you're measuring the height of the houseplant with a rubber ruler that can also grow or shrink.
Every day you go round your house and check your ruler against a bunch of things to see how the ruler has changed. Then you measure the height of the houseplant against the ruler. Then you correct for the changed size of the ruler.
That's basically how economists try to correct for inflation. They have a sample "basket" of goods and services that should remain the same quality. Then they look at how the prices of those have changed. The average change is inflation.
Then once you have corrected the ruler, you look at how the total value in the economy has changed, and that's growth. That's like measuring the size of the houseplant.
It's complicated because both can vary, but not impossible.
So you can have economic growth even if there is inflation, or deflation, or neither. The houseplant can still grow even if the ruler is changing size.
How do you distinguish between everything going up in nominal price because of inflation, vs. everything going up in nominal price because of quality improvements?
In a real economy you can measure inflation by looking at the prices of a large sample of products and services. In my simplified example of an economy with just two things for sale which are both changing in quality, you can't measure inflation as there's nothing else to compare them to.
Now, you do not have to accept any of this. Marginalist value is the modern orthodoxy, but there are still some economists, e.g. some but not all Marxist economists, who do not accept it. You can say "I'm sticking to the Labour Theory of Value" in which case all value is just the hours of labour that went into something. In that case per-capita growth has never existed: everybody has the same amount of time.
Or you can create an Energy Theory of Value in which the true value of something is the energy in joules that went into it.
But you haven't exactly disproved modern mainstream economics by doing that, as the value you're talking about is not the same as the value they're talking about.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 3:21 AM on October 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
I wish I hadn't mentioned inflation now as that complicates things. In modern, marginalist economics, value is variable, and inflation is variable, but they are different things.
Imagine you have a houseplant that's growing. But you're measuring the height of the houseplant with a rubber ruler that can also grow or shrink.
Every day you go round your house and check your ruler against a bunch of things to see how the ruler has changed. Then you measure the height of the houseplant against the ruler. Then you correct for the changed size of the ruler.
That's basically how economists try to correct for inflation. They have a sample "basket" of goods and services that should remain the same quality. Then they look at how the prices of those have changed. The average change is inflation.
Then once you have corrected the ruler, you look at how the total value in the economy has changed, and that's growth. That's like measuring the size of the houseplant.
It's complicated because both can vary, but not impossible.
So you can have economic growth even if there is inflation, or deflation, or neither. The houseplant can still grow even if the ruler is changing size.
How do you distinguish between everything going up in nominal price because of inflation, vs. everything going up in nominal price because of quality improvements?
In a real economy you can measure inflation by looking at the prices of a large sample of products and services. In my simplified example of an economy with just two things for sale which are both changing in quality, you can't measure inflation as there's nothing else to compare them to.
Now, you do not have to accept any of this. Marginalist value is the modern orthodoxy, but there are still some economists, e.g. some but not all Marxist economists, who do not accept it. You can say "I'm sticking to the Labour Theory of Value" in which case all value is just the hours of labour that went into something. In that case per-capita growth has never existed: everybody has the same amount of time.
Or you can create an Energy Theory of Value in which the true value of something is the energy in joules that went into it.
But you haven't exactly disproved modern mainstream economics by doing that, as the value you're talking about is not the same as the value they're talking about.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 3:21 AM on October 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
The point is to discredit the economists arguments right now, mittens. And Steve Keen gives more immediate reasons.
I guess, let me ask, who are the economists--aside from our anonymous dinner guest--who seriously advocate for eternal limitless growth, who think it is a possibility? I'm sure there must be someone. Steve Keen was talking about William Nordhaus, who, for his other faults, certainly did see limits due to climate change. (Just for fun I pulled down an old 1970s edition of Samuelson's Economics textbook, and sure enough there's a chapter on limits.)
The decoupling of energy consumption and GDP growth is already happening in the US. Energy consumption has bounced around a little over the past 20 years but certainly has not grown by 2+% per year; US GDP continues to grow. Our strawman economist would have to somehow be unaware of that, for this essay to really work.
I think the more relevant difference is in economists who understand there are limits, vs economists who understand we have already passed certain limits and need to rein it in now to limit massive human suffering. But I'm just not sure there are economists who recognize no limits at all? Are there some? Maybe I'm reading the wrong (right) ones.
posted by mittens at 4:38 AM on October 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
I guess, let me ask, who are the economists--aside from our anonymous dinner guest--who seriously advocate for eternal limitless growth, who think it is a possibility? I'm sure there must be someone. Steve Keen was talking about William Nordhaus, who, for his other faults, certainly did see limits due to climate change. (Just for fun I pulled down an old 1970s edition of Samuelson's Economics textbook, and sure enough there's a chapter on limits.)
The decoupling of energy consumption and GDP growth is already happening in the US. Energy consumption has bounced around a little over the past 20 years but certainly has not grown by 2+% per year; US GDP continues to grow. Our strawman economist would have to somehow be unaware of that, for this essay to really work.
I think the more relevant difference is in economists who understand there are limits, vs economists who understand we have already passed certain limits and need to rein it in now to limit massive human suffering. But I'm just not sure there are economists who recognize no limits at all? Are there some? Maybe I'm reading the wrong (right) ones.
posted by mittens at 4:38 AM on October 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
There's a graph halfway down this page of US energy use per capita which shows it flat or slightly declining since the 1970s. But that could be because energy use has been offshored, e.g. if stuff used to be made in the US but is now made in China for US consumers, the energy to make it would show up elsewhere.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 4:47 AM on October 25, 2022
posted by TheophileEscargot at 4:47 AM on October 25, 2022
> More value for money would still be more value. In fact it's easy to think of classes of manufactured goods or services that became both better and cheaper over time. Would an economist say that was shrinkage, the opposite of growth?
> How do you distinguish between everything going up in nominal price because of inflation, vs. everything going up in nominal price because of quality improvements?
adding to what TheophileEscargot said, economists try to account for technological deflation in "real" GDP with 'hedonic' price adjustments on productivity, like "for products whose characteristics and/or quality are changing rapidly (e.g. ICT goods)."
lifting the 'veil of money' though, you're left with economic activities: "An economic good or service is provided by people to each other as a solution to a problem they are faced with and this means that they are considered useful by the person who demands it [and] considered to be production in an economic sense if it can be delegated to someone else."[*]
then you can just think about all the energy (instead of money-based/capitalist coordination mechanisms) needed to conduct this activity -- how that is produced, its environmental sustainability, the (in)equitable outcomes -- and judge whether the coordination mechanism in question was effective or not!
presumably energy transition(s) and decoupling -- if environmental benefits (goods or services provided by nature) were properly factored into economic value systems -- might allow "infinite" growth in the 'too cheap to meter'-abundance sense. so devoting all the money in the world -- diverting global resources and productive capacity -- to that effort and end (mindful of the ecological impact) might seem like a no-brainer given the existential threat. except of course to people who benefit from the current arrangement. convincing everyone else of its actual derangement is the political project of our times :P
> So food was 97% of the economy before, and now it's just 3%. In relative terms, food is "kind of free" today compared to the 1800s, but food insecurity is still a thing even in developed economies, or, even replaced by a problems of food quality leading to the obesity crisis.
i like albert wenger's take:
> How do you distinguish between everything going up in nominal price because of inflation, vs. everything going up in nominal price because of quality improvements?
adding to what TheophileEscargot said, economists try to account for technological deflation in "real" GDP with 'hedonic' price adjustments on productivity, like "for products whose characteristics and/or quality are changing rapidly (e.g. ICT goods)."
lifting the 'veil of money' though, you're left with economic activities: "An economic good or service is provided by people to each other as a solution to a problem they are faced with and this means that they are considered useful by the person who demands it [and] considered to be production in an economic sense if it can be delegated to someone else."[*]
then you can just think about all the energy (instead of money-based/capitalist coordination mechanisms) needed to conduct this activity -- how that is produced, its environmental sustainability, the (in)equitable outcomes -- and judge whether the coordination mechanism in question was effective or not!
presumably energy transition(s) and decoupling -- if environmental benefits (goods or services provided by nature) were properly factored into economic value systems -- might allow "infinite" growth in the 'too cheap to meter'-abundance sense. so devoting all the money in the world -- diverting global resources and productive capacity -- to that effort and end (mindful of the ecological impact) might seem like a no-brainer given the existential threat. except of course to people who benefit from the current arrangement. convincing everyone else of its actual derangement is the political project of our times :P
> So food was 97% of the economy before, and now it's just 3%. In relative terms, food is "kind of free" today compared to the 1800s, but food insecurity is still a thing even in developed economies, or, even replaced by a problems of food quality leading to the obesity crisis.
i like albert wenger's take:
WENGER: We went from forager to agrarian, so from food scarcity to land scarcity, then we went from land scarcity to capital scarcity. And now, we’re going from capital scarcity to attentional scarcity. [...]posted by kliuless at 4:56 AM on October 25, 2022 [12 favorites]
RITHOLTZ: So you say something about these transitions that really jarred me. Previous transitions like agriculture emerged over thousands of years and was incredibly violent. Industrial Age lasted over hundreds of years, and also involved lots of violence and bloody revolutions, and two World Wars, which raises the obvious question, what sort of violence is the next transition based on attention scarcity potentially going to involve?
WENGER: Well, at the moment, the leading candidate is the climate crisis. [...]
WENGER: Yes. So we know all of this. And here’s the interesting thing. When we went from the agrarian age to the industrial age, we didn’t get rid of agriculture. This agriculture today, right, we all eat food that’s grown in agriculture. But what we did is we shrunk how much human attention is required to do agriculture, and we took it from being like 80% of human attention to like sub 10%.
RITHOLTZ: It’s less than 2% in United States. It’s tiny.
WENGER: So what I want to do is, let’s do the same with the rest of the economic sphere. I’m not an anti-capitalist. I’m not a degrowth. Person. I’m not suggesting we should get rid of markets. I’m just saying we should compress market-based activity from absorbing much of human attention to absorbing maybe 30% of human attention, and we should free the rest up to work on these incredibly important thing. Some of them are threats, and some of them are opportunities, right, opportunity to cure cancer, opportunity to create incredible wildlife habitats, restore those wildlife habitats, opportunity to travel to space. I mean, all these opportunities that we’re not paying attention to because they’re not — again, they’re not really market price based and can’t be market price based. There’s just no prices for them.
> But that could be because energy use has been offshored, e.g. if stuff used to be made in the US but is now made in China for US consumers, the energy to make it would show up elsewhere.
fwiw...
No, the U.S. didn't outsource our carbon emissions to China
posted by kliuless at 5:06 AM on October 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
fwiw...
No, the U.S. didn't outsource our carbon emissions to China
posted by kliuless at 5:06 AM on October 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
coberh: I think (hope) that acceptable growth can continue with increasing energy expenditures by moving activities off of the Earth's surface.
The author has this response in the Civilization article: "A recent analysis I participated in suggests that one of the fastest ways to destroy Earth would be to consume the unfathomably large amount of resources that leaving the planet would require."
posted by clawsoon at 5:35 AM on October 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
The author has this response in the Civilization article: "A recent analysis I participated in suggests that one of the fastest ways to destroy Earth would be to consume the unfathomably large amount of resources that leaving the planet would require."
posted by clawsoon at 5:35 AM on October 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
7. Space FantasyBy placing the "space fantasy" idea in the context of humans living on Mount Everest or the sea floor, I am assuming that the author sees a huge cost in establishing human habitation in space - like, launching human beings into space, providing human-rated life support and habitation for people to live indefinitely in places besides Earth - orbiting habitats, or on the Moon, or Mars.
Space colonization is an infantile fantasy that is not part of our future. Provocative wording, for sure, but to me reminiscent of the Mormon idea that the especially devout would inherit their own planet in the afterlife. If you subscribe to the space-faring hope, ask yourself how deeply you understand the challenges: the scale, energetic requirements, the paucity of resources important to sustaining life, the indifferent hostility and isolated unsurvivability of non-earth environments. Mount Everest and the ocean floor are orders-of-magnitude more habitable than any non-terrestrial setting in the solar system: much easier to access and nearer to restaurants. Yet we do not see condominiums in those locations, do we? Nor do we expect to—because it’s obviously silly, just like space colonization. A recent analysis I participated in suggests that one of the fastest ways to destroy Earth would be to consume the unfathomably large amount of resources that leaving the planet would require. So if you are attracted to the notion that leaving the planet is the best way to save it from ourselves, think again!
I agree that this mode of colonization of space seems impractical - if a Mars colony is dependent on resupply from Earth, if most "space infrastructure" continues to be built on Earth and launched into space (or via space to Moon, Mars, etc), then I think it's plausible to say that it would not be materially possible for significant numbers of humans to end up living off-planet.
But all that being said, I don't think that is the only way that humans end up making use of outer space. We don't have self-replicating robots currently, but maybe someday we will. Even if not fully self-replicating, we might be able to reduce the amount of mass we have to launch by sending up only critical components like computer chips. Space robots don't need life support the way people do, which also eliminates a lot of launch mass. Building infrastructure in space, using energy gathered in space, reduces the energy and material demands placed on Earth. In a long timeline this seems not unrealistic - we launch a small number of starter robots, they use solar power and materials from asteroids to bootstrap more robots and solar panels, and eventually have enough capacity to provide resources back to Earth.
posted by rustcrumb at 7:23 AM on October 25, 2022
Imagine a world where everybody is either a hairstylist or plays the banjo.
Assume a spherical banjo player.
posted by Foosnark at 7:27 AM on October 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
Assume a spherical banjo player.
posted by Foosnark at 7:27 AM on October 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
Anecdotally, I've shocked "folks interested in economics" by telling them roughly the above Tom Murphy quote, mittens. At least a few were fresh PhDs in economics (and another a fresh CS PhD doing algorithms related to economics). It really can play out roughly like in this in this story, so yes I do think this argument opens minds for more nuances arguments like Steve Keen.
As a discipline, economics runs rife with bullshit, like Nordhaus' Nobel prize work, or tenured faculty arguing units do not matter. As said in the Steve Keen thread, neo-classical economists really are "the court wizards of capital, divining in the stars the precise answers their masters want to hear and imagining a vast array of omens and portents to prove those answers correct."
Yes, there are surely many more economists who realize limits exist today than 10 years ago when Tom Murphy wrote this, but really I'd expect full professors wind up less aware than fresh PhDs. Steve Keen says roughly science advance slightly faster than Max Planck's "one funeral at a time", while economics advances considerably slower, because economists value their theories above real observations.
We could choose many different social indicators, like equability, happiness, fulfillment, scientific progress, or even some technological progress measures. We instead choose GDP or GWP which tracks energy use.
"[GDP] measures everything .. except that which makes life worthwhile" — Robert F. Kennedy
posted by jeffburdges at 7:33 AM on October 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
As a discipline, economics runs rife with bullshit, like Nordhaus' Nobel prize work, or tenured faculty arguing units do not matter. As said in the Steve Keen thread, neo-classical economists really are "the court wizards of capital, divining in the stars the precise answers their masters want to hear and imagining a vast array of omens and portents to prove those answers correct."
Yes, there are surely many more economists who realize limits exist today than 10 years ago when Tom Murphy wrote this, but really I'd expect full professors wind up less aware than fresh PhDs. Steve Keen says roughly science advance slightly faster than Max Planck's "one funeral at a time", while economics advances considerably slower, because economists value their theories above real observations.
We could choose many different social indicators, like equability, happiness, fulfillment, scientific progress, or even some technological progress measures. We instead choose GDP or GWP which tracks energy use.
"[GDP] measures everything .. except that which makes life worthwhile" — Robert F. Kennedy
posted by jeffburdges at 7:33 AM on October 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
Imagine a world where everybody is either a hairstylist or plays the banjo.
No.
posted by snofoam at 7:34 AM on October 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
No.
posted by snofoam at 7:34 AM on October 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
This story rings so false as to beggar belief. An economist being unfamiliar with Adam Smith is like a physicist being unfamiliar with Isaac Newton.
Don't get me wrong, people can and do get pretty far in their careers without understanding the fundamentals, but someone who believes in perpetual growth is as much an economist as the folks who built Verrückt were qualified engineers.
posted by explosion at 7:38 AM on October 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
Don't get me wrong, people can and do get pretty far in their careers without understanding the fundamentals, but someone who believes in perpetual growth is as much an economist as the folks who built Verrückt were qualified engineers.
posted by explosion at 7:38 AM on October 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
Imagine a world where everybody is either a hairstylist or plays the banjo.
In this bitterly divided world, war was inevitable. Entire cities were combed out of existence.
posted by allegedly at 7:42 AM on October 25, 2022 [4 favorites]
In this bitterly divided world, war was inevitable. Entire cities were combed out of existence.
posted by allegedly at 7:42 AM on October 25, 2022 [4 favorites]
In this bitterly divided world, war was inevitable. Entire cities were combed out of existence.
Duelists stalking the ruins, picking fights.
posted by notoriety public at 8:07 AM on October 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
Duelists stalking the ruins, picking fights.
posted by notoriety public at 8:07 AM on October 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
I tell ya, if people ever start uploading their brains to computers or virtual worlds, I will do everything in my power to delete and disrupt those services and entities. Reckon I wouldn't be the only one more than happy to destroy wannabe digital immortals coasting off the energy of those still living.
posted by GoblinHoney at 8:14 AM on October 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by GoblinHoney at 8:14 AM on October 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
If the $10 and the $100 hair cut require exactly the same inputs: the same time to do a hair cut, the same amount of electricity to run the hot water and clippers, the same quantities of products used etc... then it's fundamentally not different from the scaling/inflationary case: everything stays the same but the numbers we use for accounting go up.
However, if the cut takes longer, uses more hot water, uses more products, then the energy usage (and required dissipation rates) have gone up, and the hairdresser is contributing to the boiling earth scenario.
I don't see how a marginal growth argument really changes this argument. Small growth is still growth. It still requires energy growth. The only way out of that in a closed system is zero-sum reallocations, which aren't actual growth. In essence the real currency this argument is based on is energy use, not whatever normative thing we're using to do the monetary accounting.
The only way out of this from a physics POV is expanding the system size, that is going off planet.
posted by bonehead at 8:31 AM on October 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
However, if the cut takes longer, uses more hot water, uses more products, then the energy usage (and required dissipation rates) have gone up, and the hairdresser is contributing to the boiling earth scenario.
I don't see how a marginal growth argument really changes this argument. Small growth is still growth. It still requires energy growth. The only way out of that in a closed system is zero-sum reallocations, which aren't actual growth. In essence the real currency this argument is based on is energy use, not whatever normative thing we're using to do the monetary accounting.
The only way out of this from a physics POV is expanding the system size, that is going off planet.
posted by bonehead at 8:31 AM on October 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
If the $10 and the $100 hair cut require exactly the same inputs: the same time to do a hair cut, the same amount of electricity to run the hot water and clippers, the same quantities of products used etc... then it's fundamentally not different from the scaling/inflationary case: everything stays the same but the numbers we use for accounting go up.
I believe the argument is that if the price goes up but people are also more pleased with their haircuts (which are also still done with the same physical inputs) then it’s not inflation. Haircuts might be a bit of a weird choice of example. I feel like that one actually goes to absurdity pretty quickly.
posted by atoxyl at 8:54 AM on October 25, 2022
I believe the argument is that if the price goes up but people are also more pleased with their haircuts (which are also still done with the same physical inputs) then it’s not inflation. Haircuts might be a bit of a weird choice of example. I feel like that one actually goes to absurdity pretty quickly.
posted by atoxyl at 8:54 AM on October 25, 2022
My favourite example of a two-service economy is massages and stories. How much GDP growth could be generated just from better massages being traded for better stories?
posted by clawsoon at 8:59 AM on October 25, 2022
posted by clawsoon at 8:59 AM on October 25, 2022
My favourite example of a two-service economy is massages and stories. How much GDP growth could be generated just from better massages being traded for better stories?
the happy ending jokes write themselves
I'm sorry, I have poor impulse control
posted by elkevelvet at 9:27 AM on October 25, 2022 [7 favorites]
the happy ending jokes write themselves
I'm sorry, I have poor impulse control
posted by elkevelvet at 9:27 AM on October 25, 2022 [7 favorites]
The only way out of this from a physics POV is expanding the system size, that is going off planet.
Except even that isn’t true! The cost to get somebody (and their consumption) out of the gravity well is so staggeringly large that any local growth is trapped here.
And even if it were effectively free to get into space… that still isn’t enough to outpace exponential growth. Expanding into space is only geometric growth. So the shell of colonization spreads out, but everything in the (growing) core is then surrounded by space that’s already occupied… and yet the continuing local exponential growth continues until it chokes.
Even with space travel, unless you have FTL, you’re still boned trying to indefinitely fuel exponential growth.
posted by notoriety public at 11:05 AM on October 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
Except even that isn’t true! The cost to get somebody (and their consumption) out of the gravity well is so staggeringly large that any local growth is trapped here.
And even if it were effectively free to get into space… that still isn’t enough to outpace exponential growth. Expanding into space is only geometric growth. So the shell of colonization spreads out, but everything in the (growing) core is then surrounded by space that’s already occupied… and yet the continuing local exponential growth continues until it chokes.
Even with space travel, unless you have FTL, you’re still boned trying to indefinitely fuel exponential growth.
posted by notoriety public at 11:05 AM on October 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
If we want enough energy to boil the ocean, we'd pretty much have to go off-world to get it.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 1:37 PM on October 25, 2022
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 1:37 PM on October 25, 2022
If we want enough energy to boil the ocean, we'd pretty much have to go off-world to get it.
Is that true? As I understand it, all we'd need is a ~95% CO2 atmosphere or lower amounts of more powerful greenhouse gases.
posted by clawsoon at 1:53 PM on October 25, 2022
Is that true? As I understand it, all we'd need is a ~95% CO2 atmosphere or lower amounts of more powerful greenhouse gases.
posted by clawsoon at 1:53 PM on October 25, 2022
Is that true? As I understand it, all we'd need is a ~95% CO2 atmosphere or lower amounts of more powerful greenhouse gases.
The article's challenge is to do it with waste heat though. The greenhouse effect is cheating!
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 2:05 PM on October 25, 2022
The article's challenge is to do it with waste heat though. The greenhouse effect is cheating!
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 2:05 PM on October 25, 2022
If the $10 and the $100 hair cut require exactly the same inputs: ... then it's fundamentally not different from the scaling/inflationary case: everything stays the same but the numbers we use for accounting go up.
No. I pay $20 for a haircut, and some people pay $200. The physical inputs are (basically) the same, but they choose the $200 stylist because they feel that her skills are worth the extra $180.
Let's say the $20 barber practices, gets better, and is then able to charge $200 (in a world where everything else is the same). He's producing an additional $180 in value in each haircut.
But when the guy raises his prices, it's impossible to say whether to what extent it's increased quality and how much is inflation. There are lot of very smart, thoughtful people who have been working very hard on this question for decades (though in real life it's the adjustments for safer cars and TVs with better screens and improved cancer-fighting drugs that matter, not more skillful barbers).
Now, whether this is a utility increase is much harder to say. Standard economics assumes that people are good utility maximizers: that extra $180 is worth it to them, in the sense that there's nothing else they could do with the $180 that would make them better off. Clearly, that's not always true, though it's risky to start telling other people the "right" way to spend their money.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 2:23 PM on October 25, 2022
No. I pay $20 for a haircut, and some people pay $200. The physical inputs are (basically) the same, but they choose the $200 stylist because they feel that her skills are worth the extra $180.
Let's say the $20 barber practices, gets better, and is then able to charge $200 (in a world where everything else is the same). He's producing an additional $180 in value in each haircut.
But when the guy raises his prices, it's impossible to say whether to what extent it's increased quality and how much is inflation. There are lot of very smart, thoughtful people who have been working very hard on this question for decades (though in real life it's the adjustments for safer cars and TVs with better screens and improved cancer-fighting drugs that matter, not more skillful barbers).
Now, whether this is a utility increase is much harder to say. Standard economics assumes that people are good utility maximizers: that extra $180 is worth it to them, in the sense that there's nothing else they could do with the $180 that would make them better off. Clearly, that's not always true, though it's risky to start telling other people the "right" way to spend their money.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 2:23 PM on October 25, 2022
The article's challenge is to do it with waste heat though. The greenhouse effect is cheating!
Pointless and probably incorrect calculations based on quickly Googled knowledge while my daughter tells me about Benny the Bull's hiccoughs:
330kJ to boil 1 liter of water
3.3e25 molecules per liter of water
330kJ/3.3e25 molecules = 1e-20 joules to boil one molecule of water
2.8e-12 joules per deuterium-tritium reaction
2.8e-12 / 1e-20 = 280 million water molecules boiled by one deuterium-tritium reaction
1 in 5000 hydrogen atoms in the ocean is deuterium, so there's more than enough of that. I'll let you do the lithium->tritium calculations to see if we'd have enough of that.
...'twould still be interesting, though, to find out how hot the earth would get if we covered all of it in solar panels that converted all the light to electricity which was then converted to heat.
posted by clawsoon at 2:32 PM on October 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
Pointless and probably incorrect calculations based on quickly Googled knowledge while my daughter tells me about Benny the Bull's hiccoughs:
330kJ to boil 1 liter of water
3.3e25 molecules per liter of water
330kJ/3.3e25 molecules = 1e-20 joules to boil one molecule of water
2.8e-12 joules per deuterium-tritium reaction
2.8e-12 / 1e-20 = 280 million water molecules boiled by one deuterium-tritium reaction
1 in 5000 hydrogen atoms in the ocean is deuterium, so there's more than enough of that. I'll let you do the lithium->tritium calculations to see if we'd have enough of that.
...'twould still be interesting, though, to find out how hot the earth would get if we covered all of it in solar panels that converted all the light to electricity which was then converted to heat.
posted by clawsoon at 2:32 PM on October 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
We'll never have "trade" between earth and her space colonies, notoriety public, but..
We could maybe build enough different robotic orbital factories, and lunar mining, so that those robotic factories could "reproduce" themselves on more moons elsewhere, no? It'll never yield exponential growth of course, but if done for religious reasons then maybe this does not matter?
Almost anytime you hear "Kardashev scale" then the speaker believes in exponential growth for space faring species, but apparently even for an advanced space faring species there is not enough light to capture to really stay exponential long enough to dent our universe.
I've read arguments this explains the Fermi paradox, in that aliens exist but even advanced space faring ones cannot expand enough into space to be noticeable.
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.” ― H. P. Lovercraft
posted by jeffburdges at 4:08 PM on October 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
We could maybe build enough different robotic orbital factories, and lunar mining, so that those robotic factories could "reproduce" themselves on more moons elsewhere, no? It'll never yield exponential growth of course, but if done for religious reasons then maybe this does not matter?
Almost anytime you hear "Kardashev scale" then the speaker believes in exponential growth for space faring species, but apparently even for an advanced space faring species there is not enough light to capture to really stay exponential long enough to dent our universe.
I've read arguments this explains the Fermi paradox, in that aliens exist but even advanced space faring ones cannot expand enough into space to be noticeable.
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.” ― H. P. Lovercraft
posted by jeffburdges at 4:08 PM on October 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
...'twould still be interesting, though, to find out how hot the earth would get if we covered all of it in solar panels that converted all the light to electricity which was then converted to heat.
I think it should be the same as just painting the Earth black. Whether the energy does useful work on its way to reaching thermal equilibrium shouldn't matter much, right? At least in the steady state. The only things keeping Earth from reaching blackbody equilibrium are its albedo and its greenhouse gasses. If you run the math treating Earth as a blackbody, that should be a pretty close estimate of how hot it would get I think. Maybe I'm wrong, though; stat mech was a long time ago.
posted by biogeo at 4:17 PM on October 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
Are we anywhere close to a robot that could build a copy of itself from raw materials? I'm doubtful that even a human could do that. Digging up ore, refining metal, machining it, refining silicon, creating the chemicals to dope and etch the silicon... we're barely getting started, and we've already involved worldwide manufacturing and transportation networks that currently require many humans who we have no robotic replacements for.
posted by clawsoon at 4:24 PM on October 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by clawsoon at 4:24 PM on October 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
If you run the math treating Earth as a blackbody, that should be a pretty close estimate of how hot it would get I think.
I'll leave that math up to you, since I'm not familiar with it at all. :-)
If we were able to pump all of the heat from the core up for geothermal energy, would we be able to boil the oceans, I wonder? Seems like it's pretty hot down there, and there's plenty of mass, so I assume the total heat energy would be pretty high.
posted by clawsoon at 4:26 PM on October 25, 2022
I'll leave that math up to you, since I'm not familiar with it at all. :-)
If we were able to pump all of the heat from the core up for geothermal energy, would we be able to boil the oceans, I wonder? Seems like it's pretty hot down there, and there's plenty of mass, so I assume the total heat energy would be pretty high.
posted by clawsoon at 4:26 PM on October 25, 2022
Let's say the $20 barber practices, gets better, and is then able to charge $200 (in a world where everything else is the same). He's producing an additional $180 in value in each haircut.
The problem I have with this line of thinking is that it doesn't continue to support exponential growth which is the end goal of the economics. It's hard to see how, with the same inputs and outputs mind, a $10 hair cut could become a $100 haircut, and then a $1000, then a $10k styling, and so on. At some point the physical limitations on the system, in this increasingly artificial bubble, how much water, electricity, shampoo and even time the stylist can use, can support long-term growth. I'd think that growth would tend to tail off after most improvements are made and the system reaches an equilibrium of high utilization, probably looking a lot like an s-curve.
Terrariums reach a steady-state after a while, even if those equilibria are dynamic.
posted by bonehead at 7:59 AM on October 26, 2022
The problem I have with this line of thinking is that it doesn't continue to support exponential growth which is the end goal of the economics. It's hard to see how, with the same inputs and outputs mind, a $10 hair cut could become a $100 haircut, and then a $1000, then a $10k styling, and so on. At some point the physical limitations on the system, in this increasingly artificial bubble, how much water, electricity, shampoo and even time the stylist can use, can support long-term growth. I'd think that growth would tend to tail off after most improvements are made and the system reaches an equilibrium of high utilization, probably looking a lot like an s-curve.
Terrariums reach a steady-state after a while, even if those equilibria are dynamic.
posted by bonehead at 7:59 AM on October 26, 2022
Even with space travel, unless you have FTL, you’re still boned trying to indefinitely fuel exponential growth.
I do absolutely agree with this, btw, regular 3D geometric scaling isn't faster than exponential.
It's also technically wrong to limit this to an energy budget, it's much more about entropic growth over time, and the limits of that in the long run. The original article hints at this, but doens't make the entropic arguments explicit. This is ultimately about heat death (unless the astrophysicists determine that we're going to freeze in the dark instead).
posted by bonehead at 8:02 AM on October 26, 2022
I do absolutely agree with this, btw, regular 3D geometric scaling isn't faster than exponential.
It's also technically wrong to limit this to an energy budget, it's much more about entropic growth over time, and the limits of that in the long run. The original article hints at this, but doens't make the entropic arguments explicit. This is ultimately about heat death (unless the astrophysicists determine that we're going to freeze in the dark instead).
posted by bonehead at 8:02 AM on October 26, 2022
It's hard to see how, with the same inputs and outputs mind, a $10 hair cut could become a $100 haircut, and then a $1000, then a $10k styling, and so on.
"The same inputs" is doing a lot of work there. One of the inputs is the hand-eye coordination of the stylist. Another is the knowledge base of the stylist about the various hairstyles that exist. Another is the aesthetic skill of the stylist to optimize your melon into the array of hairstyles that exist along with a vector of in-style-ness. If you don't mean those as inputs, then that's your answer about the difference between $10, $100, and $1000 haircuts, and of course haircuts with negative value.
The other answer is that all of this is about human valuation, full stop. If people value haircuts very highly, then they do. Preferences are given, as they say. Suppose in the future humanity goes crazy and decides that they really REALLY value lying down on the ground, telling other people stories about they see in the sky, and hearing others' stories. Then it's entirely possible for per-capita gdp to go up and up and up as everyone abandons all useful labor to lie down on the ground and tell each other stories about the sky until the last human starves to death... if people value it that much.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 10:42 AM on October 26, 2022
"The same inputs" is doing a lot of work there. One of the inputs is the hand-eye coordination of the stylist. Another is the knowledge base of the stylist about the various hairstyles that exist. Another is the aesthetic skill of the stylist to optimize your melon into the array of hairstyles that exist along with a vector of in-style-ness. If you don't mean those as inputs, then that's your answer about the difference between $10, $100, and $1000 haircuts, and of course haircuts with negative value.
The other answer is that all of this is about human valuation, full stop. If people value haircuts very highly, then they do. Preferences are given, as they say. Suppose in the future humanity goes crazy and decides that they really REALLY value lying down on the ground, telling other people stories about they see in the sky, and hearing others' stories. Then it's entirely possible for per-capita gdp to go up and up and up as everyone abandons all useful labor to lie down on the ground and tell each other stories about the sky until the last human starves to death... if people value it that much.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 10:42 AM on October 26, 2022
Then it's entirely possible for per-capita gdp to go up and up and up as everyone abandons all useful labor to lie down on the ground and tell each other stories about the sky until the last human starves to death... if people value it that much.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace
So, some kind of… Infinite Fun Space?
posted by notoriety public at 11:38 AM on October 26, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace
So, some kind of… Infinite Fun Space?
posted by notoriety public at 11:38 AM on October 26, 2022 [2 favorites]
The problem for the human valuation is that that has to grow at a geometric rate over time, or the system slows to a steady state. And it can't just be inflation either, it has to be real value (whatever that means). That's kind of the point of the "matrix" argument that's made in the piece---that's one way to do this in theory. That's the problem, it's easy to imagine a $100 haircut being better than a $10 one, but that never stops either. Society has to be able to make every increasingly valuable services.
For "the same inputs" read "can't cost more energy" or better "can't increase entropy faster" or "can't increase the enthalpy of the system".
posted by bonehead at 12:04 PM on October 26, 2022
For "the same inputs" read "can't cost more energy" or better "can't increase entropy faster" or "can't increase the enthalpy of the system".
posted by bonehead at 12:04 PM on October 26, 2022
“The Black Carbon Cost of Rocket Launches,” Ramin Skibba, Wired, 16 June 2022
posted by ob1quixote at 3:48 PM on October 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by ob1quixote at 3:48 PM on October 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
It's true we've no replacement for humans throughout much of our supply chains, clawsoon, but economics could feature more prominently than we realize in why we do not replace those humans, perhaps more so than technical limitations.
In fact, I invoked religion largely to address the seeming economic impossibility of a full robotic supply chain. In essence, I'm envisioning a society which obeys the Georgia guide stones "commandments" against population growth and excess consumption, but also believe they must "be fruitful and multiply into the cosmos". I'd expect a society like this could automate things we cannot automate, due to our economic rules, aka our religious rules, even though their everyday lives might involve far less automation, due to saving energy for space.
As I hinted above, we'll maybe hit trouble discovering strong AIs for the same economic reasons: people are relatively cheap.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:01 PM on October 26, 2022
In fact, I invoked religion largely to address the seeming economic impossibility of a full robotic supply chain. In essence, I'm envisioning a society which obeys the Georgia guide stones "commandments" against population growth and excess consumption, but also believe they must "be fruitful and multiply into the cosmos". I'd expect a society like this could automate things we cannot automate, due to our economic rules, aka our religious rules, even though their everyday lives might involve far less automation, due to saving energy for space.
As I hinted above, we'll maybe hit trouble discovering strong AIs for the same economic reasons: people are relatively cheap.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:01 PM on October 26, 2022
jeffburdges: ...but economics could feature more prominently than we realize in why we do not replace those humans, perhaps more so than technical limitations.... As I hinted above, we'll maybe hit trouble discovering strong AIs for the same economic reasons: people are relatively cheap.
Self-driving cars are the first time we've seen huge investments in having AI deal with messiness. If that problem can be solved - if we get to a point where everybody can fall asleep in the backseat without worrying that they'll run over a cyclist - it might be good evidence for your thesis.
Even stronger evidence would be a robot that can unload a pile of cloth, cut it, sew it into clothing, and fold the clothes at the end, all without human intervention, but there's not much investment in that for exactly the reason you say.
That's still a long way from a robot that can dig up dirt and turn it into a semiconductor, but it's a step in the dealing-with-messiness direction.
posted by clawsoon at 7:18 AM on October 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
Self-driving cars are the first time we've seen huge investments in having AI deal with messiness. If that problem can be solved - if we get to a point where everybody can fall asleep in the backseat without worrying that they'll run over a cyclist - it might be good evidence for your thesis.
Even stronger evidence would be a robot that can unload a pile of cloth, cut it, sew it into clothing, and fold the clothes at the end, all without human intervention, but there's not much investment in that for exactly the reason you say.
That's still a long way from a robot that can dig up dirt and turn it into a semiconductor, but it's a step in the dealing-with-messiness direction.
posted by clawsoon at 7:18 AM on October 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
Regarding US decoupling and its realness vs exporting emissions etc.
1) the linked paper commented above demonstrates that most of europe's decoupling and much of the US is indeed trade;
2) us and eu figures do not include military emissions and they are, uh, growing sizeably
3) growth in renewables and it should allow relative decoupling, but unless other industries change and fossil fuels be abandonded, the absolute energy dependence of the rest of GDP will remain
3) tom murphys point is energy, from anysource and all sources cant be decoupled in a growing economy. Economic growth is limited by lots of physical limits and even a country or planet that managed to decarbonize its energy system couldn't grow its clean energy use for more than a few centuries before boiling the planet. That is physics, its a valid rough estimate, no economic theory trumps thermodynamics, and it is exactly the kind of limit that economists either explicitly reject or implicitly omit.
Thank you that is all.
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 1:25 AM on October 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
1) the linked paper commented above demonstrates that most of europe's decoupling and much of the US is indeed trade;
2) us and eu figures do not include military emissions and they are, uh, growing sizeably
3) growth in renewables and it should allow relative decoupling, but unless other industries change and fossil fuels be abandonded, the absolute energy dependence of the rest of GDP will remain
3) tom murphys point is energy, from anysource and all sources cant be decoupled in a growing economy. Economic growth is limited by lots of physical limits and even a country or planet that managed to decarbonize its energy system couldn't grow its clean energy use for more than a few centuries before boiling the planet. That is physics, its a valid rough estimate, no economic theory trumps thermodynamics, and it is exactly the kind of limit that economists either explicitly reject or implicitly omit.
Thank you that is all.
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 1:25 AM on October 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
All ecologies are complex assemblies of interlocking decay and growth. In fact decay is growth, from the point of view of the detritivores, and it's completely arguable that humanity's present reliance on fossil fuels makes us literally detritivores and therefore makes all of our present growth in some sense equivalent to global fungal decay.
There is nothing wrong with the idea of growth. There is a huge amount wrong with the idea that aggregate growth is a prima facie good. That's a cancer's value system.
We would be better served if economists would spend more time addressing the distribution issue than opining on aggregate growth.
posted by flabdablet at 9:33 PM on October 29, 2022 [4 favorites]
There is nothing wrong with the idea of growth. There is a huge amount wrong with the idea that aggregate growth is a prima facie good. That's a cancer's value system.
We would be better served if economists would spend more time addressing the distribution issue than opining on aggregate growth.
posted by flabdablet at 9:33 PM on October 29, 2022 [4 favorites]
and therefore makes all of our present growth in some sense equivalent to global fungal decay.
Heh. That's a perfect analogy - I love it.
posted by clawsoon at 4:18 AM on October 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
Heh. That's a perfect analogy - I love it.
posted by clawsoon at 4:18 AM on October 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
"growth dependency of current economic systems are a danger in themselves, since they prevent politicians from taking the strong decisions necessary for urgent & radical economic transformation to preserve a liveable planet."
posted by jeffburdges at 6:15 AM on November 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by jeffburdges at 6:15 AM on November 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
“How Degrowth Can Save The World”—Andrewism, 02 November 2022
posted by ob1quixote at 4:27 PM on November 2, 2022
posted by ob1quixote at 4:27 PM on November 2, 2022
We discussed degrowther positions vs the broader post-growth view some in the Kohei Saito post.
I do like that the Andrewism's video recognizes that "green growth" still wrecks our biosphere, with mining being one major factor, especially if you listen to Simon Michaux' research, noted in the Hagens thread. And really glden quotes from Gates' quotes. ;) Yet, there are several planetary boundaries which all cut carrying capacity and impose fundamental limits, even without mining.
We cannot save the world without either a post-growth society, or else some cyclic growth-collapse model like Hagens foresees. I do think post-growth human society could be happier and more fair, but it's dangerously miss-guided, and politically harmful, to just blame capitalism, and think communist somehow solves this. In reality, communism itself is growthist to its core too. It's also dangerous to increase energy consumption anywhere populous.
Post-growth is something truly new. It'll stand on its own just fine with only minimal Marx.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:03 PM on November 4, 2022
I do like that the Andrewism's video recognizes that "green growth" still wrecks our biosphere, with mining being one major factor, especially if you listen to Simon Michaux' research, noted in the Hagens thread. And really glden quotes from Gates' quotes. ;) Yet, there are several planetary boundaries which all cut carrying capacity and impose fundamental limits, even without mining.
We cannot save the world without either a post-growth society, or else some cyclic growth-collapse model like Hagens foresees. I do think post-growth human society could be happier and more fair, but it's dangerously miss-guided, and politically harmful, to just blame capitalism, and think communist somehow solves this. In reality, communism itself is growthist to its core too. It's also dangerous to increase energy consumption anywhere populous.
Post-growth is something truly new. It'll stand on its own just fine with only minimal Marx.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:03 PM on November 4, 2022
« Older Remixed and Remastered for 2022! | Crisp Sandwich Day Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
The Finite Physicist doesn't really seem to grasp the Marginalist theory of value, so he doesn't seem to understand what economists think is actually growing.
Value is basically down to the perception of buyers as to what something is worth, as long as they're willing to back that perception with money. Is a $100 haircut ten times more valuable than a $10 haircut? Yes, by definition, according to economists. If you pay $100 to see a musician is she ten times better than a $10 musician? Yep (to an economist).
Imagine a world where everybody is either a hairstylist or plays the banjo. If the price of haircuts and banjo playing goes up with the products remain the same, that's just inflation. But if everybody learns how to play the banjo better, and to cut hair better, and switches from $10 haircuts and banjo concerts to $100 haircuts, then there's been economic growth, without necessarily any increase in energy or population.
None of that means that in practice economic growth can take place without increasing energy requirement. A lot of the time things that buyers value more do take more energy. There might well not be enough low-energy high-value products and services to make economic growth possible with constant energy.
But the arguments in the "Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist" don't really make sense in pure economic terms. It's like an economist lecturing a physicist about gravity without really understanding what it is.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 8:42 PM on October 24, 2022 [16 favorites]