The new economy of contraction
March 7, 2024 12:51 AM Subscribe
The consequences of sustained population contraction are the stinger in the tail of our current predicament, because it wasn’t just our technologies that were designed around the short-term condition of rapid growth driven by abundant fossil fuel energy—so were our economies. It seems like simple common sense to most people nowadays that assets will on average increase in value, investments will yield a return, and businesses will make a profit. Stop and think about that for a minute, though. Why does this happen? Because the economy grows every quarter. Why does the economy grow every quarter? There are many reasons, but they all ultimately boil down to the fact that the population increases. With every passing year, there are more people joining the workforce, buying assets, making investments, and purchasing goods and services. Thus population growth is the engine behind economic growth. from An Unfamiliar World by John Michael Greer [Ecosophia]
might be worthwhile to click on that link to the author's wikipedia page":
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 1:30 AM on March 7 [32 favorites]
"Greer was born in Bremerton, Washington and was raised in the Seattle area. He is an initiate in Freemasonry and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn"i declare this guy's ideas bad and i also declare the guy himself bad.
"Greer came to Druidry by way of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids in 1995 after some twenty years' involvement in Hermetic occult spirituality. He received the Mount Haemus Award in 2003 from OBOD for his lecture "Phallic Religion in the Druid Revival".[2] He served as Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America (AODA), an initiatory organization teaching Celtic nature spirituality, from 2003 to 2015."
"Greer describes himself as a moderate Burkean conservative, influenced by the political theorist Edmund Burke.[6] He is currently blogging at Ecosophia, where he has written about the intersection of magic and politics."
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 1:30 AM on March 7 [32 favorites]
i am particularly suspicious when i see "celtic nature spirituality" and "burkean conservative" side by side. my raised eyebrow may be unjustified — i may be overfitting my training dataset here — but nevertheless i'm gonna have some concerns until such time as i see evidence (which may exist!) that he's consistently and unambiguously antifascist and that the ancient order of druids in america have a well-established reputation for kicking out nazis.
n.b.: even if said clear evidence of greer being antifascist exists, my critiques in the comments above still stand.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 1:42 AM on March 7 [6 favorites]
n.b.: even if said clear evidence of greer being antifascist exists, my critiques in the comments above still stand.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 1:42 AM on March 7 [6 favorites]
I came here to comment that the aside about "people who take care of their own health" pinged my crank radar good and hard, good to see I'm not the only one.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 2:11 AM on March 7 [12 favorites]
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 2:11 AM on March 7 [12 favorites]
I think this is a really interesting topic that I'd love a good post on, but yeah, this is full of BS. For one, his theory that peak population in developed countries is due to having hit the "carrying capacity" of the environment, e.g., like deer overpopulation, is given no justification.
At another point he's bragging about his past predictions of peak oil: "The price of oil, which was around US$10 a barrel at the turn of the millennium, is now fluctuating between US$70 and $90 a barrel." There was a cherry-picked moment when oil was close to $10 a barrel, but overall oil's price hasn't moved that much when adjusted for inflation.
posted by justkevin at 2:39 AM on March 7 [9 favorites]
At another point he's bragging about his past predictions of peak oil: "The price of oil, which was around US$10 a barrel at the turn of the millennium, is now fluctuating between US$70 and $90 a barrel." There was a cherry-picked moment when oil was close to $10 a barrel, but overall oil's price hasn't moved that much when adjusted for inflation.
posted by justkevin at 2:39 AM on March 7 [9 favorites]
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1hXEG
Annual working-age YOY population growth for US, Japan, China.
shows demographic expansion was generally a nice +1% tailwind for macro "growth" but it's not the be-all end-all.
anti-capitalist thinking isn't going to find the nut here since for all its faults capitalist enterprise has been demonstrably good at 'delivering the goods' (via capital accretion) as it were.
(This is a good opportunity as any to go on my 'wealth' rant here.)
I'm not a big fan of demographic-driven growth since it lowers wages and reduces the median availability of natural resources – arable land for farming, space on the ground for living in urban conditions, natural wealth like forested hills and mineral resources in the ground. (Australia and Canada have been pushing demographic expansion this century and man has that done a numba on their home prices.)
(Outright big-C Colonialism was an economic cheat that many (I'm looking at you Holland) European economies and their transplants got to enjoy by just expropriating natural wealth and labor from subject populations somewhere else (via 'internal' or overseas expansion) , generally at gunpoint.
Capital wealth is many things, from a usable hammer & saw, or knowing how to set a broken bone, a 500 year old tree, a paved road that remains passable after a rainstorm blows through . . .
Are we actually in a 'predicament' ??? Will the depopulating major economies of the world (Germany, Italy, Japan, China etc.) overstress their available labor capacity to take care of their own elderly populations later this century??
I guess, generally speaking, a child requires less service labor (& goods) to raise to economic independence than an elderly person requires to maintain a decent standard of living in senescent retirement, though an actual analysis might be close.
food, clothing, housing, education, health care, water & sewer, fossil fuels energy and electricity, entertainment...
where is this activity and provision of wealth unsustainable? Japan still has 12.5X the population of Sweden in about the same land area, but as its population declines this century a lot of prior capital investment in their marginal periphery will become stranded with fewer people to support it, either via labor or being a customer.
The rot under every economy is debt, since debt allows consumption to be pulled forward with an uncertain promise to repay the creditor over time. I guess the 1990s and 2000s recessionary periods were due to debt stresses ('savings & loan' and 'dotcom bust' crises being the exigent drivers of financial stress and fear) . . . 2008's GFC most definitely that, sigh.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1hXKq (per-worker real GDP) says the US economy has been growing gangbusters this century (up 1.4X), but so has our per-capital debt load, up 2X since 2000.
We need Taxman level tax regimes to return, though hopefully not on Tiffany Swift or whatever her name is but parasites like that Trump guy and his spawn floating around, that would rebalance a lot.
posted by torokunai at 3:23 AM on March 7 [6 favorites]
Annual working-age YOY population growth for US, Japan, China.
shows demographic expansion was generally a nice +1% tailwind for macro "growth" but it's not the be-all end-all.
anti-capitalist thinking isn't going to find the nut here since for all its faults capitalist enterprise has been demonstrably good at 'delivering the goods' (via capital accretion) as it were.
(This is a good opportunity as any to go on my 'wealth' rant here.)
I'm not a big fan of demographic-driven growth since it lowers wages and reduces the median availability of natural resources – arable land for farming, space on the ground for living in urban conditions, natural wealth like forested hills and mineral resources in the ground. (Australia and Canada have been pushing demographic expansion this century and man has that done a numba on their home prices.)
(Outright big-C Colonialism was an economic cheat that many (I'm looking at you Holland) European economies and their transplants got to enjoy by just expropriating natural wealth and labor from subject populations somewhere else (via 'internal' or overseas expansion) , generally at gunpoint.
Capital wealth is many things, from a usable hammer & saw, or knowing how to set a broken bone, a 500 year old tree, a paved road that remains passable after a rainstorm blows through . . .
Are we actually in a 'predicament' ??? Will the depopulating major economies of the world (Germany, Italy, Japan, China etc.) overstress their available labor capacity to take care of their own elderly populations later this century??
I guess, generally speaking, a child requires less service labor (& goods) to raise to economic independence than an elderly person requires to maintain a decent standard of living in senescent retirement, though an actual analysis might be close.
food, clothing, housing, education, health care, water & sewer, fossil fuels energy and electricity, entertainment...
where is this activity and provision of wealth unsustainable? Japan still has 12.5X the population of Sweden in about the same land area, but as its population declines this century a lot of prior capital investment in their marginal periphery will become stranded with fewer people to support it, either via labor or being a customer.
The rot under every economy is debt, since debt allows consumption to be pulled forward with an uncertain promise to repay the creditor over time. I guess the 1990s and 2000s recessionary periods were due to debt stresses ('savings & loan' and 'dotcom bust' crises being the exigent drivers of financial stress and fear) . . . 2008's GFC most definitely that, sigh.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1hXKq (per-worker real GDP) says the US economy has been growing gangbusters this century (up 1.4X), but so has our per-capital debt load, up 2X since 2000.
We need Taxman level tax regimes to return, though hopefully not on Tiffany Swift or whatever her name is but parasites like that Trump guy and his spawn floating around, that would rebalance a lot.
posted by torokunai at 3:23 AM on March 7 [6 favorites]
> anti-capitalist thinking isn't going to find the nut here since for all its faults capitalist enterprise has been demonstrably good at 'delivering the goods' (via capital accretion) as it were.
i mean "holy shit! capitalism is incredible at producing tons of stuff, like, goddamn it's effective, way more effective than anything before it!" is kind of at the core of most anticapitalist thought, right, or at least most of the anticapitalist thought that i'm familiar with?
fwiw my take is roughly "now that capitalism has boosted our productive capacity up past the stratosphere, like, metaphorically but also literally too, it might be neat and fun to steal all of that neat shiny productive capital that capitalism has generated, just deadass stroll in and say 'all this stuff? it's ours now! yoink!', stash the previous owners somewhere safe or otherwise keep them from taking everything back, and then bend the whole apparatus toward human ends instead of just using it to increase the supply of productive capital for its own sake." i think that's orthodox marx, right? i dunno though i'm better at writing things than i am at reading things.
can we agree at this point that now that we've left a smoking crater in the ground in the place where the guy who wrote this article once stood that we can therefore use the rest of the thread for fun, interesting, and informative derails on the topics his article discussed? because y'all are interesting to talk with.
i still wanna know if this guy's order of druids has a track record of making nazis unwelcome, because my understanding is that due to the appeal that celtic/norse neopaganism holds for nazis, most organized neopagan communities are sort of like the old skinhead communities: either they're none too gentle about showing nazis the door or else they're, well, nazis.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 3:56 AM on March 7 [10 favorites]
i mean "holy shit! capitalism is incredible at producing tons of stuff, like, goddamn it's effective, way more effective than anything before it!" is kind of at the core of most anticapitalist thought, right, or at least most of the anticapitalist thought that i'm familiar with?
fwiw my take is roughly "now that capitalism has boosted our productive capacity up past the stratosphere, like, metaphorically but also literally too, it might be neat and fun to steal all of that neat shiny productive capital that capitalism has generated, just deadass stroll in and say 'all this stuff? it's ours now! yoink!', stash the previous owners somewhere safe or otherwise keep them from taking everything back, and then bend the whole apparatus toward human ends instead of just using it to increase the supply of productive capital for its own sake." i think that's orthodox marx, right? i dunno though i'm better at writing things than i am at reading things.
can we agree at this point that now that we've left a smoking crater in the ground in the place where the guy who wrote this article once stood that we can therefore use the rest of the thread for fun, interesting, and informative derails on the topics his article discussed? because y'all are interesting to talk with.
i still wanna know if this guy's order of druids has a track record of making nazis unwelcome, because my understanding is that due to the appeal that celtic/norse neopaganism holds for nazis, most organized neopagan communities are sort of like the old skinhead communities: either they're none too gentle about showing nazis the door or else they're, well, nazis.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 3:56 AM on March 7 [10 favorites]
> they all ultimately boil down to the fact that the population increases
It's only partially true. We've increased our population dangerously for sure. We've nations who increase they population enough to block "development" even. At the same time, we've increased our energy and materials consumption, and our ecosystem destruction, many times faster than we've increased our population, meaning our notion of "developed" economy became more & more consuptive & destructive. See discussions by folks like Nate Hagens, Daniel Schmachtenberger, etc.
Alone, a natural population decline cannot become too economically problematic because actually people want jobs that feel meaningful like taking care of children and old people. You'll have enough workers if you slightly raise salaries for healthcare, and restrict resources flowing to the bullshit jobs like advertising, administration, finance, law, etc.
It's otoh awfuly hard if you cannot restrict the resources going into bullshit, and your resources start rapidly declining, from peak oil and planetary boundaries like climate. At some point your population starts declining faster than the expected death rate too.
IPCC says +3°C by 2100, but they ignore tipping points, aerosol cooling, and compute energy imbalance using 10 year old data. According to Will Steffen's estimate, +4°C makes the tropics uninhabitable by humans, and reduces the earth's maximum carrying capacity below one billion humans. We should expect fast population decline later this century.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:09 AM on March 7 [8 favorites]
It's only partially true. We've increased our population dangerously for sure. We've nations who increase they population enough to block "development" even. At the same time, we've increased our energy and materials consumption, and our ecosystem destruction, many times faster than we've increased our population, meaning our notion of "developed" economy became more & more consuptive & destructive. See discussions by folks like Nate Hagens, Daniel Schmachtenberger, etc.
Alone, a natural population decline cannot become too economically problematic because actually people want jobs that feel meaningful like taking care of children and old people. You'll have enough workers if you slightly raise salaries for healthcare, and restrict resources flowing to the bullshit jobs like advertising, administration, finance, law, etc.
It's otoh awfuly hard if you cannot restrict the resources going into bullshit, and your resources start rapidly declining, from peak oil and planetary boundaries like climate. At some point your population starts declining faster than the expected death rate too.
IPCC says +3°C by 2100, but they ignore tipping points, aerosol cooling, and compute energy imbalance using 10 year old data. According to Will Steffen's estimate, +4°C makes the tropics uninhabitable by humans, and reduces the earth's maximum carrying capacity below one billion humans. We should expect fast population decline later this century.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:09 AM on March 7 [8 favorites]
I see people saying [nation] existed at half its current population, so dropping to half isn't a problem, but I think growing to a population isn't the same thing as rather suddenly shrinking to it.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 4:20 AM on March 7 [5 favorites]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 4:20 AM on March 7 [5 favorites]
> Alone, a natural population decline cannot become too economically problematic because actually people want jobs that feel meaningful like taking care of children and old people. You'll have enough workers if you slightly raise salaries for healthcare, and restrict resources flowing to the bullshit jobs like advertising, administration, finance, law, etc.
cory doctorow has a post about a recent interview with exxon's ceo (very paywalled, unfortunately) wherein said ceo stands up on his hind legs and opens the mouth in his head and then uses that mouth and the tongue and teeth inside it to make word sounds about how renewables aren't an option because they can't provide above-average return for shareholders. like, everyone (or almost everyone) thinks it'd be nice if we didn't boil the world, and even though renewables can at this point provide us with all the energy we need without, like, doing that, they're still not an option because it's absolutely necessary to generate and continue to generate above-average returns for shareholders and hey fossil fuel extraction is way better at that.
which is to say: i suspect that no matter how many kids and elders there are who need caring for and no matter how many people would rather like to care for those kids and elders, capital still won't provide sufficient jobs in eldercare and childcare nor provide sufficient remuneration for the childcare/eldercare jobs that exist. after all, failing to provide high-quality care — hire too few people, pay them not nearly enough, work everyone like dogs, cut every corner possible, in general care as little as possible about any care you provide — can produce above-average returns for shareholders in a way that actually providing high-quality care for all will never be able to match.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 4:28 AM on March 7 [16 favorites]
cory doctorow has a post about a recent interview with exxon's ceo (very paywalled, unfortunately) wherein said ceo stands up on his hind legs and opens the mouth in his head and then uses that mouth and the tongue and teeth inside it to make word sounds about how renewables aren't an option because they can't provide above-average return for shareholders. like, everyone (or almost everyone) thinks it'd be nice if we didn't boil the world, and even though renewables can at this point provide us with all the energy we need without, like, doing that, they're still not an option because it's absolutely necessary to generate and continue to generate above-average returns for shareholders and hey fossil fuel extraction is way better at that.
which is to say: i suspect that no matter how many kids and elders there are who need caring for and no matter how many people would rather like to care for those kids and elders, capital still won't provide sufficient jobs in eldercare and childcare nor provide sufficient remuneration for the childcare/eldercare jobs that exist. after all, failing to provide high-quality care — hire too few people, pay them not nearly enough, work everyone like dogs, cut every corner possible, in general care as little as possible about any care you provide — can produce above-average returns for shareholders in a way that actually providing high-quality care for all will never be able to match.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 4:28 AM on March 7 [16 favorites]
i am particularly suspicious when i see "celtic nature spirituality" and "burkean conservative" side by side. my raised eyebrow may be unjustified — i may be overfitting my training dataset here — but nevertheless i'm gonna have some concerns until such time as i see evidence (which may exist!) that he's consistently and unambiguously antifascist and that the ancient order of druids in america have a well-established reputation for kicking out nazis.
I've only met a couple of people who fit that description, but based on my very small sample, I predict a 50/50 chance of the person being either a borderline sexual predator (aka focusing on vulnerable young women along with some kind of New Age sexual shtick), or being into white power, with all the runes and Celtic and Nordic reenactments and so on.
This guy might actually be a great person, I'm just a bit suspicious.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:33 AM on March 7 [7 favorites]
I've only met a couple of people who fit that description, but based on my very small sample, I predict a 50/50 chance of the person being either a borderline sexual predator (aka focusing on vulnerable young women along with some kind of New Age sexual shtick), or being into white power, with all the runes and Celtic and Nordic reenactments and so on.
This guy might actually be a great person, I'm just a bit suspicious.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:33 AM on March 7 [7 favorites]
The problem with population is that there is no efficient reallocation of resources. The first example that comes to mind, that we've seen play out recently, is housing construction. When there's less new housing construction, the workers don't automatically get shuffled into other occupations that need more people--roofers don't become nurses. We just end up with a lot more people unemployed and with a smaller tax base to take care of them.
I think the way to think about this is there are two kinds of growth that we usually lump into one. There's productivity growth, which can continue via new technology (or by...well...firing lots of people and forcing the remaining people to work harder), but there's also the growth of "more people buy more products" (and I'm sure there's an economics word for that but I cannot think of it)--more people means more demand for cars, and at a certain point that market has a ceiling, because if the population no longer grows, people don't have an infinite appetite for more cars per person, and you only need to replace a car so often. I suppose the race then becomes more for market share--if there are fewer people, the market for salty chips begins to shrink, so you want your Doritos to take up all the shelf space. Which you were already doing, but now it becomes a war for survival on the chip aisle.
I agree with bombastic's above pronouncement about hyperexploitation--obviously, the main engine of capitalism is slavery, or to put it more politely, finding ways not to pay for resources and labor. But population growth is the thing creating the growing market for the end results of those resources and labor, and things get tricky if you can't project out that growth anymore.
posted by mittens at 5:43 AM on March 7 [10 favorites]
I think the way to think about this is there are two kinds of growth that we usually lump into one. There's productivity growth, which can continue via new technology (or by...well...firing lots of people and forcing the remaining people to work harder), but there's also the growth of "more people buy more products" (and I'm sure there's an economics word for that but I cannot think of it)--more people means more demand for cars, and at a certain point that market has a ceiling, because if the population no longer grows, people don't have an infinite appetite for more cars per person, and you only need to replace a car so often. I suppose the race then becomes more for market share--if there are fewer people, the market for salty chips begins to shrink, so you want your Doritos to take up all the shelf space. Which you were already doing, but now it becomes a war for survival on the chip aisle.
I agree with bombastic's above pronouncement about hyperexploitation--obviously, the main engine of capitalism is slavery, or to put it more politely, finding ways not to pay for resources and labor. But population growth is the thing creating the growing market for the end results of those resources and labor, and things get tricky if you can't project out that growth anymore.
posted by mittens at 5:43 AM on March 7 [10 favorites]
This guy might actually be a great person
But he writes Lovecraft fanfic.
posted by mittens at 5:49 AM on March 7 [4 favorites]
But he writes Lovecraft fanfic.
posted by mittens at 5:49 AM on March 7 [4 favorites]
I saw the pull quote and thought "Oh, how interesting!" Then I read the thread and I guess I'll be giving TFA a miss.
But the topic of "what will a post-growth economy look like and is there a way of preventing it from being hellish for the 99%" is one that I would like to see people thinking about.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 6:09 AM on March 7 [10 favorites]
But the topic of "what will a post-growth economy look like and is there a way of preventing it from being hellish for the 99%" is one that I would like to see people thinking about.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 6:09 AM on March 7 [10 favorites]
I guess the retvrn people discovered late state capitalism and this popped out.
posted by Artw at 6:20 AM on March 7 [3 favorites]
posted by Artw at 6:20 AM on March 7 [3 favorites]
> but there's also the growth of "more people buy more products" (and I'm sure there's an economics word for that but I cannot think of it)--more people means more demand for cars, and at a certain point that market has a ceiling, because if the population no longer grows, people don't have an infinite appetite for more cars per person, and you only need to replace a car so often. I suppose the race then becomes more for market share--if there are fewer people, the market for salty chips begins to shrink, so you want your Doritos to take up all the shelf space.
david harvey might be a good read for this sort of thing. his take (which might just be straight from marx, i dunno) is that capital deals with the problem of overproduction by applying what he calls the "spatial fix", i.e. if there's no one in your current territory who wants to buy the stuff you're cranking out at a fantastically unprecedented rate, what you need to do is find new regions to bring into the market. this involves getting the political leadership in those regions to dismantle barriers to market penetration, things like social safety nets, state industries, etc. this can be accomplished by getting the political leadership to accept onerous loans and then demanding austerity measures when they can't be repaid. failing that, the fallback option is to send in the united states army to gently persuade them. when folks say "neoliberalism", this strategy is the thing they're referring to.
(i am being very imprecise/sloppy in my description here; harvey is significantly smarter than i am)
it's not always strictly necessary to expand the market for goods by bringing new geographical regions into the market sphere, though, since capital can also generate markets for stuff by enclosing whatever commons remain in the metropole and then selling products that replace what folks used to get for free.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 6:21 AM on March 7 [7 favorites]
david harvey might be a good read for this sort of thing. his take (which might just be straight from marx, i dunno) is that capital deals with the problem of overproduction by applying what he calls the "spatial fix", i.e. if there's no one in your current territory who wants to buy the stuff you're cranking out at a fantastically unprecedented rate, what you need to do is find new regions to bring into the market. this involves getting the political leadership in those regions to dismantle barriers to market penetration, things like social safety nets, state industries, etc. this can be accomplished by getting the political leadership to accept onerous loans and then demanding austerity measures when they can't be repaid. failing that, the fallback option is to send in the united states army to gently persuade them. when folks say "neoliberalism", this strategy is the thing they're referring to.
(i am being very imprecise/sloppy in my description here; harvey is significantly smarter than i am)
it's not always strictly necessary to expand the market for goods by bringing new geographical regions into the market sphere, though, since capital can also generate markets for stuff by enclosing whatever commons remain in the metropole and then selling products that replace what folks used to get for free.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 6:21 AM on March 7 [7 favorites]
I am a layperson with regard to Economics but despite that I can detect the kind of simpleminded overconfident BS that people who are as equally uninformed as I love to spout, be they fundamentalist libertarians, neo-feudal techlord aspirants, or whatever you call this particular vein of stupid.
posted by Pembquist at 7:11 AM on March 7 [5 favorites]
posted by Pembquist at 7:11 AM on March 7 [5 favorites]
Yeah it would be nice if somebody besides fringe weirdos/ possible Nazis wrote something interesting to read about dealing with a contracting population in a healthy way. I'm open to those suggestions/ welcome that post.
posted by emjaybee at 7:20 AM on March 7 [7 favorites]
posted by emjaybee at 7:20 AM on March 7 [7 favorites]
> I am a layperson with regard to Economics but despite that I can detect the kind of simpleminded overconfident BS that people who are as equally uninformed as I love to spout
okay but what about marxians who reject economics in favor of political economy can you tell how simpleminded, overconfident, and uninformed they are or do i need to make it more obvious lmk thx
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:23 AM on March 7 [1 favorite]
okay but what about marxians who reject economics in favor of political economy can you tell how simpleminded, overconfident, and uninformed they are or do i need to make it more obvious lmk thx
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:23 AM on March 7 [1 favorite]
Alone, a natural population decline cannot become too economically problematic because actually people want jobs that feel meaningful like taking care of children and old people. You'll have enough workers if you slightly raise salaries for healthcare, and restrict resources flowing to the bullshit jobs like advertising, administration, finance, law, etc.
I'm not sure I agree with this. Taking care of kids and the elderly are capital H hard labor jobs- so many people would rather work with their minds than their backs. These are the kind of jobs that need doing but no-one is going to do, because they can get paid more for their mind.
I'll happily be an outlier and say I think population decline is going to be extremely negative. We already don't have enough people do do work in the US now - not that everyone wants done. Look at all the rants about self-checkout and Amazon delivery. Those are natural shortcuts to a dwindling labor problem. Drop the population by 10% and you are going to be going to an Amazon warehouse to pick up your own stuff. You might say "well most of the stuff from Amazon is disposable and people can live without it in a depopulated future". That's as true now, with people, as it is without. If people wanted to live with less, they would. They actually don't, because it sucks.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:25 AM on March 7 [10 favorites]
I'm not sure I agree with this. Taking care of kids and the elderly are capital H hard labor jobs- so many people would rather work with their minds than their backs. These are the kind of jobs that need doing but no-one is going to do, because they can get paid more for their mind.
I'll happily be an outlier and say I think population decline is going to be extremely negative. We already don't have enough people do do work in the US now - not that everyone wants done. Look at all the rants about self-checkout and Amazon delivery. Those are natural shortcuts to a dwindling labor problem. Drop the population by 10% and you are going to be going to an Amazon warehouse to pick up your own stuff. You might say "well most of the stuff from Amazon is disposable and people can live without it in a depopulated future". That's as true now, with people, as it is without. If people wanted to live with less, they would. They actually don't, because it sucks.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:25 AM on March 7 [10 favorites]
BTW, nursing already pays above the median wage, at least for the top level of nurses (RN). There are levels of 'nurse' of course, and others pay less, and things like cleaners and medical assistants (the person who weighs you when you go to the doctor) pay at the median.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:30 AM on March 7 [2 favorites]
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:30 AM on March 7 [2 favorites]
but also it seems that hospitals are very fond of having way too few nurses seeing way too many patients.
(this is particularly bad when you consider nurses below the rn level working in retirement homes, etc., where anecdata suggests that they throw undertrained people at a stupid large number of people in memory care and say "lol have fun")
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:35 AM on March 7 [5 favorites]
(this is particularly bad when you consider nurses below the rn level working in retirement homes, etc., where anecdata suggests that they throw undertrained people at a stupid large number of people in memory care and say "lol have fun")
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:35 AM on March 7 [5 favorites]
Look at all the rants about self-checkout and Amazon delivery. Those are natural shortcuts to a dwindling labor problem.
Those also just happen to be natural shortcuts to boosting profit margins by cutting labor expenses.
These are the kind of jobs that need doing but no-one is going to do, because they can get paid more for their mind.
So isn't the solution to pay people more to do those jobs? Because it sounds like you're implying that the problem isn't so much a declining population but rather a declining population of cheap labor.
If people wanted to live with less, they would. They actually don't, because it sucks.
Yeah. This is why people would rather take jobs that pay more. And this is why jobs that pay less are going unfilled. Why is this so difficult to understand?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 7:48 AM on March 7 [3 favorites]
Those also just happen to be natural shortcuts to boosting profit margins by cutting labor expenses.
These are the kind of jobs that need doing but no-one is going to do, because they can get paid more for their mind.
So isn't the solution to pay people more to do those jobs? Because it sounds like you're implying that the problem isn't so much a declining population but rather a declining population of cheap labor.
If people wanted to live with less, they would. They actually don't, because it sucks.
Yeah. This is why people would rather take jobs that pay more. And this is why jobs that pay less are going unfilled. Why is this so difficult to understand?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 7:48 AM on March 7 [3 favorites]
And this is why jobs that pay less are going unfilled. Why is this do difficult to understand?
You are making a big assumption that there are people to do these jobs. The US unemployment rate is 3.7%. Double their pay. That's still only about 5 million people to work with across the entire US, assuming everyone who is unemployed is able to work these jobs, which is a big assumption. At least Republicans admit it and want to put kids back to work.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:53 AM on March 7 [3 favorites]
You are making a big assumption that there are people to do these jobs. The US unemployment rate is 3.7%. Double their pay. That's still only about 5 million people to work with across the entire US, assuming everyone who is unemployed is able to work these jobs, which is a big assumption. At least Republicans admit it and want to put kids back to work.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:53 AM on March 7 [3 favorites]
okay but what about marxians who reject economics in favor of political economy can you tell how simpleminded, overconfident, and uninformed they are or do i need to make it more obvious lmk thx
Marx did not "reject economics". He had his own theory of economics. This article seems totally unaware of Marxist economics.
Marx believed that Capitalism is enormously more productive than the previous stages of economic development (Feudalism, Slave Societies, Primitive Communism). He thought that the next stage of economic development, Communism, would be more productive still.
He didn't think we could yet understand exactly how that system would work, any more than someone living in a Feudal economy would be able to give detailed descriptions of how futures markets and initial public offerings work.
Marx didn't think that Capitalism would fail because of an end to population growth. He thought it would fail because price competition would eventually drive both profits and wages down to unsustainable levels, causing a crisis which would lead to revolution.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 7:57 AM on March 7 [10 favorites]
Marx did not "reject economics". He had his own theory of economics. This article seems totally unaware of Marxist economics.
Marx believed that Capitalism is enormously more productive than the previous stages of economic development (Feudalism, Slave Societies, Primitive Communism). He thought that the next stage of economic development, Communism, would be more productive still.
He didn't think we could yet understand exactly how that system would work, any more than someone living in a Feudal economy would be able to give detailed descriptions of how futures markets and initial public offerings work.
Marx didn't think that Capitalism would fail because of an end to population growth. He thought it would fail because price competition would eventually drive both profits and wages down to unsustainable levels, causing a crisis which would lead to revolution.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 7:57 AM on March 7 [10 favorites]
"Why does the economy grow every quarter? There are many reasons, but they all ultimately boil down to the fact that the population increases."
No. The main driver of economic growth - the whole not starving, living in houses with plumbing and electricity, and so on - is productivity growth: the growth in the amount of stuff (goods and services, to be technical) that people can produce, on average, with an hour of work.
Of course demography matters and affects productivity growth. For a basic overview, see Demographics can be a potent driver of the pace and process of economic development
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 8:22 AM on March 7 [7 favorites]
No. The main driver of economic growth - the whole not starving, living in houses with plumbing and electricity, and so on - is productivity growth: the growth in the amount of stuff (goods and services, to be technical) that people can produce, on average, with an hour of work.
Of course demography matters and affects productivity growth. For a basic overview, see Demographics can be a potent driver of the pace and process of economic development
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 8:22 AM on March 7 [7 favorites]
I think even with Harvey's 'spatial fix' in play, we could illustrate the problem with population decline. (I mentioned Ha-Joon Chang here the other day, and I think if you put his Bad Samaritans into a blender with Harvey's Madness of Economic Reason, the resulting slurry would taste sort of like this comment.)
Neoliberalism really doesn't work in a state of population decline, because those markets that are opened up by gunpoint are low-productivity countries where there is a much closer association between how many people you can get to work, and how many things get made. The austerity measures that result from national debt are counterproductive, literally--they carefully keep low-productivity countries from following developmental policies like South Korea and Japan used to create their industrial and cultural-export bases.
For any single company or product, you can imagine a way to weasel out of the problem, I guess--Reed Hastings is probably not staying up nights worried that eventually there won't be enough new people to watch the latest Netflix movie, because for now it'll be enough to open up an international quasi-trade, where Americans will be served more K-dramas, and, I dunno, Algeria gets more GBBO or whatever. And similarly, worries about demographic changes in, say, Social Security have much more immediate fixes that can keep it in good shape, even if there is not a constantly-growing group of young people on-hand to pay for the elderly.
But the problem remains, especially as the underproductive countries do make strides--and their economic growth inspires a population slowdown of their own. So what's a neoliberal to do then? We nudge the markets open with guns and loans, but either the country has no money to spend on products thanks to austerity, or it manages productivity growth and the attendant population contraction, which makes their economy go weird.
I don't think we really have an answer for what happens then. Does Marx, does Harvey, have a vision for an economy forced into degrowth, a permanent recession? I mean you can certainly imagine a fairer distribution during that sort of economic heat-death, but that idea of growth is so baked into everything we do and think about the economy. We're really going to need a new theory.
posted by mittens at 8:36 AM on March 7 [5 favorites]
Neoliberalism really doesn't work in a state of population decline, because those markets that are opened up by gunpoint are low-productivity countries where there is a much closer association between how many people you can get to work, and how many things get made. The austerity measures that result from national debt are counterproductive, literally--they carefully keep low-productivity countries from following developmental policies like South Korea and Japan used to create their industrial and cultural-export bases.
For any single company or product, you can imagine a way to weasel out of the problem, I guess--Reed Hastings is probably not staying up nights worried that eventually there won't be enough new people to watch the latest Netflix movie, because for now it'll be enough to open up an international quasi-trade, where Americans will be served more K-dramas, and, I dunno, Algeria gets more GBBO or whatever. And similarly, worries about demographic changes in, say, Social Security have much more immediate fixes that can keep it in good shape, even if there is not a constantly-growing group of young people on-hand to pay for the elderly.
But the problem remains, especially as the underproductive countries do make strides--and their economic growth inspires a population slowdown of their own. So what's a neoliberal to do then? We nudge the markets open with guns and loans, but either the country has no money to spend on products thanks to austerity, or it manages productivity growth and the attendant population contraction, which makes their economy go weird.
I don't think we really have an answer for what happens then. Does Marx, does Harvey, have a vision for an economy forced into degrowth, a permanent recession? I mean you can certainly imagine a fairer distribution during that sort of economic heat-death, but that idea of growth is so baked into everything we do and think about the economy. We're really going to need a new theory.
posted by mittens at 8:36 AM on March 7 [5 favorites]
As somebody with an interest in ceremonial magic, I used to hold Greer in pretty high esteem, because his writing was always pretty clear, in contrast with most of the people who were members of the original Golden Dawn. However, he went full-on Trumpist at some point, and despite his ostensibly nature-oriented sprituality he seems much more interested in defending his record on Peak Oil than on actually doing anything to mitigate against the destructive effects of industrialization on the environment. Unless, of course, those things are concepts that he came up with himself, in which case he will brook no criticisms.
He's a smart guy, but waaaay to fond of the smell of his own farts.
posted by Ipsifendus at 8:53 AM on March 7 [9 favorites]
He's a smart guy, but waaaay to fond of the smell of his own farts.
posted by Ipsifendus at 8:53 AM on March 7 [9 favorites]
Greer is undoubtedly ecofash. Or had strong leanings that way, he does it in a nice little libertarian way the rest of the fash do. But it's there underneath. Beware. He has an LJ if you are curious to read more of his bullshit. There are better allies in the fight for nature. That doesn't mean he doesn't have points. He often does, but beware when you read that he has a world view that may not align with yours.
posted by symbioid at 9:56 AM on March 7 [6 favorites]
posted by symbioid at 9:56 AM on March 7 [6 favorites]
" economics in favor of political economy"
Political Economy - IS economics.
Or do you only want to define "economics" as home economics - due to its origin in the word Oikonomia - 'household management'.
But look up the definitely of "political economy" it literally IS economics. The reason it's called "political economy" is because it's about the public economics as opposed to the original Home sense of economics.
And the reason for that drift is the development OF that economy via Capitalism as a usurper to the old ways. And he was analyzing that as were ALL the economists at the time is it just that you don't like his take on it? Otherwise I have no clue what that statement even means.
posted by symbioid at 10:09 AM on March 7 [1 favorite]
Political Economy - IS economics.
Or do you only want to define "economics" as home economics - due to its origin in the word Oikonomia - 'household management'.
But look up the definitely of "political economy" it literally IS economics. The reason it's called "political economy" is because it's about the public economics as opposed to the original Home sense of economics.
And the reason for that drift is the development OF that economy via Capitalism as a usurper to the old ways. And he was analyzing that as were ALL the economists at the time is it just that you don't like his take on it? Otherwise I have no clue what that statement even means.
posted by symbioid at 10:09 AM on March 7 [1 favorite]
There are machines to consider. (.pdf link from Brookings Institution)
Our estimates indicate that the labor share-displacing effects of productivity growth, which were essentially absent in the 1970s, have become more pronounced over time, and are most substantial in the 2000s. This finding is consistent with automation having become in recent decades less labor-augmenting and more labor-displacing
And there's population-related poverty, and not just from depressed wages and education opportunities, but ruining the chance for families to own assets by living hand to mouth. Growth from a pyramid scheme looks different from growing a middle class.
posted by Brian B. at 10:09 AM on March 7 [6 favorites]
Our estimates indicate that the labor share-displacing effects of productivity growth, which were essentially absent in the 1970s, have become more pronounced over time, and are most substantial in the 2000s. This finding is consistent with automation having become in recent decades less labor-augmenting and more labor-displacing
And there's population-related poverty, and not just from depressed wages and education opportunities, but ruining the chance for families to own assets by living hand to mouth. Growth from a pyramid scheme looks different from growing a middle class.
posted by Brian B. at 10:09 AM on March 7 [6 favorites]
It's true that lifting overweight old people sucks, The_Vegetables, but anecdotally many people do prefer work in child care and elder care roles that avoid being too physically taxing, likely Graeber provides citations.
We've many different mental faculties, but many who "work with their minds" really work with their negative social capacities ala bullshiting.
I doubt unemployment rates matter here since we've people doing unecessary jobs: "YouGov undertook a related poll, in which 37% of some surveyed Britons thought that their jobs did not contribute 'meaningfully' to the world." We'll have some miss-reporting there, but likely the opposite direction.
In fact, there are many jobs discussed by Graeber which serve organizations' internal feudalism, which cannot be defended as being inter organizational feudalism that's kinda imposed externally.
posted by jeffburdges at 10:26 AM on March 7 [5 favorites]
We've many different mental faculties, but many who "work with their minds" really work with their negative social capacities ala bullshiting.
I doubt unemployment rates matter here since we've people doing unecessary jobs: "YouGov undertook a related poll, in which 37% of some surveyed Britons thought that their jobs did not contribute 'meaningfully' to the world." We'll have some miss-reporting there, but likely the opposite direction.
In fact, there are many jobs discussed by Graeber which serve organizations' internal feudalism, which cannot be defended as being inter organizational feudalism that's kinda imposed externally.
posted by jeffburdges at 10:26 AM on March 7 [5 favorites]
American energy usage is going through the roof - which I would assume is basically all AI, so that shit is not sustainable.
posted by Artw at 10:41 AM on March 7 [3 favorites]
posted by Artw at 10:41 AM on March 7 [3 favorites]
It's true that lifting overweight old people sucks, The_Vegetables, but anecdotally many people do prefer work in child care and elder care roles that avoid being too physically taxing, likely Graeber provides citations.
Many people enjoy many aspects of some jobs and don't enjoy the aspects that sucks. That's not news, nor is it up to David Graeber to define which jobs are 'bullshit' and which are necessary.
"A 2021 study empirically tested several of Graeber's claims, such as that bullshit jobs were increasing over time and that they accounted for much of the workforce. Using data from the EU-conducted European Working Conditions Survey, the study found that a low and declining proportion of employees considered their jobs to be "rarely" or "never" useful.[17] The study also found that while there was some correlation between occupation and feelings of uselessness, they did not correspond neatly with Graeber's analysis; bullshit "taskmasters" and "goons" such as hedge-fund managers or lobbyists reported that they were vastly satisfied with their work, while essential workers like refuse collectors and cleaners often felt their jobs were useless."
From the same article.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:41 AM on March 7 [3 favorites]
Many people enjoy many aspects of some jobs and don't enjoy the aspects that sucks. That's not news, nor is it up to David Graeber to define which jobs are 'bullshit' and which are necessary.
"A 2021 study empirically tested several of Graeber's claims, such as that bullshit jobs were increasing over time and that they accounted for much of the workforce. Using data from the EU-conducted European Working Conditions Survey, the study found that a low and declining proportion of employees considered their jobs to be "rarely" or "never" useful.[17] The study also found that while there was some correlation between occupation and feelings of uselessness, they did not correspond neatly with Graeber's analysis; bullshit "taskmasters" and "goons" such as hedge-fund managers or lobbyists reported that they were vastly satisfied with their work, while essential workers like refuse collectors and cleaners often felt their jobs were useless."
From the same article.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:41 AM on March 7 [3 favorites]
Yeah it would be nice if somebody besides fringe weirdos/ possible Nazis wrote something interesting to read about dealing with a contracting population in a healthy way. I'm open to those suggestions/ welcome that post.
Peter Zeihan gives a lot of talks about economic demographics all around the world, and he seems to know what he's talking about. I don't know if he offers much in the say of solutions, but he is very very good at outlining the problems that he sees approaching.
Interestingly, Zeihen said something in a talk something like 2 years ago that I've been thinking about a lot lately, which is that he was starting to see the international order break down in terms of shipping. He said that one of the reasons globalization has been so successful is that the US basically guarantees the safety of ships out on the open sea, and that one of the early signs of the global order breaking down would be to see the safety of ships no longer have that guarantee.
I can see echoes of that in what has been going on in the Red Sea with the Houthis, truly. Why are the US and the UK trying to stop the missiles? Well, guarantors of the global trade routes.
posted by hippybear at 11:55 AM on March 7 [6 favorites]
Peter Zeihan gives a lot of talks about economic demographics all around the world, and he seems to know what he's talking about. I don't know if he offers much in the say of solutions, but he is very very good at outlining the problems that he sees approaching.
Interestingly, Zeihen said something in a talk something like 2 years ago that I've been thinking about a lot lately, which is that he was starting to see the international order break down in terms of shipping. He said that one of the reasons globalization has been so successful is that the US basically guarantees the safety of ships out on the open sea, and that one of the early signs of the global order breaking down would be to see the safety of ships no longer have that guarantee.
I can see echoes of that in what has been going on in the Red Sea with the Houthis, truly. Why are the US and the UK trying to stop the missiles? Well, guarantors of the global trade routes.
posted by hippybear at 11:55 AM on March 7 [6 favorites]
> " economics in favor of political economy"
Political Economy - IS economics.
yes yes yes i know my primary concern is that i saw a list of blowhards and appeared to be not on it, and you know what that made me feel real uncomfortable
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 1:50 PM on March 7 [3 favorites]
Political Economy - IS economics.
yes yes yes i know my primary concern is that i saw a list of blowhards and appeared to be not on it, and you know what that made me feel real uncomfortable
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 1:50 PM on March 7 [3 favorites]
For a related analysis, Robert J Gordon's book, "The Rise and Fall of American Growth" discusses the special century from 1870 to 1970 in the US.
Example - imagine a kitchen from 60 years ago - yes the appliances might be fewer, but it is in the house with one person cooking and recognisably similar to a modern kitchen. Then take it back another 60 years ago - and it is not recognisable as a kitchen at all - no running water, no electricity, no refrigeration, a veritable posse of people preparing food as everything is made fresh on the day, open fire, and not even part of the house, just in case something catches fire.
Gordon discusses the impact of multiple innovations such transport, refrigeration, etc in the half century after 1870 and how establishing that infrastructure allowed for the sustained economic boom until the 1970s. Since the 1970s what have been the major innovations - genetics, internet, computers - that's about it.
So yes - the future is here - and we are going to see how much profit there is in distributing it more widely. To the extent that the future is being offered to more marginal populations, the profits are not going to be as high.
As for population growth - Covid showed how that can be derailed.
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 1:59 PM on March 7 [1 favorite]
Example - imagine a kitchen from 60 years ago - yes the appliances might be fewer, but it is in the house with one person cooking and recognisably similar to a modern kitchen. Then take it back another 60 years ago - and it is not recognisable as a kitchen at all - no running water, no electricity, no refrigeration, a veritable posse of people preparing food as everything is made fresh on the day, open fire, and not even part of the house, just in case something catches fire.
Gordon discusses the impact of multiple innovations such transport, refrigeration, etc in the half century after 1870 and how establishing that infrastructure allowed for the sustained economic boom until the 1970s. Since the 1970s what have been the major innovations - genetics, internet, computers - that's about it.
So yes - the future is here - and we are going to see how much profit there is in distributing it more widely. To the extent that the future is being offered to more marginal populations, the profits are not going to be as high.
As for population growth - Covid showed how that can be derailed.
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 1:59 PM on March 7 [1 favorite]
Zeihan is predicting-- I mean currently predicting-- that the US will no longer protect commercial shipping, that the US (with Mexico, which is doing a lot better) will be fine, and the eastern hemisphere will be screwed. My fantasy is that the US still has some interest in international shipping and Japan, which is desperately dependent on shipping and has a pretty good navy, will ally to protect commercial shipping, but this is a guess.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:05 PM on March 7 [2 favorites]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:05 PM on March 7 [2 favorites]
> I don't think we really have an answer for what happens then. Does Marx, does Harvey, have a vision for an economy forced into degrowth, a permanent recession? I mean you can certainly imagine a fairer distribution during that sort of economic heat-death, but that idea of growth is so baked into everything we do and think about the economy. We're really going to need a new theory.
here's my theory i think we should wear ratty old clothes and use nokia phones with batteries that don't really hold charge anymore and we should work maybe four hours a day at most and even when we have to be at work we shouldn't be too invested in it and we should spend a lot of time riding around on crappy old bikes that we got from the thrift store where we got all our clothes and that threadbare couch that's exactly the wrong shade of orange but whatever it's comfortable and it was cheap and when we brought it home at first we thought we couldn't get it up the staircase because the staircase is a little bit too narrow, we thought, and it's got that weird landing, but then one of us figured out to stand it up on its side and sort of spiral it around, it's hard to describe but it worked, it just barely fit but it fit and we got the couch into the apartment and it really is comfortable, it's ugly but we love it, we could ride around on those bikes we got from that thrift store until we find a good place to spread out a blanket and sit down or lay down whichsoever strikes our respective fancies and then we could bullshit about philosophy and economics and gossip about whoever couldn't make it to the picnic today because gossip is what humans were made for and also we should drink wine. if we're feeling fancy we could bust out the nice stuff — 20 bucks a bottle! — or if it's just a regular tuesday afternoon and we're all broke either because we're in a degrowth economy or because no one wants to work anymore or maybe because we all got fired for blowing off work too many times that's cool too cause box wine has its own unique charms. oh and i'll bring those cookies that my ex-girlfriend's ex-girlfriend baked i think you had them that one time when she brought a big batch to that party, they're incredible, right?
also we should grow weed in the backyard of whichever one of us has a backyard and if one or more of us has a chemistry degree i have some very interesting ideas for them.
and furthermore i recommend that people make out with each other all the time, like all the time that's probably the most important thing. and people should make out with people they're not expected to or supposed to and cause all sorts of drama and get super messy and have fights and then fuck and then have more fights and fuck again, because if folks didn't do that their friends wouldn't have any good gossip to share next time they're the ones who can't make it to the picnic. and if we're between messy relationships then we could make a habit of looking wistfully out the window at the rain (presuming the day isn't sunny like that one pretty tuesday when we took that bike ride and picnicked and bullshitted and gossiped and got pleasantly tipsy and had those incredible cookies and then after sobering up for a little while we biked back home) we can look wistfully out the window at the rain and thoughtfully put our pens to our lips instead of actually writing and we can pine away, because when you get down to it it's fun to pine a little sometimes.
ps obviously if you just want to bike out to the middle of nowhere by yourself and read romance novels or computer science textbooks or kierkegaard or newspapers or austen or murderbot or this really fun series about dragons and revolution that the author of scholomance wrote before she wrote scholomance the whole series is at the library and i don't think anyone's put them on reserve that is extremely cool because i front about causing messy drama but actually i'm a total introvert just like you. or if you're super ambitious you could take pen and paper with you and try writing some science fiction or fantasy or economics or computer science textbooks or critical theory or dragon revolutions or trashy romance novels of your own, definitely if you want to write trashy romance novels you should do that because they're fun to write and fun to read and moreover i have heard rumors that there are bodices out there that have not yet been ripped and that simply will not do! will! not! do!
and then later we'll play board games if you want.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 2:43 PM on March 7 [13 favorites]
here's my theory i think we should wear ratty old clothes and use nokia phones with batteries that don't really hold charge anymore and we should work maybe four hours a day at most and even when we have to be at work we shouldn't be too invested in it and we should spend a lot of time riding around on crappy old bikes that we got from the thrift store where we got all our clothes and that threadbare couch that's exactly the wrong shade of orange but whatever it's comfortable and it was cheap and when we brought it home at first we thought we couldn't get it up the staircase because the staircase is a little bit too narrow, we thought, and it's got that weird landing, but then one of us figured out to stand it up on its side and sort of spiral it around, it's hard to describe but it worked, it just barely fit but it fit and we got the couch into the apartment and it really is comfortable, it's ugly but we love it, we could ride around on those bikes we got from that thrift store until we find a good place to spread out a blanket and sit down or lay down whichsoever strikes our respective fancies and then we could bullshit about philosophy and economics and gossip about whoever couldn't make it to the picnic today because gossip is what humans were made for and also we should drink wine. if we're feeling fancy we could bust out the nice stuff — 20 bucks a bottle! — or if it's just a regular tuesday afternoon and we're all broke either because we're in a degrowth economy or because no one wants to work anymore or maybe because we all got fired for blowing off work too many times that's cool too cause box wine has its own unique charms. oh and i'll bring those cookies that my ex-girlfriend's ex-girlfriend baked i think you had them that one time when she brought a big batch to that party, they're incredible, right?
also we should grow weed in the backyard of whichever one of us has a backyard and if one or more of us has a chemistry degree i have some very interesting ideas for them.
and furthermore i recommend that people make out with each other all the time, like all the time that's probably the most important thing. and people should make out with people they're not expected to or supposed to and cause all sorts of drama and get super messy and have fights and then fuck and then have more fights and fuck again, because if folks didn't do that their friends wouldn't have any good gossip to share next time they're the ones who can't make it to the picnic. and if we're between messy relationships then we could make a habit of looking wistfully out the window at the rain (presuming the day isn't sunny like that one pretty tuesday when we took that bike ride and picnicked and bullshitted and gossiped and got pleasantly tipsy and had those incredible cookies and then after sobering up for a little while we biked back home) we can look wistfully out the window at the rain and thoughtfully put our pens to our lips instead of actually writing and we can pine away, because when you get down to it it's fun to pine a little sometimes.
ps obviously if you just want to bike out to the middle of nowhere by yourself and read romance novels or computer science textbooks or kierkegaard or newspapers or austen or murderbot or this really fun series about dragons and revolution that the author of scholomance wrote before she wrote scholomance the whole series is at the library and i don't think anyone's put them on reserve that is extremely cool because i front about causing messy drama but actually i'm a total introvert just like you. or if you're super ambitious you could take pen and paper with you and try writing some science fiction or fantasy or economics or computer science textbooks or critical theory or dragon revolutions or trashy romance novels of your own, definitely if you want to write trashy romance novels you should do that because they're fun to write and fun to read and moreover i have heard rumors that there are bodices out there that have not yet been ripped and that simply will not do! will! not! do!
and then later we'll play board games if you want.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 2:43 PM on March 7 [13 favorites]
Haven't done the making out with everyone part...
A friend did grow weed in his backyard, and it was really good.
And ratty old clothes is pretty much my thing.
And then I will totally play board games. Also, butts
posted by Windopaene at 3:01 PM on March 7 [3 favorites]
A friend did grow weed in his backyard, and it was really good.
And ratty old clothes is pretty much my thing.
And then I will totally play board games. Also, butts
posted by Windopaene at 3:01 PM on March 7 [3 favorites]
ps one day we'll get old and too achy to ride bikes as much as we used to but we'll still find ways to have fun and some of that fun that we will have will make pretty good gossip i bet.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 3:06 PM on March 7 [4 favorites]
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 3:06 PM on March 7 [4 favorites]
OMG get a room, you two!
posted by hippybear at 3:09 PM on March 7 [5 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 3:09 PM on March 7 [5 favorites]
but it's so nice out today
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 3:12 PM on March 7 [3 favorites]
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 3:12 PM on March 7 [3 favorites]
Yes, and and we can all see it's out!
posted by hippybear at 3:17 PM on March 7 [3 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 3:17 PM on March 7 [3 favorites]
they all ultimately boil down to the fact that the population increases
Anyone this reductionist and who doesn't even once consider "efficiencies" in the economic growth equation can safely be placed into the "doesn't understand economics" and probably "has axe to grind, will not be derailed by facts" buckets. That's without 'intersecting' magic and politics.
But then, I've been made quite aware that I'm evil for even considering economics as anything other than 'bad'.
posted by kjs3 at 3:24 PM on March 7 [3 favorites]
Anyone this reductionist and who doesn't even once consider "efficiencies" in the economic growth equation can safely be placed into the "doesn't understand economics" and probably "has axe to grind, will not be derailed by facts" buckets. That's without 'intersecting' magic and politics.
But then, I've been made quite aware that I'm evil for even considering economics as anything other than 'bad'.
posted by kjs3 at 3:24 PM on March 7 [3 favorites]
You don't have to be smart to understand that an economic system requiring constant expansion will eventually fail. We argue whether population leads production or production leads population. The answer is yes to both propositions.
The sad pretense that shifting to solar or wind power will solve "the problem" is a sweet dream that ignores the economic system that brought us to this predicament. Phoenix, Arizona, has just now realized that it has to suspend issuing new building permits because it has to figure out where to get the water to support more people. I suppose the building trades can go elsewhere when they finish their contracts in Phoenix. This is called "kicking the can down the road."
Population expansion is a significant player. Our version of capitalism requires it, and one of its features is the unsustainable use of resources. We may figure out a way to provide water anywhere it's needed, but we aren't there yet. We may decide to build houses out of dirt clods. But we aren't there yet. We may choose to grow food without poisoning the Earth. But not yet. We can lay our deficiencies at the feet of a system that requires pro-rated profit, with the fat end of the cash at the top. Are we so calcified in this paradigm that we can't come up with a better solution than lopping off care for our grandparents or letting our children run loose while their parents work at two jobs so they can afford an apartment in the city?
We Americans are eating our children. Unless overhauled, the system will crash. The pie is only so big. It doesn't take a visionary to realize that only some will have the clout to decide how to determine the size of the slices and to whom they will be given. Given the importance of international trade, losing our hegemony may be only a footnote.
posted by mule98J at 4:30 PM on March 7 [5 favorites]
The sad pretense that shifting to solar or wind power will solve "the problem" is a sweet dream that ignores the economic system that brought us to this predicament. Phoenix, Arizona, has just now realized that it has to suspend issuing new building permits because it has to figure out where to get the water to support more people. I suppose the building trades can go elsewhere when they finish their contracts in Phoenix. This is called "kicking the can down the road."
Population expansion is a significant player. Our version of capitalism requires it, and one of its features is the unsustainable use of resources. We may figure out a way to provide water anywhere it's needed, but we aren't there yet. We may decide to build houses out of dirt clods. But we aren't there yet. We may choose to grow food without poisoning the Earth. But not yet. We can lay our deficiencies at the feet of a system that requires pro-rated profit, with the fat end of the cash at the top. Are we so calcified in this paradigm that we can't come up with a better solution than lopping off care for our grandparents or letting our children run loose while their parents work at two jobs so they can afford an apartment in the city?
We Americans are eating our children. Unless overhauled, the system will crash. The pie is only so big. It doesn't take a visionary to realize that only some will have the clout to decide how to determine the size of the slices and to whom they will be given. Given the importance of international trade, losing our hegemony may be only a footnote.
posted by mule98J at 4:30 PM on March 7 [5 favorites]
I do think Graeber over simplifies, but we're not only discussing Graeber's opinion here, The_Vegetables. Academics love discussing harmful administration. "John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by century's end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour work week"
We've shrunk the primary sector to less than 1%, and secondary winds up like 20% in the US, so now almost everyone does tertiary sector, except that actual services, regulations, etc have all been cut dramatically in the name of efficency. We have a giant bullshit shapped hole. Jevons paradox doesn't always hold, but it consumes all the liesure time fairly well.
Joseph Tainter argues the Roman empire's collapse benefitted most Roman subjects, specifically because of the taxation & waste by the empire. We've achieved this through fossil fuels more than innovation, much of which pays the food shipping that sustains our population. We're also more like Easter Island today in that planetary boundaries shall kill off most humans. Yet, we've good reason to hope collapse could improve most survivors lives, even ignoring the future biggies like the tropics maybe remaining habitable.
Zeihan maybe clever, hippybear. Also yes, the US has considerable natural resources, especially once you count Ccnada's resource as US resources. Zeihan always comes off as too much of cheerleader though, and clearly a team American market always exits, so it's very hard to take Zeihan too seriously.
I actually do think trade shall decline, but entirely because of shortages caused by climate etc, not for other political reaosns, like Zeihan thinks. I doubt much happens this decade of course, but maybe 2040s shall witness some real famines.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:38 PM on March 7 [4 favorites]
We've shrunk the primary sector to less than 1%, and secondary winds up like 20% in the US, so now almost everyone does tertiary sector, except that actual services, regulations, etc have all been cut dramatically in the name of efficency. We have a giant bullshit shapped hole. Jevons paradox doesn't always hold, but it consumes all the liesure time fairly well.
Joseph Tainter argues the Roman empire's collapse benefitted most Roman subjects, specifically because of the taxation & waste by the empire. We've achieved this through fossil fuels more than innovation, much of which pays the food shipping that sustains our population. We're also more like Easter Island today in that planetary boundaries shall kill off most humans. Yet, we've good reason to hope collapse could improve most survivors lives, even ignoring the future biggies like the tropics maybe remaining habitable.
Zeihan maybe clever, hippybear. Also yes, the US has considerable natural resources, especially once you count Ccnada's resource as US resources. Zeihan always comes off as too much of cheerleader though, and clearly a team American market always exits, so it's very hard to take Zeihan too seriously.
I actually do think trade shall decline, but entirely because of shortages caused by climate etc, not for other political reaosns, like Zeihan thinks. I doubt much happens this decade of course, but maybe 2040s shall witness some real famines.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:38 PM on March 7 [4 favorites]
i declare this guy's ideas bad and i also declare the guy himself bad.
Are you implying it's bad when a white guy is cosplaying the religion of an indigenous people who were genocided by a massive colonial power leaving no authoritative records of what their religion was really like replacing it with a bunch of made up fantasy New Age 'spiritual' rubbish and an appropriated ethnic identity?
I guess I can see that.
posted by kjs3 at 5:02 PM on March 7 [10 favorites]
Are you implying it's bad when a white guy is cosplaying the religion of an indigenous people who were genocided by a massive colonial power leaving no authoritative records of what their religion was really like replacing it with a bunch of made up fantasy New Age 'spiritual' rubbish and an appropriated ethnic identity?
I guess I can see that.
posted by kjs3 at 5:02 PM on March 7 [10 favorites]
My fantasy is that the US still has some interest in international shipping and Japan, which is desperately dependent on shipping and has a pretty good navy, will ally to protect commercial shipping, but this is a guess.
Japan, S. Korea, Vietnam, Philippines . Yeah...I think even a casual look at trade flows indicates we have at least 'some interest' in the region.
posted by kjs3 at 5:36 PM on March 7 [1 favorite]
Japan, S. Korea, Vietnam, Philippines . Yeah...I think even a casual look at trade flows indicates we have at least 'some interest' in the region.
posted by kjs3 at 5:36 PM on March 7 [1 favorite]
Zeihan is predicting-- I mean currently predicting-- that the US will no longer protect commercial shipping
Yes, and I can't understand this. In the book of his I read and the videos I've seen he just asserts this, but doesn't explain why.
And that was before the Red Sea, which he found (if I recall correctly) "interesting."
posted by doctornemo at 9:46 PM on March 7 [1 favorite]
Yes, and I can't understand this. In the book of his I read and the videos I've seen he just asserts this, but doesn't explain why.
And that was before the Red Sea, which he found (if I recall correctly) "interesting."
posted by doctornemo at 9:46 PM on March 7 [1 favorite]
I wish I could favorite mule98J multiple times. That's absolutely correct. The crises and causes staring us down are the ultimate dark version of improv's "yes, and ...". Population, capitalism, resource consumption, ideological conflict, loss of culture, etc. are leading to climate change, resource shortages, destruction of planetary resources, etc.
As someone who spent decades in the corporate world and the finance industry, I have come to see the capitalism piece as maybe the most significant. We really can't be in the business of producing things that people don't need (or want, often) and preferring meta-industries like finance, web tech, and insurance that really should be more like plumbing or garbage collection - moderately paid commodity jobs that grease the wheels. And most obviously "we need to make more profit next year" is a ridiculous way to run an economy. It just isn't going to last.
Trivial example of the "don't need" piece: You have a Yeti water bottle that's aircraft aluminum and will last 100 years or more. Now the web techs have enabled advertisers to get you to buy a "Stanley" cup that will also last 100 years or more. And I bet you don't have just 2 water bottles! Why the fuck are we incentivizing this? Surely there are now enough water bottles in the world that we can just drastically lower production for a while?
posted by caviar2d2 at 6:15 AM on March 8 [7 favorites]
As someone who spent decades in the corporate world and the finance industry, I have come to see the capitalism piece as maybe the most significant. We really can't be in the business of producing things that people don't need (or want, often) and preferring meta-industries like finance, web tech, and insurance that really should be more like plumbing or garbage collection - moderately paid commodity jobs that grease the wheels. And most obviously "we need to make more profit next year" is a ridiculous way to run an economy. It just isn't going to last.
Trivial example of the "don't need" piece: You have a Yeti water bottle that's aircraft aluminum and will last 100 years or more. Now the web techs have enabled advertisers to get you to buy a "Stanley" cup that will also last 100 years or more. And I bet you don't have just 2 water bottles! Why the fuck are we incentivizing this? Surely there are now enough water bottles in the world that we can just drastically lower production for a while?
posted by caviar2d2 at 6:15 AM on March 8 [7 favorites]
We already don't have enough people do do work in the US now
Mmm, and fully half of the country is frothing at the mouth about how the southern border is overrun by people who want to be here so badly nothing we can do dissuades them.
It's almost as if we had a solution neatly divided into two problems, if we could get over our xenophobia.
Every time people in a highly developed economy (I saw a story about concern in France recently, to which I reacted the same way) fret about population shrink, I feel like there's an unspoken white-supremicist subtext, in that all of those places could have lots more people if they actually wanted to.
posted by jackbishop at 6:23 AM on March 8 [7 favorites]
Mmm, and fully half of the country is frothing at the mouth about how the southern border is overrun by people who want to be here so badly nothing we can do dissuades them.
It's almost as if we had a solution neatly divided into two problems, if we could get over our xenophobia.
Every time people in a highly developed economy (I saw a story about concern in France recently, to which I reacted the same way) fret about population shrink, I feel like there's an unspoken white-supremicist subtext, in that all of those places could have lots more people if they actually wanted to.
posted by jackbishop at 6:23 AM on March 8 [7 favorites]
Yes, we should absolutely embrace immigration, drastically simplify and expand it, and speed the path to permanent residency and citizenship for people who want that instead of seasonal migration. I think the way you sell that to the conservatives (which you have to do) is by simultaneously setting some clear expectations for immigrants *and* for communities welcoming them. For example, better funding for English classes, housing solutions, and an exhortation to communities to make people feel at home and show them why America is special if we think that. We also need to acknowledge the real problems such as too much strain on small communities, undercutting of established local businesses through under-the-table cash work, and American companies deliberately flouting labor rules. Which comes back to capitalism - we should not be taking advantage of immigrants by having them do shit jobs for low wages. That's not fair to them or to the existing workforce.
posted by caviar2d2 at 7:19 AM on March 8 [3 favorites]
posted by caviar2d2 at 7:19 AM on March 8 [3 favorites]
corrections and clarifications:
- the fancy wine costs 10 dollars really but it tastes like 20 i swear
- the party where you had the cookies before was the one at gabe's place i think the one where his dog got out and we had to all spend like an hour looking for him
- my roommate is ace so they don't make out with anybody but also they've got some good gossip
- does your guy have molly if so lmk
We also need to acknowledge the real problems such as too much strain on small communities, undercutting of established local businesses through under-the-table cash work, and American companies deliberately flouting labor rules. Which comes back to capitalism - we should not be taking advantage of immigrants by having them do shit jobs for low wages. That's not fair to them or to the existing workforce.
I do think expanding the legitimized immigration pathways would go a long way towards solving that. The abusive exploitation of immigrant workers is not exclusively limited to undocumented immigrants, but it absolutely falls to a disproportionate degree on them, because they have no legal recourse and their employers know it.
posted by jackbishop at 9:28 AM on March 8 [3 favorites]
I do think expanding the legitimized immigration pathways would go a long way towards solving that. The abusive exploitation of immigrant workers is not exclusively limited to undocumented immigrants, but it absolutely falls to a disproportionate degree on them, because they have no legal recourse and their employers know it.
posted by jackbishop at 9:28 AM on March 8 [3 favorites]
So, I haven't watched this yet, but here's Zeihan speaking from March 5.
Unraveling The Next 20 Years: Embracing Opportunities in a Changing World [1h35m]
posted by hippybear at 3:42 PM on March 8 [1 favorite]
Unraveling The Next 20 Years: Embracing Opportunities in a Changing World [1h35m]
posted by hippybear at 3:42 PM on March 8 [1 favorite]
I've watched that before, and yes interesting, but you'd learn the fact about US+Canada being resource rich from others. I still think: Zeihan sells US cheerleading. Zeihan's intentional empire retraction sounds like a fantasy.
I'm interested in Zeihan prediction of credit collapse in places like China & India. It's maybe just wrong in that they've much larger populations. We cannot afford economic growth anywhere, and populations increases the damage potential, so Zeihan prediction sounds optimistic for the world, but maybe it's optimistic even for those nations. In particular, India would've more political options after Mukesh Ambani's empire collapses.
I'm cautiously hopeful that fossil fuel access being lost earlier benefits nations, ala "collapse now and avoid the rush." If so, America+Canada could pay a heafty price for their enregy reserves.
posted by jeffburdges at 5:23 AM on March 9 [1 favorite]
I'm interested in Zeihan prediction of credit collapse in places like China & India. It's maybe just wrong in that they've much larger populations. We cannot afford economic growth anywhere, and populations increases the damage potential, so Zeihan prediction sounds optimistic for the world, but maybe it's optimistic even for those nations. In particular, India would've more political options after Mukesh Ambani's empire collapses.
I'm cautiously hopeful that fossil fuel access being lost earlier benefits nations, ala "collapse now and avoid the rush." If so, America+Canada could pay a heafty price for their enregy reserves.
posted by jeffburdges at 5:23 AM on March 9 [1 favorite]
The thing that makes me twitch about Zeihan (aside from that I wonder whether he's telling people who are paying him want to hear) is that I never get a feeling for how this future of differentially lower populations is going to work out. It's almost as though he's taking countries one at a time too much.
What was that about the collapse of Han Chinese as an ethnicity? This is just silly-- it might cease to be a gigantic regional dominant ethnicity, but it isn't going away.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 6:51 AM on March 9 [3 favorites]
What was that about the collapse of Han Chinese as an ethnicity? This is just silly-- it might cease to be a gigantic regional dominant ethnicity, but it isn't going away.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 6:51 AM on March 9 [3 favorites]
I don't entirely buy all of Zeehan's proclamations. But someone was asking in this thread about someone doing predictions of the future that were different from the ones featured in the main links.
I'd welcome other viewpoints. too.
posted by hippybear at 4:35 PM on March 9 [1 favorite]
I'd welcome other viewpoints. too.
posted by hippybear at 4:35 PM on March 9 [1 favorite]
Zeihan's intentional empire retraction sounds like a fantasy.
Agreed. I've read one of his books and listened to a bunch of his videos and can't find him explaining how this would actually happen.
posted by doctornemo at 1:18 PM on March 10 [2 favorites]
Agreed. I've read one of his books and listened to a bunch of his videos and can't find him explaining how this would actually happen.
posted by doctornemo at 1:18 PM on March 10 [2 favorites]
someone was asking in this thread about someone doing predictions of the future that were different from the ones featured in the main links.
I'd welcome other viewpoints. too.
As a futurist, I can see what I can find that fits the blue.
posted by doctornemo at 1:19 PM on March 10 [2 favorites]
I'd welcome other viewpoints. too.
As a futurist, I can see what I can find that fits the blue.
posted by doctornemo at 1:19 PM on March 10 [2 favorites]
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> It seems like simple common sense to most people nowadays that assets will on average increase in value, investments will yield a return, and businesses will make a profit. Stop and think about that for a minute, though. Why does this happen? Because the economy grows every quarter. Why does the economy grow every quarter? There are many reasons, but they all ultimately boil down to the fact that the population increases.
seems pretty off to me. the economy doesn't grow as population increases, the economy grows as more and more aspects of human life are marketized, as more and more regions are marketized, and as more and more wealth is forcibly extracted through hyperexploitation — both colonialist hyperexploitation and the internal colonialisms within the metropole itself that manifest as race-based hyperexploitation.
there are economic implications to population decline, most notably the implications of having a large span of time with are more people past the age/health requirements of peak exploitability relative to the number of people of exploitable age, but the actual total number of people isn't the key thing there.
and this bit here:
> We’ve already seen some of this by way of articles in the mainstream media shrieking that growing your own food is bad for the climate, and that people who take care of their own health instead of relying on a baroque and fantastically overpriced medical industry are evil conspiracy theorists.
seems fuckin' evil. the first link is to a report on a study that counted the carbon emitted per serving of food in urban agriculture and rural agriculture (quelle horreur! how dare they count! such mainstream media shrieking!) and discovered that, hey, looks like urban agriculture might make a lot of carbon.
and the second link, that second link there, ooh boy. the people who the article describes as "people who take care of their own health" are in fact "wellness influencers" — the "i don't need your evil vaccine because i have an immune system!!" folks — and the linked article concerns how that demographic are indeed total suckers for / promulgators of trash ideas.
so yeah. i declare this article sus.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 1:17 AM on March 7 [42 favorites]