Are You Troubled ENOUGH ?

[hpeer]

Ill plug RO Wilson’s idea of Half Earth. I like that concept but have little faith it will gain traction.

Essentially it says we, each individual country, should learn to live within 1/2 of all resources setting aside 1/2 the country for nature.

https://www.half-earthproject.org/

[jeff356]

I thought it very interesting to see some of the impacts on pollution and smog just in the small time that some some countries shuddered in place for a Covid response.

Now if there was way to engineer and put in place technologies and processes that could come near to achieving the same outcome with regards to reduced pollution I think it would make a great impact towards the end goal.

[Don C L]

Originally Posted by Singularity

I linked this video in another thread here, but if you're not familiar with the maths of the logistic map, I think you'll find it eminently interesting. It's perhaps a holy grail of sorts for old Pythagorus. Why this math isn't taught broadly is curious.

The guy in the video has a PhD in physics and otherwise demonstrates the logistic map using animal populations:

https://youtu.be/ovJcsL7vyrk

Extremely cool! Pythagoras would have loved it I bet!
Pulsations of chaos and order made me think about wave patterns too.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by hpeer

The UN has been fantastically wrong in population projections, so there is that. And I see some trends and attitudes that buck that prediction. Another beer night topic.

But more importantly to you point I think the country to watch is Japan. Population shrinking and aging and xenophobic they Would seem to be the country to face population degrowth issues first. Decade long depression, many jobs for every potential applicant, high work related suicide rates.

Its a place we should watch and learn from.

Indeed, so much to talk about, so many beers to drink .
I am not up on the UN's historic prognostication on population. The book I just read (Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline by Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson) argues this point as well, but to the down side. They claim the UN is over-estimating the levels of population growth, and therefore they say global population will peak earlier and lower.

Regardless of who exactly is right, the rate of population increase has been slowing for many decades, and shows no sign of reversing. Population will peak and start to decline in the very near future.

The point of the book is that we've never experienced this kind of coming depopulation. Outside of catastrophic pandemics, most human societies only know how to manage population growth, not shrinkage. So yes, Japan is a canary in the coal mine for what may be coming to all of us soon.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by hpeer

...I think the country to watch is Japan. Population shrinking and aging and xenophobic they Would seem to be the country to face population degrowth issues first. Decade long depression, many jobs for every potential applicant, high work related suicide rates.

Its a place we should watch and learn from.

I don't believe that Japan has been in a decade-long economic depression, but like most economies, there's some future economic pain coming.

They keep soldiering on, and with some exceptions, their quality of life is pretty good, I believe. (I visited once in the 90s). I don't know much more than that.

I haven't studied this, but here's a link to "Abenomics", the economic path that has been followed in Japan since 2012, and this plus all the links one can find when searching Abenomics should give one insight into their recent economic situation.

(while doing a search on "japan" and "depression", there were a lot of links like this, indication of another problem they're grappling with)

It will definitely be interesting to watch Japan in the next few years. I believe that they are a tough and resourceful nation, so rather than being the canary in the coal-mine, they might help lead the world to economic and other solutions.

They could certainly teach us lots about living with less wealth inequality.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

I wouldn't call ecological damage, habitat loss, or extinctions "progress", but maybe it's just me.

Productive farms, factories being shut down because of "the view"... when has that ever happened, seriously? And how about the tons of abandoned factories, oil wells, mines, dumps and brownlands that companies have just walked away from without cleaning them up?

This doesn't have enough truth to even qualify as an excuse.

A true media approach...ignore the issue and play word games to push the agenda along.

You can nitpick over is it a farm vs store vs factory...and it might be an article of the eco-faith not the "view" but yes, businesses do get shut down. Usually it's indirect by implementing rules and regulations that make it impractical to keep the business operational.

You haven't countered the truth, you just try to shut down the conversation when you can't make a factual response.

PS: I'm not suggesting we don't protect the environment but the emotion driven responses will always fail in the long run because reality sets in at some point and that small group of wealthy will lose power if they don't take the impact to the poor into consideration.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

You haven't countered the truth, you just try to shut down the conversation when you can't make a factual response.

Not at all. But I'm not gonna debate weak or poorly made points, I will call them as such. Do better. I know you're capable of it.

"Media" ..."agenda"... -yawn- ...tired and offpoint. Come up with something original.

PS: I'm not suggesting we don't protect the environment but the emotion driven responses will always fail in the long run because reality sets in at some point and that small group of wealthy will lose power if they don't take the impact to the poor into consideration.

um, what? What are you trying to say?

[HeinSdL]

I'm more than troubled enough.


Speaking about economic growth, the benefits of which ended for most years if not decades ago, it's an utterly fraudulent concept. It used to be beneficial for the masses in the post war years. Take North Sea oil, of which I have some knowledge but certainly is not an exception, which went from 0 to 500 fixed structures, 10's of thousands of wells and 100's of kilometres of pipeline and many more mobile rigs in the space of two decades. That was growth: employment for millions.


When I started my career there there was no more growth as characterised by constant cost cutting, lay-offs and certainly not much in terms of perks to speak of.


So I moved to finance - that's how it works right, leave a shrinking industry and jump onto something else where the action is. (Try telling that to a life-long roughneck though.) And finance, in most of the years I've worked there, hasn't exactly been a hotspot of growth either. A bit of luck and a lot of focus kind of got me through, but this wasn't growth.


So where is the growth? Well obviously in the tech sector. And who works there? Well relatively no-one compared to the massive work forces of legacy industries. Google: $40b revenues mainly through stuffing adverts into websites. Amazon: $200b? and still growing at 20%+ annually. But don't ask the average Amazon worker how the growth of their employer is working out for them. (These workers are anyway not really Amazon workers as oilfield workers used to be, they're just tiny cogs in the machine.)


For most, growth has been a non-existent concept, it simply gets hoovered up by the 0.01%. Now I don't really need global economic growth personally, but I, as all of us, do need a functioning planet. And that is where it becomes troubling: to ensure growth continues for the benefit of the very few, all the rest need to fall into place and consume, consume, consume. Plastic sh*t shipped from China which no one really wants and certainly does not need, kids getting plumbed into their phone at the earliest opportunity completely bypassing any parental oversight, all the while pumping I don't know how many tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. This is not growth, this is a fraud.


(NB did you know The Netherlands is the second biggest exporter of farmed meat globally? WTF, soya from Brazil in and out pops meat at 99c per kilo producing a hell of a lot of pollution in the process. And not a Dutch regular citizen benefitting in the slightest. All in the name of economic growth.)


So I am troubled. The system has broken down and we're all still harping on about economic growth while not realising that that growth is not meant for the masses. Only for the very few who do not give a damn if the whole show eventually collapses, and in fact and in addition have the lobbying power to ensure nothing changes.


So for the avoidance of doubt I will respond to the original question just once more: the answer is yes, more than.

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by HeinSdL

"...



So where is the growth? Well obviously in the tech sector. And who works there? Well relatively no-one compared to the massive work forces of legacy industries. Google: $40b revenues mainly through stuffing adverts into websites. Amazon: $200b? and still growing at 20%+ annually. But don't ask the average Amazon worker how the growth of their employer is working out for them. (These workers are anyway not really Amazon workers as oilfield workers used to be, they're just tiny cogs in the machine.)


For most, growth has been a non-existent concept, (...)


..."

I believe there was a huge growth in Asia over 1980 - 2007. Hundreds of millions of new jobs created there in that period. Possibly well over one billion new jobs.



Also considerable growth in Eastern European block countries that joined the EU. Also millions of new jobs.


Years after 2007 see fewer new jobs everywhere.


b.

[RaymondR]

Since an economy is the total value of goods and services produced you don't need to consume more resources to grow it. For example you could take all the cheap Korean built cars, melt them down and rebuild them as Mercedes. The inputs are primarily metaphysical, that is engineering, and the electricity used to reform the materials, which could in the future be cheap nuke, wind or solar or a combination of same. Cease the quantity production and switch to quality.

[Mike OReilly]

You can also dump all the oil in coastal oceans, then clean it all up. This would be a huge boost to the economy and to GDP. But it would not be so good for the coastal environment.

This is just one example of the insanity of how we account, and value, things in our societies.

[HeinSdL]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

I believe there was a huge growth in Asia over 1980 - 2007. Hundreds of millions of new jobs created there in that period. Possibly well over one billion new jobs.



Also considerable growth in Eastern European block countries that joined the EU. Also millions of new jobs.


Years after 2007 see fewer new jobs everywhere.


b.

That is right and I need to clarify my assessment. It's not so much that there haven't been jobs created, there have, in any case in Asia, my point was more that those new workers haven't really benefitted on a personal basis.

40 years ago a single earner in the west was able to buy a house, a car, organize education for the kids and probably benefit from a decent health system. Today in the west, not really, hence my negative view on growth. In the developing economies: yes job creation but on the back of the western view that it was better for those people to have a job than be in poverty, even if that job provides the minimal $1 per day and eliminated all quality of life. Oh, and that job was previously done by someone in the west for $30 per day. Again: growth, because increased consumption was possible at slightly lower prices for the end consumer. But the real growth, driven by the massive reduction in costs, was not spread fairly and remained concentrated in the hands of the few. And it is those few who have no desire for change (in order for example to meet environmental goals).

[Singularity]

Originally Posted by RaymondR

...Cease the quantity production and switch to quality.

There's a very off-color joke that asks: "What are the 4 things a man needs to survive on a deserted island?"
Answer: "Food, water, p****, and different p****."

This sort of speaks to the idea, perhaps, why the grass is greener on the other side. As a thought experiment, imagine what would happen if you took a herd of animals that, in the wild, was prone to migration (i.e. their biology caused them to literally see grass further away a more brilliant than where they are). What would you expect to happen if you locked these animals in a pen (say at the zoo). If these animals are wired to keep moving, seeing "new" on a regular basis, then getting locked in a pen might induce persistent depression, or angst/anxiety. Sound familiar?

So perhaps a sizeable % of humans who don't migrate (i.e. most humans) also lust after new/intersting/different. Compounding matters, chronic stress exacerbates depression/anxiety such that, perhaps, this causes many people to, as best they can, chronically aquire new crap...when the new crap doesn't lend more utility than the old crap, but people can't but help themselves from buying more crap because of biologic drive.

Add into the mix the hedonistic treadmill theory that sort of explains certain of these dynamics. It's a vicious cycle of harder to please where people will, left to their own devices, go into deep debt and/or work themself to death, just to get new/different stuff...consequences to the environment be damned.

If the above is mostly true, the quality of goods is really besides the point...which I'd suggest is the case for perhaps the majority of people for most of their younger life.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Singularity

...So perhaps a sizeable % of humans who don't migrate (i.e. most humans) also lust after new/interesting/different. Compounding matters, chronic stress exacerbates depression/anxiety such that, perhaps, this causes many people to, as best they can, chronically acquire new crap...when the new crap doesn't lend more utility than the old crap, but people can't but help themselves from buying more crap because of biologic drive.

Add into the mix the hedonistic treadmill theory that sort of explains certain of these dynamics. It's a vicious cycle of harder to please where people will, left to their own devices, go into deep debt and/or work themselves to death, just to get new/different stuff...consequences to the environment be damned.

Without denying the truth of the above, I think one can point to many societies past and even a few communities in the present (eg indigenous tribes, Omish, etc) who seem(ed) to be able to thrive indefinitely without overconsuming themselves to extinction. Ever-increasing hedonistic consumption is a hallmark of our current "western" civilization and every country that acquires it seems to jump onto the same treadmill.

It's not hard to see why. Western civilization's economic engine is predominantly capitalism, in which a never-ending search for profits encourages and allows the exploitation of just about any possible opportunity, as well as condoning the gluttony of constant acquisition. And to create and expand a market... advertising, which helps generate demand. Demand requires creating a need or want ... a dissatisfaction or anxiety that can only be met by acquiring the product.

So I accept that there will always be an innate desire in our species to improve our situation, but I believe the main driver of the current "western" overconsumption is capitalism's unquestioning acceptance of endless growth by any means, where future costs (debt, resource depletion, environmental damage, etc) are discounted or ignored in the belief that we will just "grow" past them.

I'm a capitalist, at least until socialism hands out boats, but I believe we need to be pricing in all the realistic costs and impacts of our actions, and seeking a model of free enterprise that is able to work within a sustainable framework.

Well-made, repairable stuff would be more sustainable... but it also puts a potential damper on the speed of technical progress. Eg it would be unreasonable to expect a cellphone to last 20 years. No reason our damn dryer should be toast after 5 years, though...

(Part of my career was in advertising. Yes I will be doing at least a short stretch in hell for that)

[RaymondR]

Capitalist or socialist. Two economic systems. Capitalist, the control ie the creation and distribution of wealth is dispersed to individuals and responds to the whims and needs of the people. Socialist, the creation and distribution of wealth is controlled by a non productive political elite with poor connections to the needs and wants of the people. Capitalism, usually associated with well functioning democracies. Socialism, seldom associated with well functioning democracies and usually with totalitarian dictatorships. In the real world those societies which work best appear to be capitalist with socialist tendencies.