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From: Rowland McDonnell on 14 Jul 2010 16:18
Rob <ngonly(a)gmail.com> wrote:

> Rowland McDonnell wrote:
> > Rob<ngonly(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Rowland McDonnell wrote:
> >>> Rob<ngonly(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Rowland McDonnell wrote:
> >>
>
> >>>
> >>> A lot of older computers can compare very well with newer computers when
> >>> you think about *using* them. So what if you don't have four 3GHz CPU
> >>> cores? They are not needed for word processing or sending email and so
> >>> on.
> >>>
> >>
> >> [snip]
> >>
> >> This belongs to the the 'growth' argument IMO.
> >
> > How do you mean?
>
> If I've remembered the context correctly, I mean 'economic growth' is
> accepted almost uncritically nowadays in the mainstream.

How do you mean?

> We're supposed
> to do it without thinking what it means, because 'growth is good'.

Do what?

> I
> might find merit in the notion that broadening cultural appreciation as
> a means of growth has merits, but expanding (someone's, nation state's)
> economic growth (of which private consumption is a major component in
> the government's measure) is a crime of our times. IMO, naturally.

Erm? Sorry, I really have no idea what you're on about.

> >> Keep producing stuff that
> >> people superficially need, and the country is doing well.
> >
> > Keep importing stuff that people think they need, and the country is
> > doing badly - and that's what we've got these days, innit?
> >
>
> The country will continue to do badly, hardly a 'sustainable economy'.

And it's what we have....

> This fella thinks he's discovered something:
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jul/11/apple-foxconn-start-ups

Umm - could you elucidate?

I can't see anything but hot air.

[snip

Rowland.

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From: Rob on 15 Jul 2010 05:46
On 14/07/2010 21:18, Rowland McDonnell wrote:
> Rob<ngonly(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Rowland McDonnell wrote:
>>> Rob<ngonly(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Rowland McDonnell wrote:
>>>>> Rob<ngonly(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Rowland McDonnell wrote:
>>>>
>>
>>>>>
>>>>> A lot of older computers can compare very well with newer computers when
>>>>> you think about *using* them. So what if you don't have four 3GHz CPU
>>>>> cores? They are not needed for word processing or sending email and so
>>>>> on.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> [snip]
>>>>
>>>> This belongs to the the 'growth' argument IMO.
>>>
>>> How do you mean?
>>
>> If I've remembered the context correctly, I mean 'economic growth' is
>> accepted almost uncritically nowadays in the mainstream.
>
> How do you mean?
>

Economic growth is accepted uncritically as a good thing. For example:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-10643858

>> We're supposed
>> to do it without thinking what it means, because 'growth is good'.
>
> Do what?
>
>> I
>> might find merit in the notion that broadening cultural appreciation as
>> a means of growth has merits, but expanding (someone's, nation state's)
>> economic growth (of which private consumption is a major component in
>> the government's measure) is a crime of our times. IMO, naturally.
>
> Erm? Sorry, I really have no idea what you're on about.
>

:-)

OK, I'm clearly not too good at my job! Virtually every government uses
economic growth as a measure of success and a nation's health. Barely a
day goes by without the news reporting statistics on economic growth.
Two points:

The correlation between happiness and economic growth is more or less
inverse

Economic growth is predicated upon, amongst other things, consumerism.
Things like buying computers which aren't needed.


>>>> Keep producing stuff that
>>>> people superficially need, and the country is doing well.
>>>
>>> Keep importing stuff that people think they need, and the country is
>>> doing badly - and that's what we've got these days, innit?
>>>
>>
>> The country will continue to do badly, hardly a 'sustainable economy'.
>
> And it's what we have....
>
>> This fella thinks he's discovered something:
>>
>> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jul/11/apple-foxconn-start-ups
>
> Umm - could you elucidate?
>
> I can't see anything but hot air.
>

Not really - it's not a very good article, except he does point out the
shortcomings of economic rationality - the basis of the economic growth
is good thesis - and is vaguely on-topic because of the the Apple
reference ;-)

Rob

From: Pd on 15 Jul 2010 06:33
Rob <ngonly(a)gmail.com> wrote:

> Economic growth is accepted uncritically as a good thing.

Which is why I never vote for any of the 'mainstream' parties. They all
buy into this idea that growth is the only worthwhile measure of
economy, and that grow is good, not grow is bad.

I have lots of metaphors in my head for the direction our civilization
is going, but they all illustrate the same thing - that change in the
right direction is happening too slowly to avoid a really serious
crunch, perhaps not in my lifetime but I am fairly sure it will happen
in my children's lifetime. If that crunch involves food and water, then
human civilization will mostly survive, I think. If it involves air,
it's much harder to find a place to hole up until the drastically
reduced population allows the biosphere to recover.

We're all doomed, Ah tell thee!

--
Pd
From: Rowland McDonnell on 15 Jul 2010 10:33
Tim Streater <timstreater(a)waitrose.com> wrote:

> peterd.news(a)gmail.invalid (Pd) wrote:
>
> > Rob <ngonly(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Economic growth is accepted uncritically as a good thing.
> >
> > Which is why I never vote for any of the 'mainstream' parties. They all
> > buy into this idea that growth is the only worthwhile measure of
> > economy, and that grow is good, not grow is bad.
> >
> > I have lots of metaphors in my head for the direction our civilization
> > is going, but they all illustrate the same thing - that change in the
> > right direction is happening too slowly to avoid a really serious
> > crunch, perhaps not in my lifetime but I am fairly sure it will happen
> > in my children's lifetime. If that crunch involves food and water, then
> > human civilization will mostly survive, I think. If it involves air,
> > it's much harder to find a place to hole up until the drastically
> > reduced population allows the biosphere to recover.
> >
> > We're all doomed, Ah tell thee!
>
> I trust you've read "The Revenge of Gaia", and if you haven't, you
> should.
>
> It all boils down to the population being too high.

That's what they were saying back in the 1960s.

Once upon a time, they were convinced that once you got much beyond 4
billion people on the planet, we'd all be living in high-rise flats and
eating processed vat-grown fungus and algae with either a
fascist/commumist repressive world government enforcing strict birth
controls via compulsory sterilization or worse; or wars all the time. Or
something like Brave New World for the whacked out types (okay, that's
rather older than the 1960s, but that's only 'cos Aldous Huxley was
ahead of the game).

We now have 6.5 billion and rising at an accelerating rate and you know
what? We have enough food and we're not all involved in wars over
lebensraum.

So those predictions turned out wrong, didn't they?

The big problem for the current planetary burden of people now is access
to fresh clean water - but if you have plenty of power, you've got what
you need in that line because there's plenty of sea water around and
about. And in 40-60 years time, the world will be converting over to
fusion power and there *WILL* be enough power.

If Blighty packed in people as densely as Monaca, we'd have 4 billion
people on these septic isles.

Think about that.

There's plenty of room for expansion on Earth - not too many people at
all, not as such.

Rowland.

--
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From: Pd on 15 Jul 2010 13:55
Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote:

> If Blighty packed in people as densely as Monaca, we'd have 4 billion
> people on these septic isles.

And Monaco is self-sufficient for food and water?

--
Pd
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