Population

[DBT]

How long can the economy be kept growing? What, if any, is the limit?

 

[bilby]

How long can the economy be kept growing? What, if any, is the limit?

The economy is just numbers. There's literally no limit.

There's zero need for the economy to represent anything tangible, when it's measured in fiat currencies.

There's obviously a limit to how many cars can be made, given that we are limited to only the finite amounts of iron in our own Solar System. It's a very big limit, but a limit it clearly is.

But there's no such limit for economic activities that do not depend on physical commodities. You can sell an unlimited number of copies of a piece of software. The maximum price you can charge for your labour, or for goods, or for services, is unlimited. The maximum amount of US dollars, or euros, or Yen are all limitless.

Resource extraction is, necessarily, limited. Economic growth is not.

 

[DBT]

The economy is also manufacturing, construction, housing, jobs, vehicles, transport, travel, tourism, retail.....

 

[steve_bank]

Maybe nor ecology, PP is about in part reducing unwonted kids. Kids who may end up in a govt program with little support or worse.

Population was dropping as America became better off in the first place. No need for 5 or 6 kids to provide support for older parents. That is why legal immigration in the USA was important, keeping the economy growing needs a growing population.

Planned Parenthood is just what it says. Planning how many kids you want and can support, or no kids at all.

The flip side is the Catholic mantra breed like rabbits or abstinence. There is a poster from the 60s or 70s showing the pope saying 'The iull is a no no'.

PP or anything like it has not been around for 200 years. In the 19th century food, water, and disease was a check on population. If you are born into a poor family odds of survival were low.

Adding Japan has a problem with an aging population and not enough yoong workers to support them. They do not support immigration like USA, Canada, and western Europe does.

For the Brits the American colonies was an outlet for a growing population of young healthy adults with nothing to do and nowhere to go.

 

[bilby]

The economy is also manufacturing, construction, housing, jobs, vehicles, transport, travel, tourism, retail.....

Yes.

And?

Some elements of the economy have physical constraints on their maximum extent. Some do not. Overall, it is physically possible for the economy to grow indefinitely.

 

[bilby]

Maybe nor ecology, PP is about in part reducing unwonted kids. Kids who may end up in a govt program with little support or worse.

Population was dropping as America became better off in the first place. No need for 5 or 6 kids to provide support for older parents. That is why legal immigration in the USA was important, keeping the economy growing needs a growing population.

Planned Parenthood is just what it says. Planning how many kids you want and can support, or no kids at all.

The flip side is the Catholic mantra breed like rabbits or abstinence. There is a poster from the 60s or 70s showing the pope saying 'The iull is a no no'.

PP or anything like it has not been around for 200 years. In the 19th century food, water, and disease was a check on population. If you are born into a poor family odds of survival were low.

Adding Japan has a problem with an aging population and not enough yoong workers to support them. They do not support immigration like USA, Canada, and western Europe does.

For the Brits the American colonies was an outlet for a growing population of young healthy adults with nothing to do and nowhere to go.

Yes. And then they had an industrial revolution, and had to import young healthy adults because suddenly they didn't have enough of them.

Demand for workers varies. This is why a welfare state is needed to ensure that workers benefit from the productivity of society as a whole, even when their specific skills or abilities are not in sufficient demand at any given time.

 

[DBT]

The economy is also manufacturing, construction, housing, jobs, vehicles, transport, travel, tourism, retail.....

Yes.

And?

Some elements of the economy have physical constraints on their maximum extent. Some do not. Overall, it is physically possible for the economy to grow indefinitely.

The elements of the economy that have physical restraints was my reference.
Research, knowledge, improvement, efficiency, etc, are not an issue.

 

[bilby]

The economy is also manufacturing, construction, housing, jobs, vehicles, transport, travel, tourism, retail.....

Yes.

And?

Some elements of the economy have physical constraints on their maximum extent. Some do not. Overall, it is physically possible for the economy to grow indefinitely.

The elements of the economy that have physical restraints was my reference.
Research, knowledge, improvement, efficiency, etc, are not an issue.

Your question didn't mention 'elements of'.

You asked:

How long can the economy be kept growing? What, if any, is the limit?

The answer is "Indefinitely, and none".

If you wanted to ask a different question, then you should have done so. The question you actually asked has a simple answer, that you apparently don't like. Reality doesn't care what you like.

 

[bilby]

If the question is "how much stuff per person is accessible with current extraction technology?", the answer is in the order of a billion tonnes per human, at the projected peak of population. Obviously nobody can realistically use anything like that amount of stuff; And none of it is 'used up' - when you finish with a car, or a building, or anything else, the materials that it's made from become available for re-use.

With adequate supplies of energy, and current technology, there's nothing we could realistically run out of, except Helium.

Everything we have ever extracted from the Earth's rocks, oceans, and atmosphere is still here (except that Helium lost to space). It may be spread out and dispersed such that reconcentrating it to useful raw material will require a lot of energy; Or it may be chemically altered so that conversion back to a useful compound or elemental state will require a lot of energy; or maybe both. For example, all the coal we have burned is now oxidised and dispersed in our atmosphere, but getting it back is not particularly difficult. It's quite expensive though, and so it's far cheaper to just dig up new coal instead. That's something we need to change (regardless of the number of people who are alive at any given time).

Resource depletion ultimately just comes down to having insufficient cheap energy. Energy is everything.

 

[DBT]

Your question didn't mention 'elements of'.

You asked:

The answer is "Indefinitely, and none".

If you wanted to ask a different question, then you should have done so. The question you actually asked has a simple answer, that you apparently don't like. Reality doesn't care what you like.

I didn't have a chance to mention everything. You can't include everything in a brief post. Obviously, the elements of the economy that are of concern are those that rely on natural resources for raw materials, timber, mining, construction, fishing, etc, that have the greatest impact on the environment and ecosystems.

 

[steve_bank]

Matheus was not entirely wrong in his time. Sconce has increased food yield per unit area. That allowed a large increase in population which in the end becomes unsustainable.

Some derived a metric on the number of squire meters of land per person is required for a reasonable standard of living. Housing, recreational space, open space like parks ,manufacturing and business, and agriculture.

Put a rat population in a closed environment with a limited food supply. Population rashes a point where they turn on each other reducing population.

Try to bring the entire human population up to a North American and Western European middle class standard of living and food consumption and what happens?

 

[Politesse]

Try to bring the entire human population up to a North American and Western European middle class standard of living and food consumption and what happens?

And that's exactly how we know that it isn't actually population, in and of itself, that is the threat. There are a lot of people living in the world, but only a tiny bloated global aristrocracy whose chosen lifestyle creates economic incentive for the wholesale destruction of our natural ecological balance. Being of that class myself I'd like to think we could keep some of the advantages of "middle class standard of living" without destroying the entire planet to maintain it. But we're going to have to change some things about that standard, either in terms of what we expect or how we meet those expectations. "Reduce population" gets you no closer to either of those goals; most of the places that cause the worst ecological havoc are already in a state of declining population, and this has not to any measurable degree quenched their lust for meaningless accumulation of material goods and luxuries. It's a red herring, and an incredibly dangerous one.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

We're just like the Kiabab deer population. What were the goals? Were they met? Was the population reduced? How was it reduced? Those damn deer, so different than humans, always increasing their population, always grazing when they should have known better. But there were never too many for the plateau, the habitat they depended upon. Reducing the population was never the best solution.

 

[Politesse]

We're just like the Kiabab deer population. What were the goals? Were they met? Was the population reduced? How was it reduced? Those damn deer, so different than humans, always increasing their population, always grazing when they should have known better. But there were never too many for the plateau, the habitat they depended upon. Reducing the population was never the best solution.

The Kaibab deer population didn't dig the uranium and coal mines that now dot the Kaibab, nor drain the aquifers that lie beneath it. The general ecological balance of the plateau was never at any serious risk from the deer; absent our intervention, natural mechanisms like predation would have kept their population in check, despite the fact that unlike us, rapid procreation is a major aspect of their species' strategy for success in a marginal environment.

And no, the deer can't really "decide" to graze differently. But we can. You may protest if you feel this is not true of you personally, but I believe that human beings in general are much more intelligent than your average deer, and more adaptive to changing situations.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

We're just like the Kiabab deer population. What were the goals? Were they met? Was the population reduced? How was it reduced? Those damn deer, so different than humans, always increasing their population, always grazing when they should have known better. But there were never too many for the plateau, the habitat they depended upon. Reducing the population was never the best solution.

The Kaibab deer population didn't dig the uranium and coal mines that now dot the Kaibab, nor drain the aquifers that lie beneath it. The general ecological balance of the plateau was never at any serious risk from the deer; absent our intervention, natural mechanisms like predation would have kept their population in check, despite the fact that unlike us, rapid procreation is a major aspect of their species' strategy for success in a marginal environment.

And no, the deer can't really "decide" to graze differently. But we can. You may protest if you feel this is not true of you personally, but I believe that human beings in general are much more intelligent than your average deer, and more adaptive to changing situations.

They bred and consumed themselves into catastrophe, no different than us.

 

[Politesse]

We're just like the Kiabab deer population. What were the goals? Were they met? Was the population reduced? How was it reduced? Those damn deer, so different than humans, always increasing their population, always grazing when they should have known better. But there were never too many for the plateau, the habitat they depended upon. Reducing the population was never the best solution.

The Kaibab deer population didn't dig the uranium and coal mines that now dot the Kaibab, nor drain the aquifers that lie beneath it. The general ecological balance of the plateau was never at any serious risk from the deer; absent our intervention, natural mechanisms like predation would have kept their population in check, despite the fact that unlike us, rapid procreation is a major aspect of their species' strategy for success in a marginal environment.

And no, the deer can't really "decide" to graze differently. But we can. You may protest if you feel this is not true of you personally, but I believe that human beings in general are much more intelligent than your average deer, and more adaptive to changing situations.

They bred and consumed themselves into catastrophe, no different than us.

Are you under the impression that simply re-iterating your point is the same thing as defending it against specific critiques? You have not made your case any more convincing by repeating it.

 

[DBT]

We're just like the Kiabab deer population. What were the goals? Were they met? Was the population reduced? How was it reduced? Those damn deer, so different than humans, always increasing their population, always grazing when they should have known better. But there were never too many for the plateau, the habitat they depended upon. Reducing the population was never the best solution.

The Kaibab deer population didn't dig the uranium and coal mines that now dot the Kaibab, nor drain the aquifers that lie beneath it. The general ecological balance of the plateau was never at any serious risk from the deer; absent our intervention, natural mechanisms like predation would have kept their population in check, despite the fact that unlike us, rapid procreation is a major aspect of their species' strategy for success in a marginal environment.

And no, the deer can't really "decide" to graze differently. But we can. You may protest if you feel this is not true of you personally, but I believe that human beings in general are much more intelligent than your average deer, and more adaptive to changing situations.

We are able to change our ways, but will we do it in time to avoid an environmental catastrophe? That is the question.

 

[Politesse]

We're just like the Kiabab deer population. What were the goals? Were they met? Was the population reduced? How was it reduced? Those damn deer, so different than humans, always increasing their population, always grazing when they should have known better. But there were never too many for the plateau, the habitat they depended upon. Reducing the population was never the best solution.

The Kaibab deer population didn't dig the uranium and coal mines that now dot the Kaibab, nor drain the aquifers that lie beneath it. The general ecological balance of the plateau was never at any serious risk from the deer; absent our intervention, natural mechanisms like predation would have kept their population in check, despite the fact that unlike us, rapid procreation is a major aspect of their species' strategy for success in a marginal environment.

And no, the deer can't really "decide" to graze differently. But we can. You may protest if you feel this is not true of you personally, but I believe that human beings in general are much more intelligent than your average deer, and more adaptive to changing situations.

We are able to change our ways, but will we do it in time to avoid an environmental catastrophe? That is the question.

I'm not feeling a lot of optimism about that lately, to be honest.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

We're just like the Kiabab deer population. What were the goals? Were they met? Was the population reduced? How was it reduced? Those damn deer, so different than humans, always increasing their population, always grazing when they should have known better. But there were never too many for the plateau, the habitat they depended upon. Reducing the population was never the best solution.

The Kaibab deer population didn't dig the uranium and coal mines that now dot the Kaibab, nor drain the aquifers that lie beneath it. The general ecological balance of the plateau was never at any serious risk from the deer; absent our intervention, natural mechanisms like predation would have kept their population in check, despite the fact that unlike us, rapid procreation is a major aspect of their species' strategy for success in a marginal environment.

And no, the deer can't really "decide" to graze differently. But we can. You may protest if you feel this is not true of you personally, but I believe that human beings in general are much more intelligent than your average deer, and more adaptive to changing situations.

We are able to change our ways, but will we do it in time to avoid an environmental catastrophe? That is the question.

The consensus seems to be that the waning of the last ice age raised sea levels by a meter a century. I don't think we'll enjoy that luxury this time around.

Hey Poli, glad you're coming around to my thinking.

 

[Politesse]

We're just like the Kiabab deer population. What were the goals? Were they met? Was the population reduced? How was it reduced? Those damn deer, so different than humans, always increasing their population, always grazing when they should have known better. But there were never too many for the plateau, the habitat they depended upon. Reducing the population was never the best solution.

The Kaibab deer population didn't dig the uranium and coal mines that now dot the Kaibab, nor drain the aquifers that lie beneath it. The general ecological balance of the plateau was never at any serious risk from the deer; absent our intervention, natural mechanisms like predation would have kept their population in check, despite the fact that unlike us, rapid procreation is a major aspect of their species' strategy for success in a marginal environment.

And no, the deer can't really "decide" to graze differently. But we can. You may protest if you feel this is not true of you personally, but I believe that human beings in general are much more intelligent than your average deer, and more adaptive to changing situations.

We are able to change our ways, but will we do it in time to avoid an environmental catastrophe? That is the question.

The consensus seems to be that the waning of the last ice age raised sea levels by a meter a century. I don't think we'll enjoy that luxury this time around.

Hey Poli, glad you're coming around to my thinking.

On population? Not in the slightest. The over-population hysteria has done nothing to halt the pace of ecological destruction. I keep asking you and others for any concrete evidence that this red herring is leading to better ecological outcomes, at all. The eugenics crowd has been hyping over-population hysteria for more than 250 years, and has had the ear of monarchs, parliaments, and empires. Yet the parts of the world most devastated by careless extraction are being plumbed by European, American, and Chinese corporations - the very regions that have most whole heartedly embraced Malthusian dogma. If these ideas are accurate, then why is embracing them doing nothing to halt or even demonstrably slow the pace of ecological destruction?