The End of Economic Growth Is Inevitable. Let’s Plan for It.

[iopsi]

The habitable land won't be equally distributed tho. You guys in the US shouldn't have much problems i guess, since the country is not very densely populated and has a lot of usable land.
Here in Europe (well, Italy in my case) it will be more complicated if tons of immigrants are let in. Otherwise our population is projected to increase slightly and then decrease, which should mean a bigger piece of the pie for everyone.

[oldbeyond]

Agreed, the growth is not sustainable(too a large extent it’s simply pillaging stocks to get high flows, like giving yourself a generous salary from your savings account but ignoring the steady decline in your balance sheet). But mostly it’s used for more stuff, not more people, with the exception being some poor regions. Generally people seem to prefer McMansions and international travel to having 6 kids.

[tonyedgecombe]

Here in Europe (well, Italy in my case) it will be more complicated if tons of immigrants are let in. Otherwise our population is projected to increase slightly and then decrease, which should mean a bigger piece of the pie for everyone.

I expect European countries will end up taking a hard line approach to immigration. Some people think it's extreme right now but we have only had a million people from Syria. Imagine what it will be like with 500 million knocking on the door.

[iopsi]

I expect European countries will end up taking a hard line approach to immigration. Some people think it's extreme right now but we have only had a million people from Syria. Imagine what it will be like with 500 million knocking on the door.

Yeah, considering that the majority of population growth will be located in Africa, while at the same time being one the continents hit the most by climate change.... it won't be pretty.
Here a ton of people are already low-key (a few even openly, several of my friends for example) racists and almost fascists/very right wing. An increase in such sentiments seems likely in the future.

[7Wannabe5]

The habitable land won't be equally distributed tho. You guys in the US shouldn't have much problems i guess, since the country is not very densely populated and has a lot of usable land.

If you just look at import vs. export $$ for agricultural products in Europe, it seems as though the populations are still self-supporting. However, I wonder to what extent this is misleading due to government support for production of expensive products?

The traditional economic model for agricultural production generally has most intensive (maximizing human labor and other inputs, minimizing acreage) production, such as market garden tender fruits and vegetables, and dairy/ small livestock, near to city centers and most extensive production such as crops that require little maintenance between planting and harvest, grazing livestock or timber production furthest from city center. Cheap oil and refrigeration during transport has altered this model, but I think it still might be the case that many relatively affluent and crowded nations are outsourcing much of their extensive production. So, this, perhaps, would be the primary difference between the situation in Europe vs. U.S., and also to some extent between the Red and Blue regions of the U.S.

[white belt]

IOW, a plan based on distracting humans from having a life or sex by providing them with vivid video game environment will not work because men do not have babies and women do not like video games as much. If you want to distract most young women away from having babies, you have to think about providing them with something that is cute and adorable and requires care like a baby*, something like access to a college education or their own small business**, and something like a shopping trip to Paris***. If you can figure out how to do this within the confines of 1 jacob per year or energy/resource cost budget equivalent to dollar estimation then problem solved! Trying to appeal to what they "should" want instead of these things (for instance well-meant frugal suggestion to wear underwear until it falls apart )will ultimately fail.

*least expensive example of meeting such qualifications for me
[https://www.bluestem.ca/carex-beatlemania.htm][/url]

**this could be accomplished largely through virtual means

***I am currently reading "Ooh, La, La : French Women's Secrets to Feeling Beautiful Every Day" and contemplating how much $$ I need to throw into the kitty towards my very G2 daughter's wedding this autumn. I must admit that just like the Chinese subsistence farming woman who was interviewed by the Italian professor who created the course I took on the topic of systems analysis of food, water and energy cycles, I want my DD to be able to "go to Paris."

Interesting perspective. So in your opinion, the key to female life satisfaction is care for something cute, access to a academics or a business in which they have some sort of agency, and (?) money to go on a shopping trip to Paris. I understand the first two points, however I don't think I understand the shopping trip to Paris. I believe your speaking in metaphor, but I can't get past the literal meaning.

I wonder what the equivalent keys to male life satisfaction might be. Sex, demonstrating competence through doing something, and competing with others? I'm not really sure but at least two of those are already possible in a virtual world.

As discussed in another thread, I believe it is possible that into the future some men will derive more meaning from their virtual lives than their physical lives (already happening?). If your assumption that women won't take to a similar sort of virtual life is correct, I wonder if we could see a return of polygyny. The many single men choosing to not participate in a dating market would lead to a gender ratio imbalance, which means some women that want to have children would have to resort to mating with a man that might already have other partners/wives.

[7Wannabe5]

@white belt:

I am likely mixing up aspects of my own personality type (eNTP) with aspects of my feminine energy when generalizing the "wants" of members of my gender. That said...

Humans are omnivorous, social, highly-flexible-creative scavengers. In most historical human cultures, there is a gender and age based division of labor between hunting, gathering and preparation of food. Often females bring in or render/retain useful more kilo-calories through gathering and processing/preparation activities than the males do through hunting. Shopping (as opposed to consuming, although the two verbs are often confused in our culture and on this forum) obviously lights up some of the same happy spots in the brain as gathering. So, "I found the cutest sweater in this little out of the way shop in Paris" is not unlike "I found a large amount of berries in that little out of the way spot to the left of the path to the hickories." Pure stoic/minimalist style frugality is better for people who are born without the gathering/shopping gene. People who do have the gathering/shopping gene are better off engaging in either stockpile-self-sufficient style frugality and/or scavenger-wheeler-dealer-trader type frugality. I find myself becoming depressed if I go too far towards the stoic/minimalist model for this reason. Obviously, some video games do serve this purpose, but not well enough for somebody who is accustomed to real life scavenging.

Also inherent in the "trip to Paris" short-hand is the notion that females care more about the "pretty" than males in the sense that they feel more like it is their job to project or imbue or create the "pretty." They are also more likely to want to reward themselves with something "pretty." One of the top lessons I have learned on drawing the line between cheap and frugal is that I absolutely can't repress this motivational drive/desire without risking dysfunction. There is very little about video games that acts on this desire for fulfillment of sensual aesthetics.

I wonder if we could see a return of polygyny. The many single men choosing to not participate in a dating market would lead to a gender ratio imbalance, which means some women that want to have children would have to resort to mating with a man that might already have other partners/wives.

I would first note that there is a world of difference between promiscuous polygyny and committed or mature polygyny. The first is more related to testosterone and more prevalent in young men and the second is more related to vasopressin and more prevalent in older men. Obviously, the characteristics/resources necessary to, for instance, have casual sex with 4 different women within the course of a week, are very different than the characteristics necessary to maintain relationships with 4 different wives and variety of offspring. I would note that the characteristics/resources necessary to maintain 4 gender-neutral open or polyamorous relationships would also vary, but somewhat overlap with the other two, and also behavior in situations where females are scarce, but men are inclined towards being friendly towards each other and sharing.

Anyways, I don't think a growing tendency towards "video monkhood" will result in many women resorting to polygyny. Females are generally at least 1 Wheaton level more socially advanced than their male age peers and Western style dating in which male offers contract is just one of many human cultural possibilities. What I believe will happen, as is frequently the case with young or inexperienced introverted men who are otherwise attractive, is that very socially (as opposed to sexually) assertive females will co-operate to drag them out of their lairs. IOW, the sort of managerial-type females, who although not necessarily otherwise very attractive, always seem to be able to wrangle up a date for the prom through social manipulation will gain share dominance of the mating pool. IOW, the "video monks" will usually end up monogamously married, but to women who are less attractive and more bossy than they might have otherwise acquired if they had made just a bit of effort themselves.

[jacob]

https://www.wired.com/1997/07/longboom/ ... This Wired article from 1997 predicting a long boom from 1980-2020 is quite interesting. (Reading old predictions about the future is ALWAYS interesting.) While predictions that extrapolated existing mature technologies were quite accurate, other predictions about emerging technologies were quite off (where's my DNA computer and my hydrogen car?), the best lesson of the article is perhaps when the conclusion takes a break from the "this time it's different" and contrasts and compares to the 1890s which are/were similar to the 1990s just in case "this time is the same as last time" again.

[jacob]

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/ ... balisation ... daisy tailing to the Wired article. Slobalisation (slowing down globalization). Means a greater focus on regional trade reducing market sizes. Regional markets will become more integrated and efficient. Will make it harder for developing countries to improve via trade. Regional markets are still large enough for white collar workers to thrive. Blue collar workers will be replaced by robots instead of China. Global problems (migration, climate, tax dodging, ...) will become harder to solve. US will cede regional power to Russia and China. The increasing focus on regional at the expense of the global will make the world more unstable.

[daylen]

The increasing focus on regional at the expense of the global will make the world more unstable.

In the short term, but wouldn't this reduce the risk of large-scale existential events? Decentralization would slow technological development and reduce militarization, so perhaps the world would become more locally unstable while being more stable globally (or across a longer period of time)? Maybe there is a certain threshold of globalization where society becomes non-ergodic or cannot exist in a steady-state for long.

[jacob]

It's still possible create problems at larger scales than the scale at which the generators exist. Any emergent properties for example. What is being lost is the complexity/coordination to solve those problems at the larger scale. For example, the EU's ability to prevent European wars; the UN's or League of Nation's ability attempt to prevent international wars. Various treaties. Despite not being perfect, they're still better than nothing. The EU's trackrecord is particularly good in that regard compared to the pre-coal union days.

The opposite also holds. Global scale problems can create the local scale. E.g. a local manufacturing plant becomes useless because there's a cheaper way to produce goods faraway. Or a climate change generated storm surge taking out a city elsewhere than where the primary pollution was generation. It is this direction that are currently the target of politicians. The belief is that by removing globalization, these problems will go away. However, simple removal (minimalism?) will make it harder to solve the other direction mentioned in the first paragraph.

Hmm thresholds ... I think the various traps, especially the progress trap is pertinent here. There is for example no way to reboot technological civilization if industrial capacity is lost. There's a book called The Knowledge which albeit pretty cool is also pretty useless. We can't use 17th century mining techniques for the resource concentrations that are left. OTOH, we can't build a modern mining industry w/o already having the present mining industry to support it.

[ZAFCorrection]

@Jacob

This might be an already-well-studied case, but I would think the bigger question is the economics of extracting resources from places such as derelict buildings, landfills, the rusted car sitting out in the field, etc. In the technology reboot scenario, fossil fuels are clearly gone-gone, but old shit lying around represents a very high quality "ore," albeit one that requires an entirely different workflow to process.

[jacob]

Yes, [buildings, etc.] will be the go to place for ore in the future. As far as I understand, recycling hitech metals (e.g. CrV steel) is not as trivial as simply heating and beating a piece of iron or carbon steel into a different shape. Also many resources are lost to entropy. Instead of being concentrated at a specific place underground which can be mined, it's spread everywhere in people's houses, where it (iron for example), is combined with zinc in one part in one gadget in one attic, chrome in another part, oxygen in a rusted screw, etc. This is part of the recycling problem.

It will definitely take an entirely new approach to resource flow management.

This is part of why I try to DIY. I can usually repurpose most of my resources. It's one way not to spend money. Things are simply rebuilt.

[ZAFCorrection]

Ya, refining/separation is definitely non-trivial. Though, current raw material producers are also faced with the same problem on a grand scale. The high technology sector is basically built on the need to get the gadolinium and whatever out of the fun stuff like copper and zinc. Otherwise, if these oddball elements had to be produced on their own, modern electronics might not be cost effective.

The required change in workflow and thinking is interesting. I would not be surprised if it became economically advantageous to recover certain materials through recycling a good amount of time before anyone actually got around to doing it.

[jacob]

You might have seen this? Craziest example of "urban" precious metal mining I've ever seen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5GPWJPLcHg

[ZAFCorrection]

That is really interesting. I had not seen that. I always thought jacking catalytic converters from cars would be a baller upgrade from stealing copper out of empty buildings. But I did not think about the platinum ending up on the road. Incidentally, there is also some research on this topic:

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b04909

The fun part is they do their headline cost comparison for gold and copper by taking the e-waste recycling cost per unit to be $16.95 - $13 (chinese government subsidy) = only a tiny $3.95. Super cheap if the government is paying for it. Allegedly copper and gold extraction from TVs is still cost effective even without the subsidy, but I have not looked at that number yet.

[jacob]

They have another video where they extract platinum from spark plugs. Extracting gold from used electronics (see youtube for the process) is sufficiently widespread that prices for used electronics (CPUs, etc.) are economic. You can buy bags of used sim cards on ebay for about 8-15c per card depending on size. It is, perhaps, another [ghetto] way to store gold.

E.g. https://www.tomshardware.com/picturesto ... pu.html#s1

[Kriegsspiel]

Very neat video jacob. I think if I was messing with all that dust I'd be wearing a respirator.

If you go on scrapmetalforum.com there's lots of talk about scrapping TVs.

[Mister Imperceptible]

@kriegsspiel

I was thinking the same thing. Like all those poor souls in China doing similar work. Wear a mask.

[BRUTE]

with platinum around $820 per ounce, brute wonders how much that tiny bead could be sold for, and if the whole process is profitable.