1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

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slowtraveler
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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by slowtraveler »

Regarding Jacob connecting spending with resource consumption, how does me spending 10k a year on massages lead to any environmental degradation assuming no creams are sued and I walk there?

prognastat
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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by prognastat »

Well how did you receive this 10k, chances are likely that gaining this 10k had some cost on the environment and as such spending more means more had to be done.

Also the chances that there are no costs in the actual massage are pretty low too. However they can be minimised in ways such as you mentioned.

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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by jacob »

You can pretty much assume that those 10k flow out into the same generic economy, so unless the person providing the massage spends the money on getting massages themselves, the standard impact multiplier applies.

An example of the latter might be if I sell some shares in one company and then use the cash to buy some other shares.

Cost is a pretty good---but obviously not perfect---proxy for total material use. In that case a Prius + lower gas use >> cheap econobox with higher gas use. The greater technological impact of constructing the Prius is included in the price. Similar when comparing a $10k PV system with a $40/month coal-fired electric power from an unenlightened utility company.

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jennypenny
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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by jennypenny »

@jacob--Pretend I haven't read an econ textbook in over a decade and don't remember exactly what standard impact multiplier means. What are you saying? That it doesn't matter how I spend my $10K because I have to assume the next person/people to spend it (wherever it ends up) will spend it like the average consumer?

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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by jacob »

Yes. That's accurate to the first order (or as accurate as a CPI calculation).

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jennypenny
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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by jennypenny »

So it's not just about how little I spend, but how little ammo I give the next person? and so on ....?

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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by jacob »

Yes. As the money flows out the chance of it reverting to a "standard" flow increases. Even if you spend all your money at the local organic farmer; there's a chance that they don't spend it all at the other local organic farmer. Eventually this cascade becomes generic in nature. So what mostly matters is not how you spend but how much.

Example: A $40,000 wrist watch might seem like a low-impact consumption object ... but in reality you just paid and indirectly consumed for the life style of a watchmaker for an entire year.

Example: A 1oz gold coin is a small object but it costs enough money and that money is spent on big machines that will a few dozen tons of rock (overburden) to get at it.

7Wannabe5
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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I think the spending as proxy for material use rule of thumb starts to fall apart at some level of complexity, particularly when barter and/or self-employment come into the calculation. For instance, if my BF buys me a $40 pair of shoes at the mall, cost to me is $0 vs. the $4 I might have otherwise spent at the thrift store, and I know that at the margin he invests in the stock market rather than spending on more consumer items, and as a token of gratitude I give him a used book I acquired previously as business inventory and already wrote off, and the new pair of shoes will last approximately 3X longer than the used pair?

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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by jacob »

Yes, just like CPI falls apart upon closer inspection. That's why it's first order only.
This concept works similar to an EROEI calculation or the original google search algorithm.

7Wannabe5
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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I think maybe the first $2/day or barter equivalent any human spends should just be considered part of nature. And if you live in a 1st world economy, any used goods purchased for less than maybe $.25/lb should not count, because would otherwise simply be wasted.

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jennypenny
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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by jennypenny »

NM ... def not being clear. :(

slowtraveler
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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by slowtraveler »

@JennyPenny
What is not clear?

If I spend 10k on something with very low environmental impact, the next person will almost certainly buy gasoline, clothes, food, hygenic good, etc. with that money and thus, regression to the standard consumer spending styles occurs with respect to how the money spent impacts the environment.

The initial question I had now seems cleared. It does seem to mean that money spent gets double counted since it counts the spending of both me and whoever provides the service. Because it is a time based consumption rate, velocity of money is a factor somewhere in the equation.

7Wannabe5
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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@jennypenny:

Another way to look at it is that human beings, no matter what service they are providing, are powered by food, and food cost is currently 80% associated with petroleum. Somebody who is providing a more highly skilled/highly paid service had to eat food through all the extra years of education and training, and all the people who earned their living by educating/training other individuals also had to eat. So $$ of service provided by human is pretty well correlated with petroleum usage. In a way, it's no different than renting a car.

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Bankai
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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by Bankai »

jacob wrote:
Mon Sep 03, 2018 3:48 pm
Speaking of 1 jacob vis-a-vis the world's total global population, I once calculated that the consumption of the world's inventory of humans would be sustainable if everybody consumed no more than about 1.3 jacob each. That was back in the early 2000s when there were 6e9 humans and not 7.6e9 humans. So that's a big part of where the 1 jacob came about. I was already spending less, but I've always thought of it as a ceiling insofar what I could morally do.
If the cap on expenses was placed due to moral reasons (i.e. not to consume more than one's fair share of resources), than why continue eating animals? Do the same logic and morals not apply, and with immediate effect? Each steak eaten could've fed 2 starving persons in Africa for a day (energy efficiency of beef is ~4.3%).

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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by jacob »

@Bankai - I don't eat that many animals either. The way I see the moral calculus is that if each person (present and future) has a right to one slice of the pie, then I'm not going to eat/use less because some person decides to take three slices. The two he makes go without (his grandchildren or starving persons in Africa) are on his head. Morally, at least from a libertarian standpoint, the buck stops with the overconsumers. One is not obligated to actively help but one is certainly obligated to not actively hurt.

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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by Kriegsspiel »

Sub-Saharan Africa has a total fertility rate around 5, which probably doesn't help.

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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by jacob »

When you spend as little as they do/can (far below 1.3jacob/5) the number of children doesn't matter. If you want to see where the average person is eating too much of the pie, look at GDP/capita for various countries.

For example, the GDP/Capita in Sierra Leone is 0.07 jacobs. A person could have 13(*) children and still not eat up their slice. Of course that ends it there. Those 13 children could not have any children of their own.

(*) Technically 13*1.3 since the sustainable spending limit is 1.3 jacobs.

Kriegsspiel
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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by Kriegsspiel »

I meant having a bunch of kids doesn't help the starvation problem.

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Jean
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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by Jean »

GDP doesn't capture consumption at very low level

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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by wolf »

JAFI(2018) = 8432 (US Inflation 2018 = 1,9%)

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