1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

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the_platypus
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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by the_platypus »

"devil's sooty brother"...LOL.

I think we are at the same place then, more or less. I do think, however, that if you spend more on some good because it is "sustainable," then you must be certain that that person's lifestyle and business is absolutely, without a doubt, sustainable. I would not doubt a traditional Ladakhi or an Aran Islander or some other broadly subsistence based culture. I do doubt like, Tom's of Maine or Trader Joe's. I am halfway on my local organic co-op.

I think it's sensible to spend more to get something produced more sustainably, the increased price being a result of the lack of government subsidies and lessened fossil fuel inputs. That intended end is good. The unintended uses of money given to businesses is only as sustainable as the business operates and the employees live. That's where I can be more skeptical and lean towards Jacob's reasoning. It's easy for greenwashing and an over-developed standard of living to cancel those intended goods. Perhaps the best solution is to just know personally local e.g. farmers, business owners and determine through in-person interactions if they really walk the walk.

The trouble with money is it opens you up to all the unscrupulous "goods" of the marketplace...so it's necessary to trust/verify that the person you're giving your money to will use it wisely. In a world where almost everyone lives in settlements larger than 150 people, that's really difficult.

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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by the_platypus »

@white belt I absolutely agree. There is a hierarchy of how to meet one's "needs"...first being not to need it, then being not to own it, then being not to buy it, and so on...

But certainly there are cases when the only way to meet a "need" is to buy it, and then one will be presented with an array of possible goods/services which fulfill the conditions, all differing in price and perceived sustainability. That is where I was questioning. I'm not sure with e.g. local organic farmers. But I suppose if the good in question is organic produce then the market doing its thing should force prices down and thereby limit the second order spending damages? That is, the extra cost of organic produce is eaten up by production costs (which are a result of not using fossil fuels? chemicals?) and not by profit.

I feel like this has been answered before but I have a tendency to forget...

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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by Alphaville »

the_platypus wrote:
Tue May 25, 2021 3:02 pm
"devil's sooty brother"...LOL.
it's the title of an old fairytale :mrgreen:

the_platypus wrote:
Tue May 25, 2021 3:02 pm
I think we are at the same place then, more or less. I do think, however, that if you spend more on some good because it is "sustainable," then you must be certain that that person's lifestyle and business is absolutely, without a doubt, sustainable. I would not doubt a traditional Ladakhi or an Aran Islander or some other broadly subsistence based culture. I do doubt like, Tom's of Maine or Trader Joe's. I am halfway on my local organic co-op.
ah... hard disagree on this, because that would require me to be like the stasi, spying on everyone, which is not just impossibility, but also terrible mental health. i don't know those ethnic groups you mention, but id venture a guess they might be idealized versions of reality--all humans are more or less terrible :mrgreen:

say what you want about tom's of maine, but back in the day they were pioneers. thanks to them we now have a myriad other options. as for trader joe's, they have their problems, but they also pay their workers better, and i like that. i don't buy any of their palm oil products though.

i do food co-op too, and they charge more than anyone! a boutique for the rich? so many dilemmas...

of course one tries to do their due dilligence, to research the company, to research the retailer... but ultimately nobody is omniscient. per the austrian school, only the whole market, as a whole, performs the whole calculation--if you believe that.
the_platypus wrote:
Tue May 25, 2021 3:02 pm
I think it's sensible to spend more to get something produced more sustainably, the increased price being a result of the lack of government subsidies and lessened fossil fuel inputs. That intended end is good. The unintended uses of money given to businesses is only as sustainable as the business operates and the employees live. That's where I can be more skeptical and lean towards Jacob's reasoning. It's easy for greenwashing and an over-developed standard of living to cancel those intended goods. Perhaps the best solution is to just know personally local e.g. farmers, business owners and determine through in-person interactions if they really walk the walk.

The trouble with money is it opens you up to all the unscrupulous "goods" of the marketplace...so it's necessary to trust/verify that the person you're giving your money to will use it wisely. In a world where almost everyone lives in settlements larger than 150 people, that's really difficult.
eh, again, universal stasi proposition. non-practicable/impossible standards. i'd like to offer an alternative view.

i don't believe in design of high complexity. you just can't control it. this is why communism failed. total perfect solutions are not in our universe. we live in a chaos we barely understand.

but successive approximations... are okay. we can make a change, see what happens, another change, see what happens... until things get better. like the tao te ching says, a journey of a thousand miles begins beneath the feet.

so... when you buy something proclaimed sustainable you're buying into a culture. it's not just the one person you give the money to--you're rewarding the whole culture. even if there are opportunists and scammers. you're signaling to the world you want more of this, not that. you're changing the aggregate demand. production shifts to follow. more ventures develop. products and services improve. prices drop.

the other thing is that we're dealing with a moving target. if we demand more sustainable/ethical goods and services, the standards become more stringent. businesses get more public scrutiny than the person you supposedly know. they have to adapt. this is how toms of maine went from natural goods pioneer to "not good enough" in your eyes.

the last thing is that i value access for the masses. i don't want to be the sole hipster buying obscure hipster products made for 10 hipsters. our population is heading towards 11,000,000,000 humans. not 150. and i want everyone and their mother to have access to clean air and water, good food, good health, public art, public education, and to be able to inhabit and enjoy healthy ecosystems.

if that at the end of a thousand mile journey towrds sustainability that ends up being delivered by a future evolution of the walmart corporation... then so be it--as long as they damn deliver.

of course i think we're just too many humans--but different story though.

anyway, this is the same as the electric car. is it the cure to all our problems? hell no. is it better than fossil fuels? hell yes. so, we improve on our fleet, become more efficient, then we look again, find new problems, and again, and again, etc. in successive approximations.

do we really have any other choice? i don't see it. i don't mean there isn't one, i just mean i can't see it. if there is--where is it?

the_platypus
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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by the_platypus »

Wow, that's quite a story! Ah, I didn't mean like spying, but more the kind of knowledge a person gets when they know the person who grows their food personally. You'd notice if they bought a large yacht, basically. The only point about the ethnic groups is that I can trust they would use the money well. I would trust Mark Boyle (or Jacob!) with $100. I'm not so sure about Wal-Mart.

I agree it's important to send signals/rewards to push businesses/culture in that sustainable direction. And I get what you mean about approximation, small steps, don't make perfect enemy of the good, etc. I do a lot of shopping at the co-op for that reason. In past times, ideally (and if anyone is interested in ideals, it's me, lol), there would be a tight linking between economic activity and community and therefore ethics; but the anonymity baked into money somewhat precludes that.

All this uncertainty and anonymity and complexity...seems like the safest bet is to meet as many wants without money as possible. Either I do it myself or I have someone in my social circle do it; in either case, I would have excellent knowledge of the process of production of that good/service and the person/relationship behind it. I think that's a large part of why Boyle lives w/o money.

Aaaaand I guess I am back to jafi after all as a pretty decent proxy :lol: :lol:

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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by Alphaville »

the_platypus wrote:
Tue May 25, 2021 6:39 pm
Ah, I didn't mean like spying, but more the kind of knowledge a person gets when they know the person who grows their food personally. You'd notice if they bought a large yacht, basically. The only point about the ethnic groups is that I can trust they would use the money well. I would trust Mark Boyle (or Jacob!) with $100. I'm not so sure about Wal-Mart.
i'm not sure about walmart either :lol:

my point was that i'll take the cure to our problems from whoever can deliver them.

i don't know this mark boyle... will look him up
the_platypus wrote:
Tue May 25, 2021 6:39 pm
I agree it's important to send signals/rewards to push businesses/culture in that sustainable direction. And I get what you mean about approximation, small steps, don't make perfect enemy of the good, etc. I do a lot of shopping at the co-op for that reason. In past times, ideally (and if anyone is interested in ideals, it's me, lol), there would be a tight linking between economic activity and community and therefore ethics; but the anonymity baked into money somewhat precludes that.
ah! i think the first one to theorize that commodification removes the social relation between consumer and producer was marx. see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_(Marxism)
you could find more there.

but yeah business is based on specialization and trade and vast networks none of us can control/look at where the money goes. in our current variety of capitalism, the consumer is king. so reducing consumer demand via cultural means is important, but i think the quality of the demand is also important, i.e. what do we want from business. cultural change does make a difference--only to a point of course because there's also manufactured demand, trends can get coopted, etc. i'm all for the beyond burger though :D

i'm reasoning from the assumption that our system is not going away. we've had division of labor and trade since way before there was money, or cities even. marx as i recall idealized guild labor in the european middle ages, but i'm not sure he had all the facts. e.g. the apprenticeship system can be terribly abusive even today--ask @horsewoman.

personally, after living some time in a bolshevik commune... i found out i like markets after all. but yeah some people are happy in communes. see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz

it's a viable model. not for everyone, but for some people it works well.

maybe you could visit for research purposes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz_volunteer
(hairy times to visit right now, but maybe at some point or something...)
the_platypus wrote:
Tue May 25, 2021 6:39 pm
All this uncertainty and anonymity and complexity...seems like the safest bet is to meet as many wants without money as possible. Either I do it myself or I have someone in my social circle do it; in either case, I would have excellent knowledge of the process of production of that good/service and the person/relationship behind it. I think that's a large part of why Boyle lives w/o money.

Aaaaand I guess I am back to jafi after all as a pretty decent proxy :lol: :lol:
it's an easy benchmark to achieve if you just shop at walmart :lol:

but yeah, if you can find a way to live off the land with no money, that works too. eg if you can find personal satisfaction in a neolithic village of 150 people, then why not. or a kibbutz. a kibbutz trades with the outside but your basic needs are provided within the bounds.

my concern is more with the impact of the aggregate demand of 8 billion apes trending towards 11 billion. the number of dollars spent doesn't worry me as much as the actual resources depleted and biomes destroyed. i don't think these can be translated so easily into dollars. if anything, i often find an inverse proportion--the cheaper something is, the more externalities are unaccounted for.

meanwhile here i think are the people trying to get the accounting done right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_economics
which isn't an easy task.

alright che platypus, i hope you find what you're looking for. ¡hasta la victoria siempre! :D

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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by white belt »

The 2 largest chunks of the average household budget in the USA are housing (33%) and transportation (16%). Food is 3rd (13%) but includes meals eaten at restaurants. Let's be honest, it is unlikely that buying organic foods to cook at home is the only thing that is keeping a person from 1 JAFI spending. Jacob posted this in another thread but I keep coming back to it when this food spending discussion roles around again:
jacob wrote:
Fri Nov 27, 2020 9:50 am
Carbon mitigation (if you're a first-worlder reading this) is more effectively done with a Pareto strategy which should prioritize a reduction in direct and indirect power production (electricity and stuff) and transportation (how much you and your stuff is moved around). The other strategy is like trying to save $30 on your food budget while you're spending $200 on your car payment, $300 on your part of the rent, and another $300 on "fun". Focus on those instead, literally.

This doesn't mean that food should be ignored or that focusing on the others is an excuse to pigging out or thinking you've done your part. The carbon budget is just like any other budget. Prioritize and optimize. Ultimately find a better way to use the resources.


Alphaville wrote:
Tue May 25, 2021 4:41 pm
do we really have any other choice? i don't see it. i don't mean there isn't one, i just mean i can't see it. if there is--where is it?
See the Deep Adaptation paper. Some will argue that attempting to work within the existing system is a mistake.

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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by Alphaville »

white belt wrote:
Tue May 25, 2021 10:35 pm
The 2 largest chunks of the average household budget in the USA are housing (33%) and transportation (16%). Food is 3rd (13%) but includes meals eaten at restaurants. Let's be honest, it is unlikely that buying organic foods to cook at home is the only thing that is keeping a person from 1 JAFI spending. Jacob posted this in another thread but I keep coming back to it when this food spending discussion roles around again:
see this is why i have a problem measuring everything in jafis.

take housing: just because you own it outright and no longer pay for it, it doesn't mean that you spend less. it just means you spent it upfront, real cost just gets amortized over your lifetime. unless you built by hand of course.

if the house appreciates... is it because it's now using up more resources than before? is the appreciation in price of a home translatable as resources? if someone pays you more than you put in: are you causing more destruction?

if you built by hand, but cleared some woods to build, and require your own road, that had to be cleared just for you, and now need 4wd vehicle to do anything... are you using less resources than if you had paid more in a shared road where you can bicycle your errands?

if you build by hand with cob and locally source materials that require a lot of labor--are you depleting more resources than if you build quickly with cheap chinese drywall?

think in terms of resources, not "personal finance". they're completely different things.

i guess my criticism of the jafi is the assumption people make with it: that ecology is reducible to personal finance.

it's not. it may be related, depending on context, but it's not the same thing.
white belt wrote:
Tue May 25, 2021 10:35 pm


See the Deep Adaptation paper. Some will argue that attempting to work within the existing system is a mistake.
i think maybe i didnt make myself clear. in the sentence that you're responding to with this, im asking (rhetorically) if we really have an alternative to a successive approximations methodology to solve our big problems. i'm not talking about inside/outside any system.

what im saying is that i dont believe we can arrive to "deep adaptation fortress" or "permaculture world" or any other unknown complex scenario by sheer design. because by definition we can't design large unknown complexities. we can only get there, if we ever do, step by step, one experiment after another, watching carefully.

there is no great master plan that solves the world. the more complex the plan, the harder to implement, the more serious the mistakes, and the bigger the fail. the fact that simple designs work reliably fools us into thinking that more complex designs will work better in a complex world. and then it's often the opposite, when a big black swan comes crashing through the window.

complexities that work well develop organically, bit by bit, by infinite experiments and failures that make the system resilient or antifragile--they don't develop as giant rube goldberg conceptualizations.

sure, every now and then there are great revolutions that change everything with grand plans. but after them... come the counterrevolutions :lol:

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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by jacob »

There are two ways to see this. One adjusts for inflation and the other one just recalculates the number based on GDP, overshot, and population annually.

Which one you pick depends on whether you're focusing on sustainability or whether you just want to "beat jacob's track record".

If you just want to compare to my historical "spending", my original number was $6000 but that's 20 years ago and clearly $6000 in 2001 is not the same as $6000 in 2021. This is useful and important so as not to get discouraged when reading older FIRE works.

If you're more interested in the sustainable aspects, you should recalculate annually. The numbers lag by a couple of years. It has remained remarkably stable over the years as economic growth (which includes inflation) get eaten up by corresponding population growth and a deepening overshot. In 2019 it was $6750 IIRC.

But guys, it's just a rule of thumb that gets you to an actionable number as opposed to a bunch of feel-good handwaving about buying EVs and solar panels. Some things to consider for the sustainably oriented...
  • It doesn't account for purchasing power parity or which country you spend it in although you clearly "burn" more in some countries than others.
  • It doesn't account for what the money is spent on (e.g. organic), but spent money quickly makes it into the rest of the economy where it's likely spent on "the average basket of goods".
So the main point is to get within the ballpark && "not spend evil". E.g. if you spend $6750 on nothing else but burning diesel fuel in barrels, you're part of the problem. And if you're promoting sustainable practices while at the same time you're spending $15000 or $30000 per year, you'd have to make a much stronger argument for your spending practices (e.g. "I'm building post-collapse infrastructure to be used by future generations"). But if you have normal consumer patterns (the same as those the global overshoot number is based on ...) and stay around $6750, you're on the high road.

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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by Alphaville »

jacob wrote:
Wed May 26, 2021 7:56 am
If you just want to compare to my historical "spending", my original number was $6000 but that's 20 years ago and clearly $6000 in 2001 is not the same as $6000 in 2021.
ok so please let me ask for clarification of the concept here:

in the intervening 20 years you went from dorm dweller to homeowner, yes?

how do you account for your housing expense, which was presumably a large one at some point?

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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by jacob »

Alphaville wrote:
Wed May 26, 2021 8:31 am
how do you account for your housing expense, which was presumably a large one at some point?
See this old thread where imputed costs were litigated. It goes on for several pages...
viewtopic.php?p=120667#p120667

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Alphaville
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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by Alphaville »

jacob wrote:
Wed May 26, 2021 8:51 am
See this old thread where imputed costs were litigated. It goes on for several pages...
viewtopic.php?p=120667#p120667
thanks! i'll bookmark that to catch up with it.

eta looks like i really need to start from page 1

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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I grok that 1 Jacob is just a measure, but I am stuck on considering the ethics inherent in dividing “dumping rights” by human population. For instance, belief in equality of humans each possessing unique soul combined with belief in personal responsibility in relationship to God through the Bible led to relatively early education of females in Protestant culture which eventually led to population reduction/smaller families which eventually led to less religion due to less need for extended support of family.

My point being that maybe it is worth considering the possibility that an ethics transcendent of one human/one soul may be necessary towards survival of species. OTOH, I have zero clue what such an ethic could possibly be.

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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by ertyu »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Thu May 27, 2021 8:44 am
I grok that 1 Jacob is just a measure, but I am stuck on considering the ethics inherent in dividing “dumping rights” by human population. For instance, belief in equality of humans each possessing unique soul combined with belief in personal responsibility in relationship to God through the Bible led to relatively early education of females in Protestant culture which eventually led to population reduction/smaller families which eventually led to less religion due to less need for extended support of family.

My point being that maybe it is worth considering the possibility that an ethics transcendent of one human/one soul may be necessary towards survival of species. OTOH, I have zero clue what such an ethic could possibly be.
Educate women. You educate women, population growth takes care of itself and with that, takes care of resource strain. Worked for europe and the states, worked for china, worked for the former "2nd world" of russia and eastern europe. You enter a development econ class, the first thing you learn is, educate women.

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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@ertyu:

Right. I believe there was even a very pointed experiment conducted in a poor region of India that indicated that spending money to educate girls, even absent other factors of affluence, resulted in reduced birth rates. IOW, it might be more how well the girls are educated relative to the boys that matters most.

Simplified motto might be A Garden and a Library for Every Woman! ( possibility of micro-businesses also assumed)

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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by white belt »

ertyu wrote:
Thu May 27, 2021 10:41 am
Educate women. You educate women, population growth takes care of itself and with that, takes care of resource strain. Worked for europe and the states, worked for china, worked for the former "2nd world" of russia and eastern europe. You enter a development econ class, the first thing you learn is, educate women.
We talked about this in an old Population Growth thread. The following issues remain:

-education also correlates with consumption, which means that educated societies may have less children but they will consume much more in their lifetime (and they will dedicate many more resources to the children they have)

-we don’t have time to wait for all women to get educated in order to reduce population growth before permanent catastrophic climate effects (likely already happening). How many years did 7WB5’s example from Protestantism in the USA take?

-resource scarcity leads to harsh competition leads to war leads to religious fundamentalism taking hold which can quickly undo any reductions in birthrate due to education of women. See many middle eastern countries who used to be progressive and now have swung the complete opposite direction (Afghanistan, Iran, etc).

Now I still support educating women, but it is not a silver bullet because you also need to provide economic opportunities for women. These are hard to come by in the developing countries with high birth rates and low GDP.

In regards to human ethics, I believe there needs to be some kind of shift that values future generations as much of more than the present. Currently that doesn’t really exist beyond a vague sense of wanting to make a “good life” for your kids.

The JAFI is just a measure, but I find it useful for putting my own consumption in perspective. I think there is a human tendency to define the consumption of those around them as “normal” and all my IRL peers are yuppies making 6 figures so it’s nice to be reminded of how strange that existence is in the grand scheme of things.

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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@white belt:

True, but I would note that this change happens much more rapidly in modern context. Obvious example would be my experience educating recently immigrated refugee status girls from poor conservative Muslim regions. There were some notable exceptions for sure, but in general they were a highly motivated group. And when you are my age, it’s almost shocking how fast kids go from being kids to next generation of adults.

OTOH, although rapidly improving over last 50 years, median global per capita income is still just a hair over .5 Jacob’s. So, rising affluence certainly could swamp out population reduction. Thus, energy intensity absolutely can’t be ignored.

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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by ertyu »

We're getting off-topic folks. Wasn't arguing it's a silver bullet, nothing is. But it is one of the things with more bang for the buck

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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I was researching the numbers myself, and I am wondering whether the Eco-Jacob (as opposed to the Frugal Jacob) should be calculated in International (PPP) $$ rather than U.S. $ given that the other factors are global? This makes a fairly significant difference since International Eco-Jacob would be based on $18,378 GDP/capita vs. $10,893 GDP/capita. Thus, yearly spending to stay within ecological limits would be approximately $11,486 vs. $6808.

Another consideration might be the biocapacity of your region as clearly illustrated on this site:

https://data.footprintnetwork.org/?_ga= ... 23598936#/

So, for instance, because the U.S. is relatively resource heavy, low population density, but extremely consumptive, the biocapacity per human (ecological income) is 3.4, but biocapacity spending is 8.0, so biocapacity deficit is 4.6. Although I am not an individual who strongly identifies as
part of nation-state bounded ecological holon, I find this interesting because it obviously also applies at the levels of human population within local watershed or human residents of permaculture project. However, if you were an individual, like maybe Garrett Hardin, who identified strongly with all manner of quite literally conservative national policy as it applies to issues such as wilderness preservation, immigration policy, urbanization, etc. , you might feel morally okay with spending as much as $39,000/year pre-tax vs. the $53,383/year pre-tax U.S. average GDP/capita. (Somebody correct me her if I am to large extent double-dipping by adjusting for PPP and gha.) However, you would then have to accept/deny the moral consequence that residents of , for instance, Bangladesh would only have at best $4594/capita ecological income to spend.

My take on the matter, based in part on my experience interacting with good many immigrants, is that International Eco-Jacob should apply because strategy of relocation along PPP gradient doesn't make sense as moral calculation although it may make sense as individual financial calculation, but luck of the draw in national biocapacity birth lottery shouldn't apply except to the extent that you personally endeavor to improve your very local biocapacity per human by for instance, tearing down an ugly abandoned mini-strip mall and turning it into a park and/or taking a 9 year old out of the foster care prison system and feeding him with your permaculture project. MMV :)

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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by oldbeyond »

I recently came accross this argument which states that TFR is mostly a factor of child mortality (a variable that of course correlates with income, access to health care, female education et al): https://ifstudies.org/blog/african-fert ... -should-be

I feel that JAFI and similar concepts are great as they cut through a lot of self-deception around sustainability. Our culture of course finds it very convenient to have us simply opt for “green products” and keep our collective habits and arrangements where they are. So you get the massive solar array to run your gadgets and your electric car, saving the planet with your 100k burn rate. I fully accept the heuristic on that level.

It seems like it would have to be used with some awareness of its limits, though. Some “green” consumption decisions do seem more like a voluntary resource/pollution tax, where the increase in spending (the most powerful choices are of course both cheap and “green”, here I’m talking about where it might be reasonable to spend a bit more for environmental reasons) mostly come from having to manage externalities, not in higher energy use or increased margins. For example, it’s often cheaper to fly than to take the train between our major cities, as airfares are competitive on a relatively open market, while the main state owned train operator holds a monopoly on most rail links, and is used as a cash cow by the government. Or say buying locally sourced food where the farming builds topsoil, captures carbon and increases biodiversity compared to cheaper food from industrial farming.

I struggle with where to draw the line here sometimes. On the one hand avoiding the trap of green consumerism, but on the other not buying very destructive products to save a few bucks. Case in point has been food spending, where I’ve become more strict with quality, and seen it increase a bit with diet held constant. It’s a marginal issue to the average consumer but perhaps a bit more relevant as you become more efficient.

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Re: 1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@oldbeyond:

I generally agree, but there can also be a sort of ratcheting decision matrix on buying green as efficiency improves. For instance, it might cost me more to repair the grid electrical service to my tiny house than to construct a solar system adequate to my level of usage given alternative means of supplying heat such as pellet stove or natural gas. Unfortunately, current building code gives me no choice but the former, because the assumption is that higher usage is needed. Whereas, in some African backwater the obvious solution for electrical supply would be more green and modular.

Anyways, I’m just happier with this new calculation because there’s no way I can come up with to avoid having to either be unsafe, never see my kids, live with a grouchy old man, work full time another X years to afford myself option of middle class neighborhood cash house purchase, or contribute to burn down of planet, if Eco-Jacob is less than $7000/year. OTOH, $11,000/year is easy-peasy lemon breezy for me.

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