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Re: Ecological Economics and Entropy
In <328688bd.5674673@news.midtown.net> alnev@midtown.net (A.J.) writes:
>You have yet to demonstrate any *logical reason* for struggling to
>keep pace with growth as some sort of means to an end. You make
>a grave error in trying to extrapolate future benefits of growth from
>historical benefits.
>It's like saying that a baseball team will do
>better with 90 players than with 9.
Your example is not an example of extrapolation.
*If* a hypothetical team went from 3 members to 4, 5, ...9,
then to 10, 11, ... 89; and gained in performance
each time it increased, *then* a reasonable
(though not infallible) extrapolation would predict it
doing even better at 90.
To extrapolate with greater assurance, one needs
to analyze the causes of the improvement.
With population, the causes are not mysterious:
various forms of inter-human cooperation and
economies of scale. These effects do not tend
to decrease at greater population levels;
some of them *increase*: e.g., the number of
possible *contacts*, of inter-human *combinations*,
of *interfaces* between ideas and between directions
of progress, grows non-linearly and
explosively with population.
Therefore, population increase is likely to be
the more beneficial the further it proceeds.
Empirical data does not contradict this.
>You refuse to account for
>*physical* limits to human endeavors, and plain old elbow room.
>Or do you not think Man lives in a physical realm, I wonder?
Among other realms, yes; there are 3 physical dimensions,
and various logical ones.
I refuse to account for any physical limits which
we are not approaching in any foreseeable future.
It would be futile. How soon are you going
to hit a brick wall if you are moving *away*
>from it? This is the case with our resources.
Consider for example your "elbow room".
We live in 3 dimensions.
The thickness of the layer adjoining the earth surface
that we effectively use increases faster than population.
We have more and more living room.
>>> > The assumption that we can
>>> > support 15 billion people is the wrong attitude to begin with.
>>
>>The suggestion, then, is not *working smarter* but
>>*living less*, in fewer numbers. No, thank you.
>>You go first.
>What the heck do you mean by "living less?" Do we "live less" when
>we go on vacation and manage to find a beach that isn't packed like a
>sardine can?
I mean the people who would be alive if they
were born.
As for the beaches - how many people do you think
went there for vacation a century ago? Per capita,
a lot fewer than now. This
is a relatively new pleasure, the rich as usual started it,
then it spread. Crowding is *not* a monotonic function of
population; it is a function of supply and demand -
*both* of which grow with population. In the long term,
over centuries, crowding tends to diminish as
population grows; but over years, it goes up and down.
>Do we "live less" when we move to an area where the air
>is cleaner because there are fewer people and fewer cars?
The air of a medieval city, with tiny population,
was exceedingly noxious. Air quality in the USA has been
improving for several decades - while population was
increasing. A much greater global population
will be able to air-condition the whole
planet, and enjoy perfect air everywhere.
Clean air, nice beaches are consumer goods
like any others; they can be produced; and economies
of scale apply to them.
>ZPG does not necessarily mean fewer numbers (that's NPG).
I know. But ZPG - given increasing longevity - means
fewer working-age people: not enough to support
the aged; it means fewer people with fresh innovating
minds; it means very few children, a childless, cheerless world.
It means stagnation and boredom. It means regulation
of intimate life. And, for those who *would* have been born,
it means *no life at all*.
And all for what? To make everything worse, not better;
to reduce the greatest resource of humanity, from
which all others proceed. ZPG is as bad a cause
as was ever waged by *any* crusading movement.
It is anti-life *and* anti-choice;
anti-freedom and anti-future and anti-baby.
It is wicked, stupid, and ugly.
>Zero growth
>proponents are merely saying enough is enough!
Enough progress, enough prosperity, enough
life, enough growth?
All *I* am saying is: *not enough* is
*not enough*. The world is severely underpopulated,
and getting more so. A single fact proves that:
the price of labor keeps
rising, compared to prices of consumer goods or
natural resources.
When *will* it be enough?
I hope, never; but if and when we increase to the first
trillion, let us check again.
15 billion is a *paltry* number. And, as things go
now, even *ten* billion will never be reached.
ZPG people *are* having it their way (not
their fault, other causes are at work).
Here is one optimistic but realistic scenario of what might
happen *then* (physical constraints *are* taken account of,
in phases 1 through 6, but not 7, for a reason):
(1) population peaks at about 9 billion by 2035;
(2) near mid-century, a severe shortage of workforce is felt;
(3) a breakthrough permitting
mass production of babies by *in vitro* gestation
is achieved (with perfect genetic health, too). A global
economic boom follows - and extra-global,
too: space ventures get really profitable at last.
(4) population explodes, reaching 100 billion by
2150, three quarters of them on earth, the rest
around the Solar System; Earth is mostly a place
for living and brainwork now (a most pleasant place,
a garden planet) - much of industry and agriculture
has moved off-planet.
(5) A.D. 2,250: a trillion humans live in
the Solar System (a quarter trillion of
them on Earth); interstellar colonization is beginning,
with great amounts of human genetic material shipped
along. All people are practically immortal by now,
except for accidents. Per capita energy
consumption is 1,000 the present Western level.
Perfect health, vigor and radiant happiness
throughout the unlimited life are everyone's birthright.
(6) A.D 2,400: a quadrillion humans inhabit
the Solar System, quintillions exist in nearby
parts of the Galaxy and are spreading like
a forest fire. Mankind's immortality
(and that of formerly terrestrial life) is guaranteed.
But, due to genetic engineering,
humans have split into several species by
this time (all of them far superior to modern
Homo semiSapiens) - and continue to evolve.
Their knowledge and understanding exceed ours
as much as ours differ from a chimp's.
(7) A.D. 3,000. The space-time continuum itself
has become manipulable by post-humans.
They manufacture universes out of vacuum, they
influence cosmic evolution as *we* influence
global evolution already. Their intelligence has
increased on a par with their powers.
By our standards (though
not by theirs!) they are gods. No limits
that we can think of apply to them.
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