Damn, this is a sad day for the homelab.
The article says Intel is working with partners to “continue NUC innovation and growth”, so we will see what that manifests as.
While companies today are certainly overzealous in their drive for growth, it is a myth that infinite economic growth is impossible. It is not only possible but necessary: https://medium.com/@oliverwaters_76079/the-strange-necessity-of-infinite-economic-growth-ebc2e505cdf1
Who is Oliver Waters and why should I listen to them regarding economic theory? I read the post, and it reads more like a philosophical thought experiment than any applicable economics theory.
While I don’t believe someone needs a higher education degree to speak on complex topics, I’m not going to take a Medium blog post from someone who lists no demonstrable experience in theoretical or practical economics as a central source for discussions, sorry.
When the money supply grows infinitely then everything priced in it has to grow infinitely
It’s called taxes, don’t worry.
Maybe capitalists instead of economists? 😂
Capitalists are behind the most prelavent economic school (neoliberalism) today—just look at the history of the “Chicago school”. I doubt the capitalists themselves believe that BS, but it’s profitable for them to make the rest of the world to believe it.
I highly recommend evonomics.com, some rally good essays on there about the cult-like economic beliefs of today. Written by economists who’ve seen through the BS.
Thanks for the rec, I’ll check it out
Only two kinds of people believe in infinite growth; economists and psychopaths.
But you repeat yourself :)
Pretending like capitalism is this new concept that needs to be fully explored and debated before we understand that it’s bad is a pretty bad faith framing of the issue. Infinite economic growth is literally impossible because Earth has finite resources and there is a finite number of humans. There is no necessity or imperative behind infinite economic growth other than to make the ruling class richer at everyone else’s expense.
I would say just generalizing capitalism as ‘bad’ is also not in good faith. It is not without issues, and letting it be completely unrestrained would probably be disastrous. But no other economic system has lifted more people out of abject poverty or driven technological innovation as hard. There are benefits.
There’s the old “more people were in poverty before capitalism” argument.
Did capitalism bring people out of poverty? Or did access to education, healthcare, social safety nets, and proper food bring people out of poverty? Where I live, capitalism is what’s driving people into tent cities.
How does one person controlling the capital in an area, help other people if they’re gatekeeping the economic prosperity from by forcing them to perform labour, at a disproportionately low rate of recompense, to help them (the capital owner) increase their net worth? Don’t even say trickle down economics or I’ll deck you.
In a finite system, infinite anything is an impossibility.
If the last 300 years are anything to go by, we clearly do need resources if we are to maintain growth at a rate high enough to barely keep pace with the needs of the market. Coal, steal, oil, cement, water, food, etc.
The reality is, we can’t replace the current demand on renewable energy sources alone. You seem to believe the system can pivot and adapt fast enough to fix itself. While I’m of the mindset the system will follow the path of least resistance even if that means killing itself.
We need resources, yes, of course! However, consuming those resources is not the only way to generate growth. My linked post lays it out fairly clearly, I think.
Whether or not I think we, currently, can pivot quickly enough to a model that doesn’t kill us all, I don’t know. I think it’s possible, but like you, I’m also pessimistic about it happening. In any case, that is not at all what I was suggesting. My only point was that infinite economic growth is feasible in general.
Do you have the text of that article you linked? I’ll confess I hit a login wall nearly immediately into the discussion and I never log in to any of that stuff. But I am curious to read more.
Apologies! I didn’t realize it was walled.
The Strange Necessity of Infinite Economic Growth
Nov 13, 2018Despite intuitive claims to the contrary, infinite economic growth is not just possible — it’s essential for human flourishing.
In an article for Foreign Policy, the anthropologist Jason Hickel has recently called for an end to global economic growth, as the only way to avoid total ecological destruction. He argues that so called ‘green growth’ — the idea that we can decouple intensive resource use from economic growth — is a myth. George Monbiot has shared a similar concern, echoing previous warnings by influential writers Naomi Klein and Paul Ehrlich.
I’m going to focus on Hickel’s work, since it contains several related misconceptions that are nonetheless highly intuitive. In his article and across his other writings, Hickel makes three key basic claims:
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There are hard physical limits to how efficiently we can use resources. It follows that infinite economic growth is impossible on our physically finite planet.
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Empirical studies are showing that we cannot ‘decouple’ resource use from economic growth, meaning we will run out of resources if economic growth continues.
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We can maintain high living standards even with zero global economic growth.
Let’s look at each claim in turn.
- Is infinite growth impossible?
In his article, Hickel claims that there are strict physical limits to how efficiently we can use resources, which means pursuing economic growth in the form of rising GDP will eventually exhaust all resources on the planet. Hickel relies on conclusions from three empirical studies that purport to demonstrate this, which I will unpack in my response to his second claim. But here I just want to clarify what exactly economic growth is. By doing so we can understand why economic growth does not in principle depend on unsustainable resource depletion, before examining if such future growth is an empirical plausibility.
‘Economic growth’ refers to the increase in, and improvement of, goods and services that are useful to human beings. This is often conflated with what is called ‘extractivism’: which is the obviously finite process of extracting material resources from the Earth to sell on the market. The former is a necessary process for the continuous flourishing of humanity, the latter erroneously conceives of nature as, in Naomi Klein’s words, a ‘bottomless vending machine’.
Since the Earth consists only of a finite amount of matter and energy, we clearly cannot indefinitely consume its contents without eventually drowning in waste or starving to death. But even this obvious insight contains a misconception. We never actually ‘consume’ matter and energy in the first place. We are forever bound by the first law of thermodynamics, which dictates that matter and energy are never created or destroyed, only transformed.
This brings us back to economic growth. Fundamentally, it is the process of human beings transforming matter and energy into more valuable forms via the development of theoretical and practical knowledge. It is ‘economic value’ which increases exponentially, measured (very)roughly by GDP. The crucial point is that while the extraction of finite physical resources cannot increase indefinitely on a finite planet, economic growth actually can.
Steven Pinker describes the infinite potential of economic growth eloquently in his book Enlightenment Now:
‘…it’s a fallacy to think that people “need resources” in the first place. They need ways of growing food, moving around, lighting their homes, displaying information, and other sources of well-being. They satisfy these needs with ideas: with recipes, formulas, techniques, blueprints, and algorithms for manipulating the physical world to give them what they want. The human mind, with its recursive combinatorial power, can explore an infinite space of ideas, and is not limited by the quantity of any particular kind of stuff in the ground.’
Of course, it’s abundantly clear from history that most civilisations have failed miserably to generate and implement the requisite knowledge to provide for the needs and desires of their citizens. This brings us to Hickel’s empirical claim: that our own current trajectory is leading us to disaster.
- Prediction or prophesy?
One might reasonably suspect that the promise of infinite economic growth would only be plausible for a sufficiently advanced civilisation — particularly one that has managed to wean itself off fossil fuels. We should therefore ask if decoupling economic growth from resource use is likely to be feasible given our relatively primitive level of technological development.
On Hickel’s account, things are not looking good. He cites several studies which suggest there is no way to avoid running out of resources if we continue with our current rate of economic growth.
The main problem with these studies is that they tend to presume a certain fixed ‘biocapacity’ of the Earth. This concept and the corresponding notion of humanity’s ‘ecological footprint’ have many problems, the most fundamental of which is that they depend arbitrarily on our current level of scientific and technological development. This is because the maximum level of human consumption that our planet can support is not fixed by some natural law — it depends entirely on the sophistication of our technology to convert raw materials efficiently into life-supporting forms.
The very same lump of matter and energy has vastly different properties to us humans depending on the level of and quality of our knowledge. Major scientific breakthroughs therefore allow us to do dramatically more with less. One kilogram of uranium contains two to three million times more energy than the same amount of coal or oil, but this fact went completely unnoticed by everyone up until fundamental breakthroughs in physics in the 20th century.
Similarly, the invention of desalination techniques unlocked the effectively boundless supply of seawater. While the rest of the Middle East suffers water shortages, Israel has a surplus — thanks to advances that have reduced the costs of desalination by two-thirds since 1990.
One study mentioned by Hickel calculated that we’ll be using 95 billion metric tons of resources globally in 2050. But this figure is meaningless without a corresponding estimate of what fraction that is of the Earth’s total resources. And we can’t know what Earth’s total resources are because we cannot predict future fundamental technological advances.
At one point Hickel declares that the sustainable level of global resource use is about 50 billion metric tons a year, without citing any source or justification. The authors of the 2012 study he references cited this same figure as a possible upper limit on global resource extraction, being roughly the level of extraction there was in 1992. But why choose this year? Because that was the year of the first United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. In other words, it was picked out of a hat.
Even where these studies make allowances for future improvements in how efficiently we use resources, they only allow for greater efficiency in the use of resources we currently know about. If the future is anything like the past, we will discover whole new ways to build and power things, and replace whole classes of raw materials we currently depend upon.
Then there’s the fact that these studies’ predicted improvements in resource efficiency are themselves woefully pessimistic. The most optimistic prediction in the studies Hickel mentions is that resource efficiency will double by 2050. But almost any consumer product we use today requires far fewer resources to build and run than their equivalent 32 years ago. While it’s a somewhat trite example, take the iPhone. This one product has replaced landline push-button phones, pagers, cameras and camcorders, calendars, alarm clocks, audio-recorders, flashlights, maps, GPS, credit cards, and more. We should only expect this kind of dematerialization to accelerate over the next 32 years, given the rapid advances being made in nanotechnology and materials science.
This fundamental fallacy driving the pessimism of these studies was eloquently captured by David Deutsh in his book The Beginning of Infinity. In the chapter ‘Unsustainable’, Deutsch reflects on Paul Erlich warning his high school class in 1971 of the impending global ecological collapse, a tragedy which never came to pass:
‘Ehrlich thought that he was investigating a planet’s physical resources and predicting their rate of decline. In fact he was prophesying the content of future knowledge. And, by envisaging a future in which only the best knowledge of 1971 was deployed, he was implicitly assuming that only a small and rapidly dwindling set of problems would ever be solved again.’
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People used to say this about energy as well, yet in the past 5-10 years, I’ve read several articles demonstrating that we appear to have decoupled energy growth from economic growth
That article is utterly unconvincing. It just handwaves the finite nature of our material reality with a very weak appeal to “infinite” human creativity. And then the conclusion is that infinite growth is necessary because there’s no way to change the status quo of wealth hoarding. It’s just apologism for the very worst aspects of capitalism without a single iota of serious thought.
You won’t because you don’t understand what you’re talking about.
Yeah this part bothers me. To these companies a solid profit stream is not viable. It has to be iPhone level growth year after year or they think it’s failing and axe it. It’s quite annoying. Eventually you will hit a plateau. That just means it’s a mature market, not failing. Grrrr…
You see the same shit on streaming services. “Oh this show has been out for two days and hasn’t reached Game of Thrones level of popularity already? Let’s remove it from existence forever.”
Just throwing shit at a wall to see what sticks.
Capitalism is unsustainable. We’re seeing what happens in late capitalism. The belts tighten, the workers get left in the dust, the products consumers actually want get the axe.
We don’t even have capitalism yet, what late stage are you talking about?
I guess that really depends on where you live. I can only speak on behalf of the US.
Where do you have capitalism in US? US is probably one of the most anti capitalist countries in the world right now.
Ok, buddy.
The entire USA financial system works on the basis of capital. What the fuck are you talking about? I cannot wait to read your conspiracy theory.
That’s not really true though and it’s anecdotal. The anti-capitalist mindset might be growing due to awareness and people suffering at the hands of capitalism (continued layoffs, increased cost of groceries and rent, union busting, worker exploitation), but that’s because of the ever-tightening squeeze of late capitalism. When you have a structure that requires infinite growth to exist, in a world with finite resources, you end up with the current state of the US.
I think it would be more accurate to say that the anti-capitalist mindset among the working class has definitely grown in the US, but at its core, the US is pro-capitalist.
Where’s US pro capitalist? It’s one of a few countries with legal corruption called lobbying, which helps big corps to shield themselves from competition. US today has a plethora of laws and regulations which create and sustain monopolies. US has whole industries created by lawmakers and completely stonewalled from anyone entering them. Capitalism my ass…
Also capitalism doesn’t require infinite growth. I don’t know where you people are getting that lunacy from.
Infinite growth is not a core part of capitalism. You’re right there. But do you know what is? Pursuit of profit. And do you know what leaves dollar signs in companies eyes? Pursuing infinite growth. Infinite growth results in infinite capital, in theory. Such growth is not a requirement of capitalism, but it is the logical conclusion when you throw sustainability out of the window. And boy, do we know that corps love doing that!
You summarized the infinite growth aspect better than I did. This is exactly what I was referring to. Thank you!
I’m not sure where they are getting their info or how the US isn’t a capitalist hellscape. The US in its current state is exactly what happens when capitalism reaches a boiling point because all of the people driving it pursue infinite growth with zero accountability.
Laws and regulations that allow capitalists to continue their pursuit of infinite growth. One of the definitions of capitalism is simply:
The concentration or massing of capital in the hands of a few
This is like a 1:1 definition of what we have in the US today, and our government enables, protects, and benefits from it. It’s “late” capitalism because it’s grown into a completely unsustainable system.
Late capitalism is the acceleration of growth and concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, with various crises being the result (layoffs, inflated prices, union busting, cuts in safety—e.g train derailments, etc).
That’s not capitalism, lol. Oh, you people…
What are you defining capitalism as, and what word would you use to describe our current system?
You can read about capitalism in Wikipedia.
Most countries today move towards economical fascism, where governments exercise control over private property but do not nationalize it. Lobbying, donor interest protection, cronyism, rise of oligarchy - you can see it in many countries. And then inevitable radicalisation of the public and scapegoating everything else as the core issue. Capitalism, migrants, ecology - everything is a problem but the government.
Contemporary capitalist societies developed in the West from 1950 to the present and this type of system continues to expand throughout different regions of the world—relevant examples started in the United States after the 1950s
This Wikipedia article says that the US is a capitalist system.
Lobbying, donor interest protection, cronyism, rise of oligarchy
Where are these things listed in the article as being incompatible with capitalism, and their presence meaning it’s some other system?
No true Scotsman.
Bruh, I don’t believe in late stage capitalism either but we are definitely living in capitalist economies in most of the world.
Capitalism isn’t just laissez-faire, completely free market type stuff. It’s a spectrum.
