Soma
1604
@Canuck graph looks right to me. Recently some economists are saying our economic growth in NZ is due entirely to population growth, and there is actually no productivity growth. This is pretty bold claim, because the dairy sector is going shit hot (China like milk), and new farms are mushrooming across the country. But apparently we haven’t got enough farm hands to do all that extra low paying grunt work, so we have to import workers. Plus the government is keen to lure migrants in rather than training people up in most sectors, so skill shortage is addressed by importing workers and hence population growth, rather than doing things smarter that leads to productivity growth. In fact, wage growth has been static for quite a while, in line with rest of the developed world.
So IMO New Zealand is consistent with what @magnet is saying, not an exception.
So, there is no way for a civilization to stay wealthy while maintaining a constant population over time?
That’s rather dire, isn’t it?
magnet
1606
Well, economic growth depends on productivity and workforce size. So an economy could still grow with a constant population, provided productivity continued to increase. But that’s hard to do.
You could also enlarge the workforce in a constant population by delaying retirement (which is what is happening in Japan right now, btw). Of course, there are limits to that too. And there will be constant pressure for political interventions that will increase the population (Japan’s government is doing what it can to increase fertility rates). Which makes sense in a way: an impending catastrophe that you face alone takes priority over a future catastrophe that others can mitigate.
Or you could just switch to an economic model that doesn’t rely so much on economic growth, which probably means throwing out capitalism. Could a centralized economy “stay wealthy”? That’s a whole other debate.
But perhaps you are asking the wrong question. Even with a fixed population, resources will eventually be exhausted. Population is not the problem, resource use is the problem. So for example, a declining population that relies on fossil fuels might not last as long as a growing population that has switched to renewable energy. And while it would be nice to assure resource availability in perpetuity, in reality it doesn’t make much sense to plan ahead more than, say, a few hundred years. Can we make it that long even with a growing population? Probably!
Resource use can change too in response to exhaustion (and other factors). Think increased solar power as oil becomes more problematic, etc.
Mined resources are also being replaced - think growing diamonds for industrial (and other) uses in labs (as compared to being dependent upon mining), using alternative semiconductors, creating circuits using carbon nanotubes, etc.
Resource exhaustion tends to drive innovation as well as conservation (think air pollution regulations fixing acid rain, london fog deaths, etc. as a function of the exhaustion of the resource consisting of quality air. Desalinization as a response to droughts, etc.
Essentially, many resource exhaustion arguments aren’t hard and fast, hence the long-delayed malthusian die-off.
I don’t think it’s an irrational goal to try to sustain human life on earth in perpetuity or at least as close as possible to doing that. Isnt sustainability a thing? Or is it Star Empire or bust?
They aren’t mutually exclusive, and can be pursued in parallel ;)
magnet
1610
It might be irrational, depending on the cost. And slowing economic growth has very real present costs, for a very uncertain future benefit.
And by this, I mean that we really have little idea what the needs of humanity will be in 1000 years. For instance, suppose there is an asteroid strike in 2000 years that wipes out 99.9999% of the population. And suppose that humanity is so interdependent that it cannot survive without certain minimum global population. In that case, artificial limits to our population would be counterproductive.
Sure, but nothing is infinitely sustainable. This planet has a finite lifespan regardless of what we do.
Miramon
1611
Yeah, it’s just that finite lifespan is enormous if we don’t mess it up. So it’s really silly to suggest that it’s okay to destroy the planet quickly because it will eventually die anyway.
magnet
1612
I definitely don’t think that we should destroy the planet quickly. I think we need to identify the imminent threats, and by imminent I mean on the timescale of centuries. Climate change is an imminent threat that must be dealt with. And there are other potential imminent threats, like antibiotic resistance, honeybee colony collapse, etc.
But I don’t regard our population, by itself, as an imminent threat. It’s a long term threat, maybe. Or maybe not. Malthusians have a track record of being proven wrong, over and over again. So I’m a lot less willing to cause immediate suffering to soothe them.
robc04
1613
I’ve got a weird question. My wife showed a coworker a picture of my new haircut and her reaction was that I look like a neo nazis and my wife should get me to change it before I get us hurt or involved in some conflict. Is that a thing now, where people automatically think people are part of some neo nazis group because of a haircut?
My haircut is an undercut with a fade on one side and a hard part on the other. Essentially this is what it is:
- on the part side it is shaved pretty short , maybe 1/4 of an inch all the way up to the part.
- on top it is longer, maybe 2 inches to 2.5 inches, parted to the side. I’ll probably let the top get a bit longer, but my hair was cut pretty short my last haircut.
- on the other side it is a fade (shorter by the ear and gradually gets longer). Probably starts off 1/4 of an inch and gets to 1/2 an inch towards the top.
Here’s what it looks like. I sneezed so my face looks a bit off.
Should I be concerned or is my wife’s coworker making something out of nothing (this is what I think)?
Would you guys look at this haircut and think - must be a neo nazis?
Gosh, that’s kinda what my hair style is like too. Thank goodness I’m not in the US.
You should be concerned about your wife’s coworker.
ShivaX
1616
robc04
1617
I think that probably where she got the idea from.
Forget the hair, WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR FACE?! Where are your eyes? How do you eat?
robc04
1619
I did say I sneezed! You don’t get like that when you sneeze? That’s what we do on planet Zoltan … I mean us normal Earthlings do that.
nKoan
1620
Eh the alt-right haircut is basically a fashionable long on top/short on the sides cut right now. In Portland it seems just about every guy has a variation of that cut. There is a fun game that I like to play called “hipster or Nazi?” when walking down the street.
Yours doesn’t seem as extreme as the alt-right cut IMO. I guess it’s maybe sort of close but needs to be saved closer on the sides and longer on the top, like Macklemore used to have.
WaPo sorta covered this in November.
Been that way forever for those of us with shaved heads, though the association has grown less over recent years as the shaved head became more generally popular.
The undercut does seem to be the new neo-nazi fashion
Just don’t wear a white polo shirt with khaki pants.
