overseas manufacturing in developing countries

sorta. you can't redistribute an apartment building to africa.

yet

*ponders*

focus on growth reliancy has always troubled me, encourages boom/bust cycles, increases pressure to provide proper checks & balances. What's the economy running from here.

also economic growth can be a lot of different things. I can spend $30 on 30 iphone apps or mp3s or whatever and, ignoring what happens to that money afterwards, I'm 'contributing to economic growth' without seriously contributing to emissions. or I can spend the $30 on gas and go for a drive.

xp nope, but cmon now, if only there were some method of storage and transportation of asset wealth hmmm

basically the problem isn't 'economic growth' the problem is energy dependent economic growth and there's some debate about how closely they correlate. there's pretty good evidence that it's 'pretty damn closely' but I don't think that has to be the case forever.

yeah but in periods when the economy isn't experiencing "growth" financial transactions are still constantly taking place. here in the free world people don't actually start starving because the economy's in recession.

again i'm admittedly an economic illiterate but surely the point is that growth is only an important motor for certain kinds of economies, which are replaceable with a different model in theory if not perhaps in fact

And also, is it possible to posit some kind of workable universal floor in terms of what we consider humane work? And is there any way to actually make such a thing economically viable?

― frogBaSeball (Hurting 2), Tuesday, January 24, 2012 12:36 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark

probably the only rule that everybody can universally agree on is that you be 'properly compensated' in proportion to the work you do

if you are, how much you want to 'work' is up to you

probably the only rule that everybody can universally agree on is that you be 'properly compensated' in proportion to the work you do

that just moves the ball to another cup. what's 'properly compensated'? what does a human being need to live? etc.

I just mean that nobody thinks it's bad that we americans allow some people to work 100 hour work weeks because hey, we're paying them six figure salaries or higher!

I think it's bad!

mostly in the big picture cultural sense tho

what we really are some philosopher kings who will govern wisely and prevent us from excess

yeah but iirc that entails shooting all yr musicians oh hang on

often those people who work 100h weeks and making 6 figures don't believe that they're properly compensated

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/01/goldman-sachs-bonus-day-is-a-bloobath.html

and are

yeah but nobody else thinks they aren't, so they can go thumb themselves

workers reacted by forming trade unions, often in the face of extreme hostility from factory owners and their friends in positions of political power

Funnily enough, trade unions still face extreme hostility from factory owners and their friends in positions of political power... in 2012... in the UK

I sorta get at this logical endpoint a lot when I think about this stuff but coming off what I said I think are the big two moral q's (destitute poverty, climate change) there's a question about whether we should be 'economically efficient consumers' (possibly helps the most amount of people?), 'better consumers' (buy only from 'nice factories', helps certain people more) or 'not consumers at all' (the bad environmental effects from consumption matter more than helping people in china)

the answer is def 'consume less' but oh hey look the iphone 4s talks to you

usual problem of utilitarian ethics tho isn't it? if you only had a computer and a clear view of the future you could calculate the answer precisely but

destitute poverty and climate change/sustainability are two good places to draw firm lines, agreed, i think sustainability points towards answers in the questions you raise too? maybe?

sorta, but sustainability is still 'picking sides' (the environmental side > helping people in china) and there's a huge gap between living a nearly-emissions-free lifestyle (an a question about how many people could feasibly do it, and what we'd be giving up, etc.) and making some half-hearted gestures towards sustainability.

economic sustainability, lower profits for greater stability, etc

ah

i think i've written an exam answer on it 7 years ago please don't ask me to start dredging tho

I mean ultimately the need for gdp growth is more of a cultural thing than a 'requirement' for a market economy. would everyone here be happy making the same amount of money for the rest of their lives?

if prices continued to fall due to increased efficiencies ya sure

*claps hands, shooes away servants*

as long as the prices of everything stay the same!

exactly

fuck prices 'staying the same' some of the people in this economy are paid to invent eg kindles

also no growth probably will make it harder to find a cure for every disease in the world ever, and the iphone 6 will never come out, just saying

on the league table of lifestyle we're all sitting happy in the top division let's be honest

nah i don't believe that capitalist expansion is the only driver for invention

regulate the price of new technology and ruthlessly cull outdated industries

xp can you tie 'no growth' to 'no scientific discoveries' tho iatee?

xp what nv said

invention almost by definition would create growth

lots of new shit only becomes really expensive after venture capitalists pay the penniless inventor $$$$$$ for a cut

xp

again i don't see why? invention tied to markets yeah but

to be precise, i'm not advocating a lack of growth by never inventing anything new of allowing for technological shift, it's growth through little more than inflation of unchanging assets that gets you into the deep shit, right?

because somebody buying medicine that they couldn't buy yesterday increases the gdp! I mean it's hard to do this math in an imaginary socialist world but if we're talking about a slow-growth market economy...

xp

they're not buying the old medicine they used to buy though

just different medicine

and yes there's high lead-in times and developmental costs for new medicines, but the price of that type of product in first world markets tends towards the obscene due to nothing more than the economic/social agreement that allows it to be

also I think a lot of the health-related discoveries pre-capitalism were, in the historical perspective, 'the low hanging fruit'

I mean it's hard to do this math in an imaginary socialist world but if we're talking about a slow-growth market economy...

this is the heart of what i'm nagging at. it seems quite possible that the big concerns you raise - destitution and environmental destruction - just cannot be fixed by the kind of market economies we have now

(e.g. 'don't rub feces on sword wounds')

xpost