🚀 go-pugleaf

doug.bashford%ow@salata.com (Doug Bashford) wrote:

In a
> B>  nutshell, he claims that since a line fragment may be divided
> B>  an infinite number of times, that line fragment is infinite.
> B>  He claims that since there is no hard border between ore and
> B>  non-ore, that the ore is therefore infinite.  Thus we have an 
> B>  infinite supply of natural resources.

You, like Daly, misunderstand the argument. You conflate the 
*physical* quantity of a resource with its *economic* supply.
Because economic and resource efficiency is improving faster 
than physical reserves are being depleted, resource prices 
are falling; in economic terms, they are becoming less scarce.
More important, when any resource becomes more scarce relative 
to alternatives, its price rises relative to those alternatives, 
which are then substituted for it. As long as real prices are 
falling and alternatives are multiplying, there is no 
justification for predicting a reversal in these trends short 
of the heat death of the universe.

>*   Sustained economic growth is impossible because it is tied to
>*   physical consumption (wealth).

This is a gross oversimplification. Economic growth and wealth 
refer not to mere consumption, but to value creation and 
accumulation.

Why impossible??  5% annual growth 
>*   in the consumption of 2 grams any substance will become a "hole" 
>*   with a mass of 800 trillion planet earths in only 2,000 years.

Provided new reserves and alternatives do not fill that "hole" 
faster than it is dug (2,000 years?!), producing a "mountain."

>*   Thus long term economic growth is impossible.

Non-sequitur.

This is but one 
>*   of many fallacies in ALL orthodox economic foundations. - G. Hardin

Hardin's alternative to catallactics is of course draconian 
state control of sexual reproduction. See "The Tragedy of the 
Commons."

>  Of course, the typical response to this is that perhaps most
>  of the economy is not dependent on consumption.  That is like
>  saying since only 3% of the economy is agriculture, the economy
>  is not dependent on it. 

What matters is that the value created exceed that consumed.

>  However, I will change my opinion if a single society can be 
>  named that drastically increased standard of living without 
>  drastically increased consumption.

Or productivity.

>  The growthmaniacs have vested interests 

Here we go again, from name-calling to character assassination.
If you can't meet the argument, attack motives.

in behaving as if
>  the earth were infinite, as if they were not depleting it,
>  as if this dis-economy of scale: growth that impoverishes
>  did not exist.  Only in an infinite world could reasonable
>  men not properly account for the depletion of our stocks. 

This physical depletion is irrelevent to the question of 
sustainability.

>  And we wonder why we are working more for less than we did 
>  in 1967?  

Explosive growth in taxes, inflation, gummint debt, regulatory 
compliance costs?

Only because depletion and such are not properly 
>  valued in our economic systems is this answer hidden.

They can be, through several property and strict liability.

We
>  deplete our stocks, then we must work harder to get them.

Smarter, not harder.

>  Much of this is also hidden by the self-feeding ever-larger
>  ever-hungrier machines that deplete it in a spiraling frenzy
>  of consumption.

Pure Luddism.

<snip>

>...     False economic assumptions are the root of all evil.

Vide socialism.

>People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment
>and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against
>the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices - Adam Smith, WofN

Amen. Just look at the labor movement.