Spanish soccer pro quits sports in criticism of capitalism

[Barrister]

There is plenty of evidence to indicate that you will die.

That there is a hard cap to economic growth however...

Well, some mathematical understanding would indiciate that indefinite exponential growth is a bit impossible for any physical phenomena.  If material wealth grew exponentially without a limit, then eventually each person would own entire galaxies.  That seems unlikely, since it would be impractical to manage all these properties when you can only travel at the speed of light.

And physics tells us the universe the universe will end in a heat death once entropy has worked its magic.  But something that is 10¹⁰⁰ years away is pretty safely irrelevant.

There is no evidence that steady economic growth can not continue for hundreds of generations to come.

[DGuller]

So I guess that lack of exponential growth has been established, and we're just arguing about parameters now.

[Barrister]

So I guess that lack of exponential growth has been established, and we're just arguing about parameters now.

What has not been established is that limits to growth will be reached before the sun becomes a red giant and all life on earth is extinguished.

[Razgovory]

And physics tells us the universe the universe will end in a heat death once entropy has worked its magic.  But something that is 10¹⁰⁰ years away is pretty safely irrelevant.

There is no evidence that steady economic growth can not continue for hundreds of generations to come.

Has there been a period of steady economic growth that has lasted for hundreds of generations?

[Berkut]

So I guess that lack of exponential growth has been established, and we're just arguing about parameters now.

That is why when I started this discussion I specifically said something like "....growth for all practical purposes is not limited..." or something like that.

[Berkut]

And physics tells us the universe the universe will end in a heat death once entropy has worked its magic.  But something that is 10¹⁰⁰ years away is pretty safely irrelevant.

There is no evidence that steady economic growth can not continue for hundreds of generations to come.

Has there been a period of steady economic growth that has lasted for hundreds of generations?

Yes, the period that covers the last three hundred generations of humanity has seen steady economic growth.

[Barrister]

And physics tells us the universe the universe will end in a heat death once entropy has worked its magic.  But something that is 10¹⁰⁰ years away is pretty safely irrelevant.

There is no evidence that steady economic growth can not continue for hundreds of generations to come.

Has there been a period of steady economic growth that has lasted for hundreds of generations?

Yes?

Economic growth has slowly and fairly consistently increased over all of human history.  There have been periods (even lengthy periods) where it has declined, and regions where it has declined even dramatically, but taken over all of human history it's been a fairly steady increase over the last 4-5000 years or so.

[Slargos]

And physics tells us the universe the universe will end in a heat death once entropy has worked its magic.  But something that is 10¹⁰⁰ years away is pretty safely irrelevant.

There is no evidence that steady economic growth can not continue for hundreds of generations to come.

Has there been a period of steady economic growth that has lasted for hundreds of generations?

Yes?

Economic growth has slowly and fairly consistently increased over all of human history.  There have been periods (even lengthy periods) where it has declined, and regions where it has declined even dramatically, but taken over all of human history it's been a fairly steady increase over the last 4-5000 years or so.

Do you have any theory as to why that is?

[DGuller]

So I guess that lack of exponential growth has been established, and we're just arguing about parameters now.

That is why when I started this discussion I specifically said something like "....growth for all practical purposes is not limited..." or something like that.

Even that qualifier is debatable, though.  For example, China and India are growing.  Americans are saying, sure, no problem, China growing economically helps our economy as well, free trade is king. 

However, as China and India grew, they increased the demand for oil, which is a pretty key and pretty limited resource.  The price of oil grew, and our economy took a hit because of it.  So how non-zero-sum is the world economy after all?

[Barrister]

So I guess that lack of exponential growth has been established, and we're just arguing about parameters now.

That is why when I started this discussion I specifically said something like "....growth for all practical purposes is not limited..." or something like that.

Even that qualifier is debatable, though.  For example, China and India are growing.  Americans are saying, sure, no problem, China growing economically helps our economy as well, free trade is king. 

However, as China and India grew, they increased the demand for oil, which is a pretty key and pretty limited resource.  The price of oil grew, and our economy took a hit because of it.  So how non-zero-sum is the world economy after all?

But oil isn't a "pretty limited resource".  It is only limited at any given price point and technology.

[Ideologue]

I can certainly sympathise with his thoughts. No matter how you want to spin it, the economy IS a zero-sum game, and for one person to make the kind of lol-wages the pro footballers make, thousands of others have to make up for it.

Uhhh, yeah....the problem is that the economy is not a zero-sum game, no matter how you want to spin it.

You need some basic econ 101. Start with the concept of specialization.

Slargos is, of course, clueless.  That said, I have a feeling that economy is not as non-zero-sum as we're lead to believe in Econ 101.  Ultimately, material resources are limited, even if we haven't yet run into that problem, and so are positional goods by definition. 

The common assumption is that our economy can grow expontentially indefinitely.  However, it may be that economy grows according to a logistic model rather than exponential, and that after some period of near-exponential growth we will hit a constraint and grow only very slowly.  If we ever hit a constraint, then a lot of the assumptions on which our economic theory stands will go out the window.

Yes, the Limits to Growth argument.

So far almost 40 years of evidence have shown it to be false, but you know, maybe the next 40 will prove it right.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth

In fairness to Slargos, the universe is finite and if heat death is our fate, protons will eventually decay.  The only infinite growth models rely absolutely on a collapsing universe, and aren't widely accepted.

So there are some hard limits to growth.

[Ideologue]

There is plenty of evidence to indicate that you will die.

That there is a hard cap to economic growth however...

Well, some mathematical understanding would indiciate that indefinite exponential growth is a bit impossible for any physical phenomena.  If material wealth grew exponentially without a limit, then eventually each person would own entire galaxies.  That seems unlikely, since it would be impractical to manage all these properties when you can only travel at the speed of light.

And physics tells us the universe the universe will end in a heat death once entropy has worked its magic.  But something that is 10¹⁰⁰ years away is pretty safely irrelevant.

There is no evidence that steady economic growth can not continue for hundreds of generations to come.

Oh FU.

[Barrister]

There is plenty of evidence to indicate that you will die.

That there is a hard cap to economic growth however...

Well, some mathematical understanding would indiciate that indefinite exponential growth is a bit impossible for any physical phenomena.  If material wealth grew exponentially without a limit, then eventually each person would own entire galaxies.  That seems unlikely, since it would be impractical to manage all these properties when you can only travel at the speed of light.

And physics tells us the universe the universe will end in a heat death once entropy has worked its magic.  But something that is 10¹⁰⁰ years away is pretty safely irrelevant.

There is no evidence that steady economic growth can not continue for hundreds of generations to come.

Oh FU.

[Bluebook]

As long as we live on a planet with finite resources, there cannot be infinite economic growth.

[DGuller]

But oil isn't a "pretty limited resource".  It is only limited at any given price point and technology.

Most everything is limited at any given price and technology, so I'm not sure what your statement is saying other than that supply curves exist.  However, not every supply curve is the same.  Supply curve for oil appears to be quite inelastic, at least in the short term, given how sharply oil price is rising due to demand growth.