Where are we on the Limits to Growth model?

[johnhemming2]

Just because there are resource limits does not mean that the state should run everything.

[Little John]

A "free" market is very good at allocating resources efficiently. Not necessarily equitably. But certainly efficiently.

But, what it is absolutely shite at is conserving resources. Which is why it is so profoundly unsuited to what comes next. It is also equally bad at anticipating the long term social and environmental costs of industrial activity. The market is, after all, "blind".

[kenneal - lagger]

Then of course there is Energy and the Wealth of Nations: Understanding the Biophysical Economy by Charles A Hall and Kent A. Klitgaard (Springer) which is a tour de force on current economics and its disregard for the EROEI of fuels and how it affects our civilisation. Well worth reading.

Nicholas Stern also hammers current economic thinking on climate change in his book Why Are We Waiting? because of economics' linear growth models which disregard the abrupt nature of the changes which climate change will likely bring to the world economy.

[kenneal - lagger]

Adding to what LJ said above, Stern says that current economic models value current consumption above the consumption or availability of resources for future generations. They work on the basis that the here and now is more important than the future! He goes into how a moral dimension can be added into the models.

[johnhemming2]

A "free" market is very good at allocating resources efficiently. Not necessarily equitably. But certainly efficiently.

The more powerful the state the more likely it is that people starve.

[kenneal - lagger]

A "free" market is very good at allocating resources efficiently. Not necessarily equitably. But certainly efficiently.

The more powerful the state the more likely it is that people starve.

It would now seem that the more "Free Market" a state becomes the more people feel the need for food banks.

[johnhemming2]

It would now seem that the more "Free Market" a state becomes the more people feel the need for food banks.

a) There is evidence for my assertion. What is the evidence for your assertion.

b) I would say peoples willingness to offer free food to other people who ask for it is a positive thing rather than a negative thing. When there were fewer food banks there were more people simply being short of food - what was called hidden hunger.

There is an argument that the relative affluence of our society makes people more willing to offer this sort of support, however.

[kenneal - lagger]

The evidence that I have John is, I admit, only anecdotal and I would hope that your statement "b" is, indeed, true. The evidence that people have less cash now is coming from the profit warnings of many major retailers in this country and the worry among commentators that there is another banking crisis just round the corner because of the well documented sky high private debt.

Massive private (and public) debt doesn't make for relative affluence. It speaks of an economy one step away from another massive crash. The bubbles in the housing market, the stock exchange and lending all lead to this conclusion.

[emordnilap]

A financial 'crash' is very close now; it's built into the system.

That ordinary people have to suffer and pay for it is also built in.

People who are comfortably off have great trouble accepting these facts.

[raspberry-blower]

Charles Hugh Smith: Systemic Uncertainty Meet Fragility

Everything works fine until it doesn't

[raspberry-blower]

Nafeez Ahmed: Inside the new economic science of capitalism's slow burn energy collapse

Yet a key problem is that mainstream economics is held back from being able to even comprehend the existence of net energy decline due to an ideological obsession with the market. The result is that production that occurs outside the market is seen as an aberration, a form of government, state or ‘political’ interference in the ‘natural’ dynamics of the market.

And this is why the market alone is incapable of generating solutions to the net energy crisis driving global economic stagnation. The modern market paradigm is fatally self-limited by the following dynamics: “short time horizons, growth as a requisite, gratuitous waste baked-in, profits as life-blood.� This renders it “incapable of producing solutions that demand long-view investment without profits.�

[emordnilap]

Nafeez Ahmed: Inside the new economic science of capitalism's slow burn energy collapse

Yet a key problem is that mainstream economics is held back from being able to even comprehend the existence of net energy decline due to an ideological obsession with the market. The result is that production that occurs outside the market is seen as an aberration, a form of government, state or ‘political’ interference in the ‘natural’ dynamics of the market.

And this is why the market alone is incapable of generating solutions to the net energy crisis driving global economic stagnation. The modern market paradigm is fatally self-limited by the following dynamics: “short time horizons, growth as a requisite, gratuitous waste baked-in, profits as life-blood.� This renders it “incapable of producing solutions that demand long-view investment without profits.�

Good article. Most people on this board will sigh, say "we've been saying this for years" and "nothing will change as a result of these so-called 'findings' ".

On the other hand, it's the drip-drip that's cumulatively getting through.

I've suggested to a couple of politicians that a total reform of CAP is required, switching the huge amounts of money involved away from gigantic mechanised pesticide consumers towards directly employing far more human bodies in organic farming, solving part of the energy problem and most of the insect decline problem in one stroke.

[fuzzy]

Fine, except the old landowners are at the top of the heap since about 1067.

[emordnilap]

Fine, except the old landowners are at the top of the heap since about 1067.

CAP reform is the first step; LVT is the second.

[raspberry-blower]

Another interesting post at Peak Prosperity that highlights the mining of copper. Rio Tinto is going after the difficult to obtain stuff - over 1km deep

Adam Taggart: Running Out of Room

The Resolution mine proposed by Rio Tinto is progressing because it's the company's the best option left. That tells us that we are now at the stage of chasing resources where going a mile down into the Earth makes sense.

Well, economic sense. But not energy sense.

Without massive energy inputs this mine doesn't happen. When copper came to us relatively easily and more inexpensively in the past, that’s the same thing as saying that it came to market requiring a lot less energy involved. That won't be the case going forward.

We should be asking at this point in the human experiment if it makes sense to be using our remaining energy in this way.

Sure, we can develop the Resolution mine project. But should we? Are there any different or better uses for that energy that might take precedence?

Further, if this is what’s required to keep the whole exponential industrial economic system going, why do so few people see projects like the Resolution mine as the curtain call for the entire project of economic growth?

TLTG encapsulated in one case study.
Humans really aren't smarter than yeast