Four of the world’s top economic experts debate one of the critical questions of our time. CBC Radio’s Paul Kennedy, host of Ideas, moderated a live debate at the University of Ottawa on January 20th, 2011. CBC Radio One will broadcast the episode on February 2, 2011 at 9:00 pm.

http://www.sustainableprosperity.ca/debate

The thing is, only a tiny amount of people have ever been able to work at some company for their entire adult life and then retire with a pension in their old age. And somehow we consider that normal and something we ought to rely upon. It’s amazing people can even get riled up at you for not taking that route when there is no guarantee it’s actually going to work. You probably can’t rely on ERE as it is described here, either, but as long as life’s a big crapshoot, you may as well aspire to something other than debt and wage slavery if you find that appealing.

One should not forget that in this context, efficiency means producing what the consumer wants using the least ressources possible, be they money, ore, time etc… After the current binge of consumption (fueled, might I say by governmental policies equating possession of a quantity of goods to wealth), I see production reverting to a more sustainable rate, in part owing to the ever increasing price of ressources (if we can let the market operate). I must point out, though, that I am no economist, and am just starting reading up in Austrian school theory.

What I am, though, is an historian. And I think the “Golden days of yore” theory has to stop. Hunter Gatherer societies must have been a lot of fun, for the 25 years of so that they let you survive. Or right up until the point where your 12th child died as an infant. The Middle Ages were not much better. Sure, people must have had fun too, with all the elves and dwarves, and dragons around (pun intended), and sure, the landscape must have looked a lot better, but you might have to work for two whole weeks to be able to wear wooden shoes in winter instead of rags, most of your products went to a bearded guy in a castle who called himself lord, juste because him and other bearded guys had more weapons than you did and offered to “protect” you.

I see “Progress”, without it’s metaphysical meaning (that of going on towards the perfection of the human race or something), as being just another word for saying that survival, and attaining the goal of any living organism, requires less and less resources. The natural will for any living organism is to transmit genes, that is to survive a harsh world, and to procreate. The current society is the one that lets us do precisely this with the less expenditure, letting us dedicate resources to other enterprises, be they material, artistic, sportive etc.

Not that I do not support your actions, Jacob, I try to implement as many as possible in my life, but I reckon that the current production system is what makes it possible for me to do so, and that progress is what has let me and my ancestors survive so that I could get there.

Drawing a parallel between economic/industrial circumstances on one hand and internal and social values and practices on the other, is at best hopeful speculation.

If people were “no longer…running around trying to fill their growing houses with cheap trinkets” they would indeed have more time and energy on their hands, but how that time and energy would be used is far from predictable. And knowledge of either history or human nature suggests that it’s just as likely for people to turn their (now unengaged) ambitions towards controlling their fellow man…or even conquering or destroying him. Indeed, on a more subtle scale, boredom and cabin fever are destructive forces, and result when people have too much time on their hands. More time and opportunity for more interaction do not necessarily result in positive outcomes.

We all know that for the great majority of good practices we say we want more of–more physical exercise, more quality reading, more learning of exciting skills, more family time, more helping others and “saving the world”–time isn’t the problem; values and priorities are the problem. “If you want something done, give it to a busy person to do.” And those of us who don’t manage our time and energies well now, are not to be relied upon to manage it much better in a hypothetical new economy/consumer arrangement. There has never been (to my knowledge) a large society with a population comprising primarily altruistic, gratification-delaying, innovation-oriented people.

So why not be a bit more modest in expectations and projections? Your ideas are excellent for someone with the kind of long-range thinking and self-control you possess. These ideas may not be generalizable to an entire economy (for economic reasons, as others have suggested), nor may they be generlizable to an entire population for psychological (temperament and character) reasons.

But that still leaves many for whom your teachings and example are very valuable.

Now if everyone then realises that the product IS useless or becomes aware that nature is destroyed in the process of making it and demand plummets… … the investement in the production factors rapidly loose value, which is only a problem If you didn’t see it comming. If you saw it comming you sidestepped the issue by selling it and buying something more usefull.

What then IS more usefull?

Depends entirely on what the future will look like, but investing for profit was a good idea since before money. Time spent becomming better at hunting by talking to another hunter or sharpening a stick was an investment in that:
A) It cost something (A stick and/or opportunity cost for time spent not hunting/gathering)
B) It changed the efficiency of the investor. (Better or worse depending on quality of investment)

Wether you swap shares in Useless Crap Inc for shares in biotech or go for a log cabin, a rifle and 1billion rounds in the remotest part of the world, you are still investing. Which one is the best investment depends on:
A) Where you wanna go
B) What everyone else is doing

What would happen If everyone went for ERE is that Useless Crap Inc stocks would plummet, Usefull Efficient Industries would soar and theres be a lot less suffering in the world.

Second point–Your bonds and stock dividends come from companies mostly, correct? What if these companies are destroying the Amazon, polluting massively in China or obliterating species around the globe to pay you those good steady dividends so you can have a nice small footprint??? See the problem? Love your blog and the replies are great too.

But once capitalism begins to collapse we could not count on our investments to live. I think ERE should be seen as a transitional way, as we go towards a really sustainable way of life, where each family produces its own food directly from nature again. But not a primitive society, but the ultimate society. I see the smartest people on earth hunting, gathering and cultivating the land. I see them dedicating to education, as it is the only path to any sustainable future.

Keep up the good job, Jacob!

All of this is almost completely a set of beliefs that many, mostly Americans, adhere to blindly and somewhat vehemently. That doesn’t make them true however!

For instance, you write: “Life as a hunter / gatherer is hard.”

This is plain wrong. Hunter/gatherers worked about 3-4 hours per day and had plenty of leisure time. We trapped ourselves into living through agriculture. This new lifestyle was far inferior to that of the hunter/gatherer but was necessary in order to increase population levels beyond about 20 people/km^2. This increase is not inevitable – you can happily have a steady state of few people – but once it starts, then it’s hard to stop, as we are all too aware of today. We hope that our populations and impact will flatten out and even decrease but that is wishing full thinking and we don’t know whether that will happen.
An example of how undesirable the new living is compared to hunter/gatherer living, the hunter-gatherers living in Denmark had to be coerced by carrot and by stick for 500 years(!) by their agricultural neighbours to the south, before caving in and adopting the new ways. There are still people around the world who have the opportunity to live as hunter-gatherers and who actively choose to do so. Not many, because we are too many, but a lucky few. Hmm… if they also have modern perks like health insurance, then they would have it made! Unless they want that new 50″ TV.

“Frankly, it flat out sucks. I’m not about to live like that, are you?”

Well, we can’t because we’ve trapped ourselves in a corner. Luckily, there are some nice outcomes from our new lifestyle, like longer life and better health security (but not necessarily better health and probably not increased happiness), but we are all assuming or hoping that we can eventually create enough traps that they will transcend our self-created problems and we will live in a happy, sustainable future. Described like this, it sounds like madness; replace “trap” by “technology” and it’s just what most of us believe. I too hope that technology will save us; unfortunately, new solutions often come with new problems, and increased efficiency often just leads to more waste/consumtion. If you can make cheap 50″ TVs easily, then people won’t make do with 40″ ones.

“We built this system because it is better. This is such a “no duh” type issue that I’m having trouble coming up with a good analogy. Sorry but it just is.”

Hehe; this sounds like the dogma that’s left when arguments have run out. This system was not built to be better at all, and it is isn’t (check US health, wealth, and living standard stats since 1950s)! Everyone has different motives, and neither GE, say, nor the US government doesn’t care about making your life better; they have their own interests at heart and often actively persue them at your expense. Turning citizens into consumers (or war-loving “patroits”, say) and creating a suitable philosophy to match can easily be compared to the Soviet methods of oppression and matching dogma. Our system is also governed by random events and, more particularly, by what happens when things are motion. We hardly have any control over history and mostly just have to live with it, perhaps by calling it all Progress or “World’s Greatest Country” or other morale-raising things. History can sometimes be changed with great effort, and the UN is a good example that we are getting more civilised on the big scale (though getting less civilised on smaller scales), but in general, you can only really hope to improve your own life, and even then only marginally. Even ERE is just a slight variant of our common way of living, though it seems like a big step away from what we are used to; this is just due to our narrow way of looking at things.

I sooooooooooo love your philosophy. I wish you were gay so I could ask you out

Check out my post:
http://www.antishay.com/?p=33

I’m trying! But it’ll be a while before I’m there.

Metaphysically time is linear. I did not mean that things move in cycles in some kind of hocus pocus sense. What I meant is that few societies are sustainable. You can liken it the life cycle of a human being. The US is young, less than 200 years old. It is at its peak health (so far) and it has never been ridden by war. Thus it has much the same attitude as a 19 year old teenager e.g. knowing everything, bent on changing the world, ideas of immortality. Endless growth (hey, a 19 year old has been getting taller and stronger all his life so why should that change?) helped by immigration and a low population density. We’ve all been there. Consider the previous reigning power on the planet. Great Britain. Their empire lasted a little more than a hundred years. If you want to know how the US will look in 50 years, look at GB. The dominant empire before GB was France.
Going back further, the roman empire had indoor plumbing and their Rome reached a population that was not matched until the mid 18th century. The Greeks were one iota from inventing the steam engine 2000 years ago. What happened? Progress stopped and what we consider civilization went backwards for 1000 years.
Maybe that’s a two steps forward and one back, but it’s a huge one.
[One can argue that it’s a step side wards: While people exchanged democracy for monarchies and indoor plumbing for cob houses, there was a surge in smaller businesses and small scale technology. Not aqueducts but wheelbarrows and water mills.

Knowing that you’re an engineer gives me an idea of where you’re coming from. I’ll venture that you’re not a power plant, nuclear, oil, environmental engineer or in other words directly responsible for providing a resource base. Just guessing here. I don’t want to make it personal so let me instead talk about computer scientists. CSs deeply believe that human ingenuity is the sole limiting resource. This is because that is their strongest limit. Their other limits are simply not seen and thus ignored and forgotten. The computer lab is always on. They never have to go outside and pedal for 60 minutes to power a computer for 30 minutes. Software developers never worry were the electricity comes from, how tantalum is mined, or the level of industrial expertise required to cut silicon wafers. This is similar to how economist think that we will never run out of oil. This is true economically speaking, but physically we would be paying $5000 or a month’s labor for a gallon – similar to gold. In the same vein politicians think they can fix problems by making laws. And so on. Specialists are deeply formed by their culture. The world is a nail to their hammer.