Hacker News Reader

Great post, I agree. It's also interesting that the constant increase in demand leads to continuous and increasing destruction of the environment and consumption of natural resources. Perhaps less demand will be better in the long run. Can we reach a new healthier equilibrium without escelating social unrest?

View on HN

Not necessarily. Aggregate demand grows the economy as a whole, and as it grows, more funding is available for innovations that solve today's problems in incredible ways.

Case in point: video rental. Netflix removed the necessity of physical stores, therefore less plastic being used to make boxes and vhs tapes and so on.

There is also a culture factor. The economy and the environment get along best when people live near the things they want. I live in a small city surrounded by nature and so many of our products can be locally sourced, sustainably.

This interesting! Never thought of it this way. Is there any kind of research showing that electric power to run the servers and hardware (which gets old and must be replaced) has a lower impact than boxes and vhs tapes?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com