Continuous growth is cancer | Hacker News Reader

Continuous growth is cancer

christianheilmann.com

162 pointsrcarmo125 comments

From a 'conversation between a physicist and an economist' [0] discussing the limits of growth:

Physicist: Alright, the Earth has only one mechanism for releasing heat to space, and that’s via (infrared) radiation. We understand the phenomenon perfectly well, and can predict the surface temperature of the planet as a function of how much energy the human race produces. The upshot is that at a 2.3% growth rate (conveniently chosen to represent a 10× increase every century), we would reach boiling temperature in about 400 years. [Pained expression from economist.] And this statement is independent of technology. Even if we don’t have a name for the energy source yet, as long as it obeys thermodynamics, we cook ourselves with perpetual energy increase.

[0] https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist...

What a fascinating article; thanks for sharing. Much more interesting than the top one.

It gave me increased appreciation for living in the period of history we're all living. I already had a perception that the fast economic growth of the last few centuries was nothing more than a fleeting blip in the history of human race, but never thought about the physical constraints imposed by energy and thermodynamics.

I'd challenge the idea that this is unsustainable because of the specific system. Entropy and resource limits mean whatever we do is unsustainable under any system as far as we tell, both theoretically and in practical timespans. Nobody seems to have an argument for where the physical resources will come from, or how we deal with exponential population growth without just having regular famines (even worse than losing a job!).

Life looks a lot like cancer. Cancer looks a lot like life. "Being cancer" isn't a bad thing, cancer is only bad when it is a disease in humans. Otherwise it is the way of the world. We are surrounded by patterns that propagate themselves quickly.

Also; the people who are anti-growth have a much, much worse track record in every way than the alternatives.

We don't have continuous exponential population growth. That's not to say that we won't exceed the limits of the biosphere at some point to meet our needs, but as a society becomes more developed the birth rate falls off massively. Just 60 years ago the US and Canada had a fertility rate of 4, meaning 4 children born to the average woman. In the US, it's now 1.64 and Canada is just 1.4 - well below the replacement rate of 2.1-ish.

The best way to be anti-growth is actually to just encourage a society to develop. The best way to lower fertility rate is to educate young women and girls and to raise incomes.

>In decreasing order of strength, fertility (TFR) correlates negatively with education, CPR, and GDP per capita, and positively with religiosity. [1]

The only reason the population of developed countries is stable or growing is immigration, but that will only last so long - development comes for us all.

[edit] The graphs of income and HDI vs. fertility rate are pretty clear. [2]

Rather than cancer, it seems more like population growth is favored in less-developed societies to encourage development - and once development happens, the population growth ends and the population even meaningfully contracts.

[1] https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility

I wouldn't leave out birth control technology either. That has had a massive impact on population growth.

The incentives here seem worrying. Developed countries must keep other countries undeveloped to maintain the flow of immigration.

If everyone develops, Europe and North America's power and share of global GDP will decrease significantly.

agreed - and this just reinforces one of the core themes in the article. on a long term scale, this hyper growth capitalist phase we’re in now doesn’t work. talk about a “non scalable solution.“

I get you’re talking about a more macro level issue, but at the core, capitalism is what’s driving this anti-pattern into existence. I’m not someone who’s anti-capitalism, but the fact that it takes the concern of our global GDP to consider the livelihood of people underdeveloped countries is depressing

The rest of the ecosystem is not benefited by humans being cancer. Humans are not benefited by obliterating biodiversity, although they may not have felt many of its effects yet.

Growth is not inherently good, uncontrolled growth is certainly not.

>Growth is not inherently good, uncontrolled growth is certainly not.

That's a nice soundbite, but what does that translate into in terms of actual policy? Do we cap growth at 2% or whatever and call it a day?

Most if not all of our social problems can be solved with enough education. If you're the type of person to read census data for fun you'll probably not want to have kids. If you're exposed to the liberal arts continuously throughout your life, you're less likely to take metrics at face value. The system is just like any other: you put garbage in it, and you'll get garbage out of it.

>Most if not all of our social problems can be solved with enough education.

So by "controlled growth", you actually mean "better education"? What type of education you think is needed? Do you think that making sure everyone has a bachelors is magically going to make growth "controlled" enough for your tastes?

Raising education and income levels actually does bring population growth rate to below maintenance levels. A wealthy and educated society tends to shrink.

What it looks like is putting far more regulation in place surrounding hiring and employee protections. Layoffs have not hit Europe to the same extent largely because it's slower and more cumbersome to hire and fire, so employers are naturally more cautious. In the US you can hire and fire at will, so why be cautious?

If companies were required to give 2 months notice like they are in many EU countries you bet your ass they'd be more cautious.

Like often enough, the problem is not capitalism per se, but rather the completely unregulated American variant of capitalism.

I dare say it also looks like antitrust with teeth, abandoning the morally and intellectually bankrupt Chicago school approach (basically, "antitrust only needs to consider harm in the form of increased prices to the consumer"), and reversing the burden of proof on mergers (at least over a certain size), so that instead of having to prove harm to block them, the companies have to prove a genuine benefit in order to merge.

Now, granted, growth in the size of a company is only one form of growth, and this wouldn't be sufficient to stop the "ever-increasing growth at all costs" mindset that's infected our corporate culture, but it is a necessary step.

The EU tech sector has been repeatedly reamed out by US and Chinese companies. They aren't a model to copy; something went badly wrong in Europe over the last few decades. Possibly they are too slow to hire when an opportunity presents.

I went to have a look at what powerful and inspiring tech companies the Europeans have managed to put together [0] - they've got ASML (decent effort) and SAP (wouldn't want to hang my hat on that). FAANG, TSMC and the AI revolution are not things that the Europeans have the capability to organise. They even had phones taken off them because they just couldn't make progress happen.

[0] https://companiesmarketcap.com/tech/largest-tech-companies-b...

Market cap of tech companies is a very poor metric to measure how good a civilization is or how enjoyable it would be to live in. I'm sure if we removed medical ethics requirements on human experimentation we could rapidly invent powerful new drugs like never before, but we don't because technological progress and economical growth are only two measures of a culture out of many.

Depends on the timescale in which you view it. The overall earth benefits through natural selection. A creature or ecosystem that overloads itself is selected out through self suicide paving the way for a more stable system to take it's place.

Uncontrolled growth is simply a method of selection. Natural selection.

>Life looks a lot like cancer. Cancer looks a lot like life. "Being cancer" isn't a bad thing, cancer is only bad when it is a disease in humans. Otherwise it is the way of the world. We are surrounded by patterns that propagate themselves quickly.

You lack holistic understanding of the science behind life and what cancer is. I will explain. And once I'm done, you should understand.

First off most energy on earth comes from the sun. Life feeds off the sun and energy that powers our infra all comes from the sun. Specifically most human energy comes from reservoirs of sun power stored in oil. So energy given to the world is limited in the rate it is delivered from the sun and the rate in which we can harvest that energy. In theory if we harvest energy at a rate slower or equal to the rate energy is given to us by the sun we can harvest energy indefinitely until the sun goes super nova.

That is the hard end. Once the sun goes super nova or runs out of energy, humanity is over. We are done. End of story. But that event is so far away that we don't have to consider it.

Second, cancer cells, are cells that are too efficient and too powerful in such a way that they consume resources too eagerly and commit a sort of suicide by consuming energy so quickly that the rates far exceed energy production.

Life in general DOES not FOLLOW this model. When you examine ecosystems throughout the world you will see that the multitudes of interacting internal systems within them that have evolved to be over-fitted to be extremely stable and operate at EQUILIBRIUM, completely different from cancer.

For example you may have deer keeping the population of grass in check and wolves keeping the population of deer in check in such a way that no population ever gets out of control.

Why does this occur? What black magic is making all ecosystems trend towards this perfect equilibrium? Natural selection. Natural selection happens on the genetic level, but it also happens at a more abstract level, the ecosystem level. Any ecosystem where some creature becomes too efficient overloads the entire ecosystem and it burns out that system. Thus the only thing you have remaining over eons of ecosystem evolution are systems that are in equilibrium because all the other systems overload and are naturally selected out.

You can actually see this happen when you introduce foreign species into a non-native ecosystem. The ecosystem will burn out, the foreign species was over-fitted for a harsher environment and was too efficient for the environment it was introduced to.

It is actually natural for ecosystems to burn out and die. Extinction is PART of natural selection. Suffering, death and destruction and famines are all part of the process of natural selection picking the ecosystem that is balanced, that works.

Humanity in this context is very different from life in general in the sense that we are definitely slowly overloading the system. Life cannot in general cannot be characterized as cancer, but humanity within the context of life CAN be characterized as cancer that's managed to survive for so long because we continuously find new energy reservoirs to exploit. Eventually we will run out given that the rate of energy coming from the sun is limited.

When you look at history at the scale of eons, it's normal. Humanity is suppose to overload. It's not all that bad when you view the situation from an even higher level of abstraction: Evolution and natural selection can happen at the cultural level of civilizations.

So in a sense you can say modern civilization is suppose to overload and humanity is suppose to regress to a more sustainable type of civilization. Hunter and gatherers or tribes that were more sustainable in the past.

Civilization regressing is better than humanity becoming extinct, but even that viewpoint is bleak. There is hope though. Humanity is different from all the overloading ecosystems and creatures that came before it. We are a bit unique in this sense. Humanity is like a cancer cell with a sort of meta awareness.

It's like if you had cancer and your cancer cells formed some sort of neural network and became aware that itself was a cancer. From this awareness we may be able to save ourselves. There is hope, but it's low probability it will pan out given our lack of self control.

>Nobody seems to have an argument for where the physical resources will come from, or how we deal with exponential population growth without just having regular famines (even worse than losing a job!).

This is what irks me. Truth and a solution to a problem are two different things. Just because something doesn't have a solution doesn't mean it's not the truth. Continuous unsustainable growth is bad, lowering entropy to produce technology at our current rate means consuming energy at unsustainable speed. There IS NO solution that will allow us to keep doing this, and you'll have to accept that because it's the bloody truth.

> For example you may have deer keeping the population of grass in check and wolves keeping the population of deer in check in such a way that no population ever gets out of control.

Both populations can get completely out of control in a wildly chaotic dance with some pretty standard conditions. You might enjoy reading up on the logistic map [0]. True equilibrium is quite rare in nature, usually situations are chaotic.

People like to pretend the world is stable but the evidence really only says 'predictably chaotic'.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_map

As an example programmers can understand, machine learning is a better model for this than a logistic map.

Natural selection is basically gradient descent with random walk as the "step" algorithm rather than back propagation. At each step, you randomly adjust the weights by a small amount. You do this with like 100 candidates and pick the best one that lowers the cost function the most. This is one generation, and you "selected" the best mutation that can proceed to the next generation of your learning algorithm. It's essentially an extremely accurate model of evolution.

When you let gradient descent run in-definitely the weights will eventually converge on a minimum in general. By "in general" I mean that these weights will only converge within the vicinity of the local minimum. Keeping the learning algorithm running with random walk... what you will find is that the algorithm travels randomly all around the minimum and stays within a certain "equilibrium zone." This is exactly what happens in biology. A more accurate example would be adversarial neural networks, when you have two networks competing. What you will find is that for adversial networks you ALSO get convergence within the vicinity of a local minimum.

The logistic map you present here is simply not an accurate model of evolution. I don't think an accurate model actually exists. The most accurate models are the algorithms we to do genetic programming and these models are simply simulations where we have a sort of "feel" for how the algorithm will converge. There is no closed form understanding of it. Our knowledge of these algorithms accurately reflects our knowledge of natural selection itself in the sense that you can't simply pull a random logistic map formula out of nowhere and claim it applies. It doesn't.

You're talking about evolution here, but I was never talking about evolution; nor was the original article.

My entire initial post was about evolution and natural selection. And how cancer, growth and life needs to be interpreted within this framework. Your analysis is flawed because it is entirely missing this perspective in the same way a car is flawed when it's missing it's wheels.

Reread my post initial post with this in mind, because you don't get it. I've been speaking about evolution from the beginning and you've been missing the point since the beginning.

It's not true true equilibrium, it oscillates around an equilibrium. You can call it an equilibrium zone.

Within this zone you can get chaotic changes, but what you don't usually get is complete destruction and extinction as you do when you get an invasive species.

It's impossible actually for things to be incredibly chaotic in the sense that they always overload. If this occured all the time you'd never form a sustainable ecosystem. Life would've died out quickly.

Essentially Your chaos equation doesn't account for natural selection. This is the factor that holds things in equilibrium.

So what you see is sort of a bunch of systems in an evolutionary arms race where each side is in a very stable equilibrium stalemate despite the fact that both sides are continuously evolving counter measures and new strategies.

“I will explain. And once I'm done, you should understand.”

A new HN catchphrase.

I like how the phrase shift the guilt to the reader if he does not understand.

why is there guilt in simply not knowing something?

presumably the less knowledgeable commenters are not responsible for policy, it's not their moral duty to know this? (even if arguably we as a species are the only ones with agency to act to keep ourselves from overexploitation of the natural resources and from falling into sociological traps, and thus we all are partially responsible individually, and in many ethics it's our duty to keep ourselves informed to be able to pick representatives/leaders and to vote with our wallets)

You don't get it. Let me explain. And when I'm done explaining you will understand.

He means the reader will feel guilty for not understanding rather then blaming me for his lack of understanding due to a poorly worded explanation.

Either I'm guilty of a bad explanation or he's guilty of being too stupid to understand. Which is it?

By declaring beforehand the fact that he will understand as a consequence of the explanation I subtly connote that if such understanding isn't achieved then the problem isn't my explanation.

>You lack holistic understanding of the science behind life and what cancer is. I will explain. And once I'm done, you should understand

I think you're being unfair in your response. "Life looks a lot like cancer" can be true and life and cancer can be totally different. They only need to look like each other.

I'd also be careful to ever invoke the term "the science".

No, the guy didn't get it. He was using the analogy completely incorrectly. There is nothing unfair about my response, he simply wasn't getting it.

I'm quite well versed in not only the science behind natural selection, but in the philosophy of science as well. This tippy toe "carefulness" about using the word is unnecessary and made up by you. There is a colloquial meaning for science that is used casually all the time and everybody knows what it means without the need for "carefulness".

“I´d like to share a revelation that I´ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species, and I realized that you’re not actually mammals.

Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way can survive is to spread to another area.

There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus.

Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You’re a plague and we… are the cure.” Agent Smith.

While it's a funny quote it couldn't be further from the truth.

All mammals will do this, modern society is just significantly more successful at it.

To say it another way, humans don't have any natural predators to keep populations in check?

We do however seem to be developing a common conscience that seems to be headed in the right direction with regards to sustainability.

It doesn't need to be a predator, it can also be food. We certainly have food shortages and mass starvations. We've gotten a lot better at producing food, but it's not a solved problem at all, we've just moved the limit.

like adding more lanes to a freeway to alleviate congestion. doesn't work.

As someone who dealt with a rabbit infestation, there is no natural equilibrium.

Can you provide more context on this? I have so many questions

It probably wasn't a funny experience for you, but this made me laugh.

Infestation is a strong term. It seems like every few years there's a combination of factors that somehow create a bumper crop of bunnies in my yard. We'll go from normally seeing a few early morning or evening to having 4-5 bunnies hopping around all the time. Which is pretty cool, all things considered as long as you treat your property for ticks and whatnot. By the next year, though, it'd be back to just a few bunnies. Maybe there's not nearly enough food to support the extra bunnies through the winter.

I saw a bald eagle over my house for the first time the other day (NE US). I wonder if the bunny situation will change with more predators.

There is. Just not with your rabbit alone. The equilibrium evolves at the ecosystem level. In the wilderness it's predators.

For your case, you are "dealing" with the rabbit infestation, therefore YOU are the one that's going to be applying pressure. YOU are part of the system.

Nope, just nope:

https://kids.britannica.com/students/assembly/view/108152

https://macleans.ca/society/lemming-population-cycle-explana...

This is nature.

Lana Wachowski did us dirty not bringing back Hugo Weaving for Matrix 4.

Hugo Weaving is too good for Matrix 4.

He declined the role if I recall.

He was tied up with a stage show at the time, if they could've waited he would've reprised his role. Wouldn't have hurt box office performance if they did given the film was ultimately released at the tail end of Covid.

There's a Matrix 4v

No it does not. No mammal develops a natural instinct to flow into an equilibrium.

What is happening is natural selection is operating on a more macro scale. Ecosystems can be naturally selected out or in.

Ecosystems where the individual components do not function in equilibrium overload and die out. The only thing you have left are ecosystems with "mammals" that happen to be in equilibrium.

The minute you introduce a foreign species into a new ecosystem you break the system by introducing a variable that has a positive feedback loop. The ecosystem either overloads or humans can intervene by apply negative pressure (ie manual culling by hunting the invasive species or even genetic engineering).

Humans are simply a natural overload. We could be part of an ecosystem that is suppose to overload and die out so that another ecosystem that has a higher equilibrium can take its place.

>Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You’re a plague and we… are the cure.” Agent Smith.

The matrix was such a garbage movie thematically speaking. They had a huge lack of understanding around the nuance and nature of biology.

“Growth” at the individual level has become a euphemism

It really means extrinsic motivation. It means being willing to play the game to hit whatever milestones are laid out for you. To push yourself for those milestones to reach a reward.

Not because those goals are intrinsically rewarding - but because you want to demonstrate what you need for promotion or raise. If the goals were intrinsically rewarding, we would need to internalize them and fully believe in them. And I don’t think that’s possible - or not even desirable - for many jobs.

Because after all 90% of goals are given to you, not co-created with you. Even when managers feel like there’s co-creation happening they don’t see how heavily they mold that process, how the power dynamic leads to the employee trying to guess what the manager actually wants, then adjust their goals to please the manager for the next career milestone.

See Googles graveyard of failed products - all to hit the next promotion - abandoned when people check that box, lose interest, and move on. Google thinks it’s a sign of growth mindset. In reality it’s a case of employees seeing a behavior-“shipping new products”- being rewarded.

"Growth" isn't a euphemism for extrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation is a broader term than the way you are using it. A person can be extrinsically motivated to not smoke, to be charitable, or countless other behaviors that would generally be spoken about in a more positive connotation than my parent comment's tone.

Some psychology books, and some individuals, put a moral spin on their favorite type of motivation (intrinsic and extrinsic). The truth is both can lead to healthy and unhealthy behavior.

In my experience, the "goals" you hit are really capabilities. Can you design bigger systems? Can you lead bigger teams? Can you define winning strategy?

Those aren't artificial milestones, they are real things (eg, you'd need them if you ran your own company) and growing from someone who "can't" to someone who "can" is exhilarating.

Maybe in an ideal world, but in my experience most corporate "goals" are just "influential" people playing political games with minimal if any real-world productivity attached. They might as well be playing Monopoly but with real money. None of them ever get fired even in abject, catestrophic failure. The only "capability" for them to cultivate is convincing enough other influential people to give them resources through various political means so that they have the biggest chair when the music stops or they retire. It's largely up the ICs to produce the "real things" as best they can given circumstances foisted upon them.

Maybe at some companies "designing bigger systems", "leading bigger teams" and "defining winning strategy" is correlated with said resource extraction, but that's all. The moment those capabilities aren't in sync with resource extraction, they become worthless. The ideal company abuses its workers and robs its customers, and will get as close to that ideal as it's allowed. It's only force of popular will that keeps that in check, and the rare decent person who makes it into leadership.

As much as I hate to hear it, what you describe is all too common.

> Can you design bigger systems?

Bigger systems don't necessarily meet customer needs better than smaller systems. They may just contain a lot of extraneous complexity.

> Can you lead bigger teams?

Bigger teams don't necessarily accomplish more than small, focused teams. The more people on the team, the higher the communication overhead, and the harder it is to maintain "conceptual integrity" in the product. Brooks described these issues in The Mythical Man-Month: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month

If employees get rewarded for building bigger systems and leading bigger teams, they'll have a bias toward doing those things ("empire building"), even when they may be against the better interest of the company and its customers.

Those aren't goals. They're just describing giving someone more responsibility.

It'd be nice if managers could determine who can handle more responsibility, but it's basically a crapshoot.

> starting to feel that the system is incredibly flawed

It is! To this day the vast profits in tech are generated by (c)opywrong laws, which make no sense, and are downright evil—because poor kids get access to crap information even though we have the technology to get humanity's best information to everyone. There are some people that have exploited these bad laws, like BG (see his 1976 letter^1) and have made vast fortunes. For a moment it looked like Google would be different, but then no, they too opted for profits over doing the right thing, and the web is getting worse.

No one is connecting the dots, or rather—people in tech and the media industries can connect the dots but mentally don't want to face the truth: the vast profits are from dishonest laws, not from some magic value creation.

We need to get rid of these bad laws and make money the honest way.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists

>To this day the vast profits in tech are generated by (c)opywrong laws, which make no sense, and are downright evil—because poor kids get access to crap information even though we have the technology to get humanity's best information to everyone.

How is "poor kids get access to crap information" due to copyright? Access to good learning resources (eg. khan academy) is easier than ever.

> Access to good learning resources (eg. khan academy)

There's also the whole world of free software. Any kid or school that can afford an old PC and an internet connection can install Linux for free and use all the free software that runs on it. We live in a golden age of cheap computers and free software.

It seems like nobody in the US educated in the last 50 years has read Marx or even has a cursory understanding of his ideas.

You’ve seen tech bros reinvent public transportation 5 different ways. Now watch as they slowly gain the insights described by last century’s most influential philosopher after living through his observations firsthand.

It doesn’t seem like that, it is like that. We consume second-hand Ayn Rand instead.

The author is correct. Growth is typically just a debt-fueled spending binge. The cancer is actually the fiat, soft money that’s improperly aligning incentives in the economy.

> The cancer is actually the fiat, soft money that’s improperly aligning incentives in the economy.

What a conclusion. Debt and borrowing exist in hard money environments too. Debt is as old as time.

Low interest rates reduce the threshold for what could be considered a successful business from a macroeconomic perspective, though, and can lead to misallocation of capital. Nothing to do with fiat.

Debt-fuelled spending binges were just as common before fiat. In fact, booms and crashes were more frequent and severe because there could be no central bank to turn the heat down under the cookpot.

It's the other way round. Dept is discounted potential future growth.

Potential growth and the ability to pay back dept is the foundation for receiving money.

What the author ignores is that it is a race. There are many opportunities but not all will be successful. Failed investments transfer the money from those who made wrong predictions to those who made successful ones. This creates sustained progress because those who are good at predicting the future have the most influence.

Once you have a lot of influence you can influence the future instead of predicting it. This is a handy way to profit without providing any value to the rest of the system.

Like high frequency trading, it's also valuable because things that are important to those in power are protected.

Productivity is the only way wealth is created. From 99% employed farming to 1% employed farming, but using technology to make this possible. This is why we have wealth - we can all get more of our needs fulfilled, because fulfilling those needs requires less inputs (labor, time, physical elements).

This is such a fundamental and all-encompassing truth it is sad more people never grasp it.

Capitalism is but one way to organize people to improve technology (in the abstract, not the Silicon Valley meaning). Capitalism harnesses a very powerful component of human nature - one’s primary desire towards one’s own needs and pleasure - and uses that to drive technological progress.

I have yet to see any other type of human organization that is more effective than this system for driving technological progress (and thus human flourishing).

I don't think it has anything to do with the type of human organization really. Rather, it's really just a matter of the wills of people, and whether they have access to capital.

Says growth is bad, layoff sucks, then:

> If you agree and you’re looking for a technical lead in your company, “check me out on LinkedIn”

I mean, what company is gonna want to hire someone who thinks growth and expansion is bad.

Companies that can reach a happy equilibrium?

Consider the following: Valve software is a tiny company in comparison to any other company out there, yet they make steady revenue. Do you think Valve could be in a better spot if instead they spent all of their money on rapidly growing their business?

The fact that Valve is a private company and not completely beholden to the endless growth that companies prioritize means it can do things other companies cannot.

> it can do things other companies cannot

which in this case seems to be lower growth and fewer jobs. good trade, but not one i would make personally.

He only thinks growth and expansion are bad when he got laid off. He doesn't have an issue with growth and expansion when it results in steady promotions, pay raises and generally an income that's far beyond the average thanks to his role being in demand and the evil forces of capitalism (which drive growth, which is bad!) are in effect.

It's an emotional reaction, so I don't think any company should be too concerned about it. When he gets hired again, his emotional state will change and he'll reconsider and land on "maybe growth isn't so bad".

you obviously can't be against all growth else you would live as a hunter-gatherer.

a more principled objection to the current situation is that you are against volatility.

but to have this position you have to prove ethically/morally/economically that hiring 100 and firing 90 is worse than hiring 10, which is a very high bar to clear and not one i've ever seen a convincing argument for.

I find it hard not to fully agree with this article. Even without questioning the capitalist obsession for infinite growth (despite finite resources and markets), we should not have had the practice of hiring more than is essential to run the business. Who thought it was a good idea to make a success metric out of headcount?

To comment on the writing: that title is genius.

>Even without questioning the capitalist obsession for infinite growth (despite finite resources and markets),

Seeing how communist regimes aren't exactly practicing degrowth, I think it's more accurate to say it's a human obsession.

>we should not have had the practice of hiring more than is essential to run the business. Who thought it was a good idea to make a success metric out of headcount?

Ostensibly companies aren't hiring for the sake of headcount. What they're actually after is market dominance, which can be obtained by building a better product, which require people.

No argument about the point on communism, but as regards the headcount--I was referring to what I've seen mentioned more than a few times in HN comments where, apparently, FAANGs or some teams therein have engineering manager positions where the size of the team that one leads greatly translates to that employee's success (perceived or real) in the company. It's also a good number to look at for recruiters when said managers start applying for jobs elsewhere.

>I was referring to what I've seen mentioned more than a few times in HN comments where, apparently, FAANGs or some teams therein have engineering manager positions where the size of the team that one leads greatly translates to that employee's success (perceived or real) in the company

How does that translate into tech companies overhiring? Even if managers want more people on their team for progression purposes, they can't exactly expand their team to whatever size they want. They're subject to budgets set by finance.

I could be wrong of course—after all my comment is from the POV of an outsider looking in.

But, just going by what you said—if budget is supposed to be a constraint, well, FAANGs have the money to waste, don’t they? Also, hiring for hiring’s sake makes sense from a strategic standpoint especially during their respective growth eras—they needed to deplete the industry of the best programmers around, so that entrepreneurs can’t just startup and compete with them and take away their business.

I think North Korea is doing a good job of limiting growth. Not as a determined goal of their communism but as a result of their corruption, totalitarian control and incompetence. Still credit where credit is due. They are not growing as fast as their capitalist brothers to the south.

Rather, the result of sanctions, i.e., the almost total absence of cross-border trade.

Historically it was through trade that societies/nations became successful, were growing, were eventually dominating. The early dominance of Europe was thanks to its long coastal lines, allowing to quickly connect to neighbors and thereby exchange goods, thus trade. The industrialization was kicked off in Great Britain, the culmination of extensive trade combined with the abundance of cheap energy (coal + steam engine). Which then took off in all of Europe, again trough trade.

If you artificially limit trade of a country, either externally because everybody hates you, or internally because you are crazy, then you automatically limit your development and thereby growth. Communism or not.

The world will become a north Korea if unchecked growth continues unchecked.

When cancer is growing the tumor is healthy and happy. It's when the tumor consumes all available resources and begins dying that it becomes a problem.

We are currently in the growth phase of a tumor. The dying phase is for your children or your children's children. Or your children's children's children. We are not sure when it will happen, we only know that it will through logic.

One should not confuse growth as in producing more and more stuff with growth as in progress.

Of course you can't produce more stuff ad infinitum. A balance to reach net-zero stuff is necessary to be sustainable.

But nothing prevents you from advancing technology ad infinitum. It can be sustainable to keep progressing. You just can't exhaust the resources around you, but you don't have to to keep progressing.

No. Technology production requires an energy input. It's fundamental physics. Reversing entropy requires an energy input, and technology is essentially entropy reversing.

At the more scientific level you can see this occurring by simply correlating energy expenditure per country per capita with the technological achievements of the respective country. Western countries are among the top energy users and technology developers.

The only good thing about technology is it's relatively low rate of decay... or in essence low rate of velocity in the descent back into a high entropy state. Knowledge once gained is kept with minimal additional energy input. But make no mistake, the crystallization of knowledge itself requires a high energy input.

Transfer and translations of these technologies also requires energy input which explains why technology doesn't easily cross certain physical boundaries like the borders between countries.

And you are saying we are anywhere close to the maximal energy that humankind can harvest?

I'd say you have seen nothing yet. And history is on my side here.

Besides, creating smarter things doesn't necessarily need more energy. We are pretty wasteful with energy at the moment. What you are talking about, entropy in the sense of progressing anywhere, is a ridiculously small fraction of what we are currently using energy for. Most of it goes to waste. There are generations of better energy efficiency to come before energy availability that can't be compensated with higher efficiency even becomes an issue. By then, nuclear fusion will be paramount and/or our use of the energy that comes from the sun will be magnitudes improved from what we do today. Just look back 100 years.

If we haven't bombed ourselves back into the stone age before that. Quite a possible outcome too.

> And you are saying we are anywhere close to the maximal energy that humankind can harvest?

Nope. But any exponential growth in consumption of energy will hit the existing limit very quickly. Even if that limit was magically increased by 10x we'd still hit it very very quickly.

> higher efficiency even becomes an issue. By then, nuclear fusion will be paramount and/or our use of the energy that comes from the sun will be magnitudes improved from what we do today. Just look back 100 years

Technological gambles are speculative. The failure of fusion is unfortunately just as realistic of a possibility that must be considered in a logical analysis.

Again.

1. "Progress" does not need to imply "exponential growth in consumption of energy".

2. Even if it does, we may be many thousand generations away from hitting a ceiling.

>1. "Progress" does not need to imply "exponential growth in consumption of energy".

It doesn't need to imply it. But from historical evidence it DOES imply it.

>2. Even if it does, we may be many thousand generations away from hitting a ceiling.

Not necessarily true. We don't fully know that. We're hitting ceilings with oil already. In the US peak oil already happened and we shifted to shale. We have about 5 more years of that. We're not sure what's left of middle eastern sources.

Other sources aren't ready yet, they're up and coming but we can't fully be sure technology will play out the way we want it to play out.

> Seeing how communist regimes aren't exactly practicing degrowth

Most are building industrial capacity and modern infrastructure. Degrowth is something you do after growth.

Presenting degrowth as something those countries would randomly engage in now is a misunderstanding of what degrowth is and when/why you would do it, and/or complete ignorance of the developmental stage of those countries.

Continuous growth is cancer? Not that I'd disagree, but try to tell that to an economist.

Economist Ernst Friedrich Schumacher whole heartedly agreed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._F._Schumacher

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful

"By calling econ 'dismal science', adherents exaggerate; the 'dismal' is fine, it's 'science' where they patently prevaricate."

Luddite nonsense. Continuous growth in organization headcount is a negative feedback loop. Eventually it will cause sluggish revenue growth. Cancers are positive feedback. And if I get a revenue cancer that just keeps growing unbounded, I think I'll take it.

My thoughts too.

Continuous growth is necessary to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If there cannot be continuous growth, who becomes the arbiter of human potential? People who call growth cancer? You can't be serious.

Future generations also deserve life liberty and the opportunity to pursue happiness and fulfill their potential surely. The issue would not so much seem to be "continuous" growth but unfettered growth (as per a narrow set of metrics) now that potentially destroys the chances of our children and grand children enjoying the benefits of that growth. If it's necessary to make decisions to dampen (or even suspend) growth now to ensure it that doesn't happen then so be it, though I'd argue it's more important to look at what we're actually measuring and ensuring we're growing in a direction that's actually sustainable.

Who should be the authority on good growth vs. bad growth? Should this extend to caps on individual wealth aswell?

Who should decide how rich people can get AND how much growth can happen? Seems like you're just changing masters.

There's nothing inherently special about the type of growth that tends to be focused on currently - it just happens to be what we've already got mechanisms in place to measure and requires relatively minimal effort to maintain. If a democratically elected government can, with the advice of appropriate experts, develop better metrics for measuring growth and determining its long term viability, how is that a bad thing?

You're saying Joe Biden or Trump or Kamala Harris should have the ultimate authority over growth? Those are the people you trust to cap human potential?

You understand they don’t make laws, right?

You're saying the current or previous congress should decide what human growth should look like then? I don't see how thats much better

It's easy to poke fun at government incompetency but like it or not they are who your country elected to make the sorts of decisions that shape its future. The only truly abysmal government is one that is paralysed into doing nothing at all.

Therefore they should be empowered to have full authoritarian control over your life? Government incompetence is why limited government exists. Can you state a definitive opinion instead of dancing around with nihilistic platitudes?

My opinion is that if a government can be elected on the grounds of promising to improve how we define what sort of "growth" is worth pursuing and implement policies to achieve that, then it has a duty to follow through on such promises. The only thing nihilistic is concluding voters genuinely don't care, or simply don't believe there are better ways of measuring and sustaining growth (in which case, so be it, and we accept whatever fate such nihilism consigns us to).

People grow (in height) for the first ~1.5 decades of their life, and then stop growing. It appears to me that there is more to it.

Does your biology analogy stretch to macroevolution aswell?

That's biology stopping growth. Do you think it'd be a good idea to let the government decide how tall people can grow, if we had the technology for that?

Who is talking about government? I am just refuting the argument that continued growth is necessary for life.

You think infinite growth with finite resources is possible? This should be good.

Which resource are we going to run out of that will halt all progress for which there are no adaptations?

We're constantly finding gigantic reserves of resources. We are closer to being able to synthesize all the resources we want or need than we are to inflexibly running out of them.

Fossil fuels are quite finite.

There's plenty of them to go around and are plenty of adaptations for when there wont be anymore. You ignored 90% of what you replied to.

It's simply taken on faith that we'll find such resources, in such great abundance that we'll never run out of them, that we're not decades away from cooking the planet beyond livability.

Its the same kind of faith as the sun rising tomorrow. The universal constant of human history is finding new resources to exploit and manipulating our environment, the scope of which grows exponentially by the century.

Why do you think this will suddenly change, without precedent? There is no reliable science behind 'cooking the planet beyond livability'. We already have adaptations (carbon extraction) for that even if it were true.

If you're going to handwave away climate change and the resultant catastrophes as "not real" then I see no point in engaging further. I don't know if you meant carbon capture when you said extraction, but that's vaporware.

Sudden change, without precedent... sounds like a black swan event, which ironically we have a term for. But there is precedent. Many civilizations before us have collapsed due to lack of resources, or mismanagement, or expanding so much they became unmanageable; this would just be the first time a globally connected civilization did so.

Exponential growth tends to become sigmoidal the further out you look, so you're taking it on faith that human history is the exception to the rule. You are convinced we are at the knee of an exponential curve and I am convinced we've already flattened into sigmoid.

We aren't the exception to the rule even remotely. Macroevolution is eternal growth. Its been around for quite some time. Life finding ways to adapt to differing resource ratios.

I'm not handwaving away anything; i'm admiring billions of years of clear precedent.

You're handwaving away all of that precedent based on extreme pessimism and alarmism that has no basis in any evidence to date. Simply because climate change exists doesnt mean its the most extreme version cooked up by a crackpot journalist.

"Macroevolution is eternal growth" - what is this supposed to mean? Beehives keep growing infinitely, civilizations always advance? Forget previous civilization collapses, remember we're in the middle of the sixth mass extinction. As for "eternal", that's a bold claim to make for all the eternity that hasn't happened yet.

I can just as easily say you're handwaving away the pessimism based on precedent. Precedent holds, right up until it doesn't.

>Beehives keep growing infinitely, civilizations always advance?

No, it means there are always adaptations. I defined what it means.

The precedent is what has evidence. Your pessimism doesn't have evidence to support inhabitable conditions within a few decades unless we initiate an authoritarian world government to control all growth and control the climate. The burden of proof is on you, not me.

>evidence to support inhabitable conditions within a few decades unless we initiate an authoritarian world government to control all growth and control the climate.

I'm assuming you meant uninhabitable conditions. And that you're putting words in my mouth.

What finite resources? We are the human species - we go where the resources are, which will involve colonizing other planets.

Uh-huh, okay.

Growth itself is not cancer. Growth that never ends is cancer, because it eventually consumes all available resources in the system. I mean this is raw inescapable logic, there's no argument against this.

There's an alternative way. A simpler life. The term for it is called equilibrium. It's not a bad way of life.

It's very hollywoody but essentially the movie Avatar is sort of a window the essential nature of what a life of equilibrium is.

How exactly is equilibrium different from stagnation?

If someone comes up with a new technology that will give us the ability to colonize the galaxy, or quantum teleport, or have years long battery life, should it be thrown away for being too disruptive to the 'equilibrium'?

> How exactly is equilibrium different from stagnation?

It's a matter of perspective.

If one sees one's own growth as an axiomatic good, then of course equilibrium will look like stagnation and the first step to death.

If, instead, one sees oneself as one part of a greater whole, all of which deserves consideration and has a place, equilibrium starts to look like a natural goal and a place of respect for everyone.

And your argument that we would throw away new technologies because they disrupt an equilibrium is a strawman; no one is suggesting that. "Technological progress" and "unconstrained growth" are not synonymous.

Let me turn this around on you and ask you this:

What is the ultimate goal of your unending growth?

Technological progress historically has functioned as a very high multiplier for growth. From the industrial revolution to communication technologies.

Controlling all growth in order to live in peace is an idea that is 100+ years old. Mackinder(widely regarded as the founder of geopolitics, was the director of LSE) wrote about it. It was his vision to foster the league of nations. By the end of his work describing such he goes down to limiting the freedom of individuals quite significantly. He was the seed for groups like the World Economic Forum and the current international bodies such as the WTO, WHO, UN, etc.

I'm not sure you realize the measures that would have to be taken down to the individual level to control all growth. Life would be unrecognizable compared to what it is today. Oh, and no one would be allowed to exist outside the system. It would only be possible in a highly authoritarian world government.

Answer to your question: Colonizing the galaxy and eternal progression of welfare for humanity.

The difference is in vocabulary. Stagnation and equilibrium are the same thing only in one word the definition has positive connotations, in the other word the vocabulary had negative connotations. No point in arguing about vocabulary and connotations.

If cancer stagnates though... That's typically a good thing.

All the technologies you mentioned are kinda far flung and/or roughly orthogonal to the issue at hand: resource consumption as the result of growth. Humanity should 100 percent be mindful of resource consumption in such a way that they don't burn out all available resources.

So to put it bluntly these are your choices using your words: you can grow uncontrollably until you die like cancer or you can stay in "stagnation" forever and live.

The choice is quite obvious.

They will always be far flung technologies with an anti-growth approach.

I'm not seeing anything on or beyond the horizon that we cannot adapt to and continue course. Can you cite specific examples?

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