You can have technological, scientific and cultural advancement without economic growth.
Building more shopping malls out in the suburbs leads to growth, but it doesn't advance society.
Building more shopping malls out in the suburbs leads to growth, but it doesn't advance society.
(For some reason, I'm reminded of the Superconducting Super Collider and the western invention (discovery? reverse-engineering?) of porcelain.)
I'm going to leave the idea of "cultural advancement" alone, 'cause I can't easily and convincingly define it or figure out where it comes from. And I don't believe anyone else can either.
Perhaps no one, in that sense limiting technological advancement to things that would benefit people.
Value is not the same as growth. We may pursue technological advancement because we think it will provide more value than whatever assets we have on hand. Continual reward is not the same as continually increasing reward. Continually increasing reward might be good, but at some point that goal may come at too great a cost.
Anyway, there are plenty of technological developments that bring money to their creator, bring positive overall wealth to the population, but counts as a negative at the GDP accounting. I guess that's the cause of lots of the "let's not care about growth" cries. Well, let's fix our GDP measurement first! (And yes, I know there are several people working on it.)
I don't need a faster iPhone, or more tech. I honestly don't see my life being any better for the last ten years worth of "growth" (much of which seems to have been pumping up asset prices).
I would quite like to relax and coast a bit in life, but with the constant chasing of growth by everyone else, standing still means you will get left behind (i.e you will become poor).
Growth and Peace aren't mutually incompatible aims.
Indeed, I'd offer that Economic Stagnation and Peace might be mutually incompatible situations.
No shit, almost all wars start with economic discontent. So all things equal, growth will mean less wars.
Maybe I am just more politically aware than I used to be but I feel discontent is rising.
Very simple example: back in 2005, most people had to print or memorize directions when they were traveling somewhere they didn't know. A few tech enthusiasts had discrete GPS gadgets, but navigation was a manual and tedious (not to mention dangerous) process for most.
Today, almost everyone carries a device that can quickly and reliably find directions, and dynamically re-calculate them. I don't know about you, but I do a lot of driving on my own and this has improved my driving experience considerably.
Now, you could argue that incremental improvements in technology (e.g. faster CPUs, more RAM, etc.) don't actually improve quality of life that much. As someone who is still rocking an iPhone 4S, I agree. It's sufficient for my needs. But incremental improvements tend to be "placeholders" while more significant technology is in development, so it's fine that they happen.
* Screens are not good enough.
* Processors are not fast enough.
* Radios are not sensitive enough.
* Data storage isn't small enough.
* Batteries aren't dense enough.
It took these things all converging with "incremental" improvements to allow the major advancement of consumer GPS.
If we all stopped producing a surplus how will movie stars and bankers get the energy to run their private jets?
Between 1920 and 1960 the only people who could travel quickly around the world were the super-rich. With the advent of the turbofan engine, and the widebody jet, quick and comfortable travel became accessible to the general public.
Cell phones and the internet are another paradigmatic case of this. It used to be that only people with a great deal of resources could get quick answers to uncommon problems, but now everyone can get those answers from a device they carry in their pocket. You can communicate more easily than the ultra-wealthy were able to only 20 years ago. Most Americans have access to communications technology on par or above that of the president.
There are many different examples of this, and the best description of it may be the following quote by Schumpeter:
>"Electric lighting is no great boon to anyone who has enough money to buy a sufficient number of candles and to pay servants to attend them. It is the cheap cloth, the cheap cotton and rayon fabric, boots, motorcars and so on that are the typical achievements of capitalist production, and not as rule improvements that would mean much to the rich man. Queen Elizabeth owned silk stockings. The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within reach of factory girls in return for steadily decreasing amounts of effort."
It seriously annoys me when people say this, because it's so incredibly short-sighted. It's only in terms of physical, tangible standard of living factors. Travel, as you noted, is one of those. And yeah, everyone has refrigerators in their homes nowadays. Yay!
But being ultra-rich gives a tremendous amount of intangible perks, such as the ability to greatly influence public policy and the ability to afford top-notch legal representation, which lets them get away with serious crimes that would put normal people like you and I in jail for decades. There's also inter-generational perks. For example, children of ultra-rich parents can afford excellent education and are much more likely to get into the top schools.
I can go on. The fact is, the differences between the haves and the have-nots today are vast, and they are getting bigger every day as wealth inequality increases. Yes, it is good that we have the basics covered for most people but beyond those basics things look pretty grim.
Up until the 19th and 20th centuries, only the very richest few could afford to learn to read, write, do math, and understand history. The increases in productivity and technology we have enjoyed have helped to reduce the differences in level of education, and any number of other aspects of life. You contend that the ultra-rich "are much more likely to get into the top schools", but you are missing the historical context which demonstrates that the level of education available to the middle and lower classes has been steadily increasing.
With regards to public policy and legal representation, we probably agree to some extent with respect to the issue, though we likely differ in paradigm. I would surmise from your comment that you believe the government could 'solve the problem'. The way that I see it, these are the areas where goverment has been most active in disadvantaging the poor and middle classes, and a reduction in the size and scope of government is the only way to systematically help level the playing field.
First, these physical, tangible standard of living factors you so arrogantly dismiss. Cheap, ubiquitous travel means freedom to live where you want, even if that's more than a few hundred miles away, without sacrificing your family and friends. That was rare 20 years ago and almost unheard of 50 years ago. Except if you were rich, of course. Today, the rich can buy somewhat more comfortable and convenient flights, at extreme expense, but not faster ones.
As for refrigerators in every home? The alternative is shopping for fresh ingredients daily, or doing without them. You can't save leftovers for very long, so you need to cook daily. And speaking of cooling? 100 years ago, the king of England couldn't get an A/C unit at any cost, today they're perfectly ubiquitous.
Education? Yeah, there is some real differences here, but the bottom has gone up tremendously: in living memory, kids were pulled from school to help in the fields. Poor kids, obviously, the rich didn't go in the fields. Today, thanks to the mechanisation of agriculture, all kids can stay in school uninterrupted. And even the poorest kids can read by almost free electrical lights. Even 100 years ago, the rich would have to read by candlelight.
The rich can buy marginally better cars than you and I, but not by a lot. Fancier, but not really better clothes. Their houses might be bigger and fancier, but not more capable at keeping you and your family warm (or cool) and dry. Certainly, the rich have more luxurious options, but not really a lot better.
The richest man on earth can't buy a better smartphone than me or get a better signal than me - that's why those ghastly diamond-encrusted phones exist. But their text messages don't arrive faster than mine and they like the exact same cat videos as me on the exact same Facebook.
Still too vulgar and consumerist? How about the environment? Once, the rich enjoyed clean air, clean water and safe disposal of sewage by living in the country. But do you know why they dusted all the time in old books? Indoor coalfires are messy affairs. If you lived in the city (rich or poor), there would be no clean water, smoggy, dirty air and literally shit flowing in the streets. Today, even the worst tenements in the densest cities have clean, running water, flushing toilets and smogless radiators. The air might not be quite as clean as it could be, but it's a far cry from the smog-hell it once was - and a lot cleaner than just a few decades ago, thanks to better cars.
The perks you list were always perks of the nobility, they are not recent gains - but you're making the perfect an enemy of the extremely good. The much more interesting point is all the perks they've lost and are losing, and those are extremely numerous.
Or if you want to freeze on 8 years back, nobody will prevent you from buying a iPhone 2G.
It sounds like you are saying you won't do that because you don't want to be "left behind", so you'd like everyone else to stop moving forward to accommodate you. But that's their choice, just like using an iPhone 2G is your choice.
"We have too much progress, can everybody just slow down a bit here!?" - first world problems :)
Maybe you don't, but lots of people do, as evidenced by the fact that they pay for it. If you don't need it, then don't pay for it.
> the last ten years worth of "growth" (much of which seems to have been pumping up asset prices)
This is true, but faster iPhones and other tech weren't what did that. Investment banks did that, by playing risky zero-sum games with other people's money.
> with the constant chasing of growth by everyone else, standing still means you will get left behind
Really? You need a faster iPhone just to keep up?
That's not really how it works. I will get a new phone when mine dies because (A) I need a phone and (B) the phone I have isn't being made anymore.
Does this means I am paying for 'more tech'? If you do not keep buying new stuff, you don't stagnate, you regress. If I don't want new technology, I have to go with no technology, not the same-old technology.
But you'll still have a pretty wide range of choices; last I checked, not every phone available was a smartphone, let alone an iPhone. Granted, the exact model you had before won't be there, but that's true of just about anything. My car is a 2002 model; I'm going to have to get a new one pretty soon, and I certainly won't be able to buy the same model. But I'll still have a pretty wide range of choices; it's not as though I'll either have to buy a luxury model or go without.
> If you do not keep buying new stuff, you don't stagnate, you regress.
Well, of course; stuff wears out and dies, so you have to get new stuff, and the new stuff won't be the same as the stuff you used to have, because stuff is always changing. Everything wears out eventually; that's just a fact of life. But nobody is forcing you to get the fanciest phone available, or the fanciest anything else.
"How much is internet?" "40 euros" "How much is internet with a phone contract bundle?" "40 euros"
I was perfectly happy with my Nokia. Battery lasted a week. I could bounce it off the ground.
The smartphone can be useful at times, but at other times it is so frustrating to use it cancels out the benefit. And since everyone else is using whatsapp, I might as well join in.
I take my pleasure in life from things outside a 4 inch screen.
I need computing power equivalent to several thousand million human brains within the physical space of my home by 2050, and fitting in my pocket by 2075.
I'd be careful not to confuse the limits of your imagination with the limits of reality.
I've seen this sentiment many times in many different ways and it has never been accurate. It's easy to feel like now is different and we've never been here before, but we have. The key isn't that you don't need a faster iPhone or faster computer, it's that you need them. There will always be another iPhone/computer, whatever that will be.
Actually, if you follow the discussion, it has already been defined in the comment I responded to:
>>The people who might think today is "big enough" might also have thought that say 1990 was big enough, and yet very few people would want to be limited to 1990's tech / culture.
What is being implied here is that we want economic growth because we don't want to be limited in tech / culture. I simply pointed out that this is a false association.
But, I guess as long as it’s not "in Europe" then it’s ok....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts
Yes, WWII saw 10+ times the number of dead per year, but that's not such a huge gap as you might think.
PS: Many of those conflicts have far more civilian deaths than that link suggests.
Of course, there is also growth that doesn't come from technology. Like building shopping malls, employing people, and letting the economy operate at full tilt, producing things that we can then either consume, save (a form of growth), or spend on investment (another possible form of growth).
You might not think building a shopping malls advances society, but it's second order effects 100% do.
Expansion is the only way forward and often everything can be measured in economic output.