Limits to growth based on thermodynamics?

Miscellaneous Current Events
1

What do you guys make of these?

There are interesting tidbits in either article

I think, save for a new war, we are not gonna be growing like they say for a while, but nevertheless…

2

Growth is then the basis for interest rates, loans, and the finance industry.

Nope. In a country with negative GDP, do people lend their moey for free?

Once we appreciate that physical growth must one day cease (or reverse), we can come to realize that all economic growth must similarly end.

I think he is confusing cause and effect. Energy use is the reward of economic effort, not vice versa.

3

Regarding 2nd article:

While it is true that the human economy - even taken as a whole - is subject to the second law of thermodynamics (because the human economy is physical and 2LoT is a law of physics), this author is completely confused about what growth is. He says, “[exponential] growth is the foundation of our current economic system” but this is a vulgar economic fallacy. The money supply grows at an exponential rate - and prices, GDP, stock indices, etc. grow with it - but this is a result of the central bank’s (unspoken) mandate to devalue the currency at a (variable) rate. There is nothing inherently exponential about the modern economy besides the central bank’s expansion of the money supply.

Clayton -

4

The constant droning about what “we” are doing, where “we” are going, and what “we” ought to be doing (or stop doing) made my head hurt. That, and the malthuso-masturbatory predictions about what’s going to happen to “us” if “we” keep doing what we’re doing for the next 500-2500 years. A collectivist free-for-all.

Weren’t these guy’s grandparents worried that at the expontial rate the number of horse carts had been growing in NYC everyone would be wading waist-deep into horse-shit within a couple of decades?

5

Weren’t these guy’s grandparents worried that at the expontial rate the number of horse carts had been growing in NYC everyone would be wading waist-deep into horse-shit within a couple of decades?

Hasn’t that happened?

6

Apparently, the stench and the potential torts associated with it incentivised the invention of a certain shit-less carriage. So luckily “we” dodged that bullet and saved “ourselves” from “us”.

EDIT: Oh, and “we” learned that progress (or “growth”) could also be measured in units other than horse carts and horse manure.

7

LOL!

You, my friend, deserve an award!