Robert Gordon: The death of innovation, the end of growth

[@Memento_Mori_Music]

"I think we reached a point where we need to cooperation instead of competition if we want to take a step further into a future society." You win the 'smart, yet concise, comment award of the day'.

[@aymericdekerdanet9318]

Just saw your comment. Man it’s 2020 and it feels that we took a turn for the worse...

[@mobydog99]

Yeah and now in 2021 the powers that be have made us all fight among each other even more. Maybe they distract us from lack of growth so we don't pursue degrowth on our own

[@Frrankkk01]

His analysis is too simplified, but he does make a powerful statement. The past century our living standards have grown systematically and might even be saturating today. We can thank previous generations for our comfortable lives. But high living standards are poorly distributed and still tend to come hand in hand with an unsustainable burden. The latter is up to us. Let's make current, and future, innovations truly sustainable and accesible to every soul on this planet !

[@prezwhitehouse]

I am studying to be an Aerospace Engineer, and while I understand his point, I think this serves as a great motivational tool moving forward.

[@ajcarpy2005]

AI, Smarthouses, Virtual Reality, Smart Watches, Google Glass, Google Now (personal assistants), 3D Printing, Personal Health Trackers, Small Business, Web Blogging, Self-Publishing, DIY, Art, Teaching, Connecting...there are lots of areas that are ripe for innovation. The thing is, we need to shift our focus and learn these new things. It's a big undertaking. Also...there are many things which are kind of waiting for an overarching infrastructure to really take off.

[@ajcarpy2005]

Our economy is in a huge transition (shifting gears) When you do that, (clutch in and shift), your RPM goes down for a bit until you can re-engage with the drivetrain... There are still tons of ideas and innovations and they are awesome but they have to be implemented at different scales and with different tools that we are familiarizing ourselves with. We are learning cooperating and integration. We are learning to live in a globalized world.

[@GrumpyOldMan9]

His textbook Macro-Economics introduced me to economics. He's brilliant

[@stevensarens7700]

His 'Macroeconomics' is to me the best text book on the subject. Thanks, Gordon.

[@SIMKINETICS]

As a 65 year old engineer, I've got a slightly different take on innovation. The 19th century introduction of scientific & engineering principles inevitably would result in a flurry of fundamental inventions, but we are now working on a wide array of refinements & a few fundamentals. The refinements are improving life constantly in many subtle ways that can appear as slower growth if one does not consider their pervasiveness in our more complex world. The widening wealth gap hides this.

[@later928]

Basically the most sophisticated old man rant I've heard yet. Of course those who are nearing their death can't see what's coming, their lives are too much in the past. Not a problem just a fact. For those of us young enough to see, there are a number of HUGE innovations that we all use and see that have changed a lot, and will continue to change even more as soon as people as old as this guy no longer have influence over large amounts of resources. And when I'm too old it will be the same way.

[@BurkeLCH]

Now that more people then ever have access to the knowledge of humanity, its sad to think there wouldn't be tons of innovation. I love being a forward thinking optimist.

[@VideoMagician77]

I find myself agreeing and disagreeing with him. I agree with him that there's been a noticeable slowdown in technological growth in the 1970-2020 time period (with the exception of the dotcom revolution he pointed out). What I disagree with him on, is that we aren't going to have productivity growth ever again which matches the 2% averages we enjoyed prior to 1970. My take on it is that vast improvements in hardware, software, and computational technologies will eventually take us to a point where we will have a record high sustainment of productivity growth. This is because once we have a certain amount of computing power, we can begin to run simulations which will allow us to optimize almost anything that we want. - If we wanted a more aerodynamic car that is cheaper to make for example, a simulation would be able to tell us how to do that perfectly. We could be seeing a situation where everything becomes perfect within the span of 10-20 years which would be the ultimate productivity boom of all productivity booms. This guy isn't thinking big enough and I believe he is overly pessimistic about the future due to the lackluster performance of 1970-2020 growth.

[@gasdive]

I was the one that said growth must stop in the foreseeable future. You asked what that has to do with current society. I explained. I didn't make a value judgement. I'm arguing that in order to make the future a pleasant place to live we need to stop attempting something that can't work in the current society. I've shown many times why it can't work. That the road we're on is a dead end. Driving a car fast toward a dead end doesn't affect the car until it reaches the end.

[@princeofexcess]

Perfect time to have this talk. Not because its accurate but because it will appear accurate. We are in a mids of economic recession that most likely will not get better in the most recent future. This recession is not caused by slowing of the innovation but by badly managed economics of countries all over the world (which actually is done on purpose because it benefits certain individuals) Inventions Today dwarf the inventions of the past.

[@Rebasepoiss]

I do agree that we are entering the phase of much slower economic growth but I think it largely comes down to enegery. It was first coal and then oil than made the economic growth possible. The economic growth and increase in oil production pretty much went hand-in-hand. Now that oil is more scarce and it takes more money and energy to extract oil and refine it, it also make sense that the economic growth will slow down.

[@bergweg]

1) What do you mean by resources? Raw materials (oil, timber, minerals...) or something else? 2) Under economic growth I understand the increase in assets. But assets are not necessarily used for the satisfaction of needs, in fact they are usually used to acquire more assets, i.e. more growth.

[@TheManInRoomFive]

That is exactly what he is saying, that the economic growth came from innovation. And that if we are to continue our economic growth we have to be as innovative today as we were during our most innovative period in history.

[@gasdive]

"Why not just enjoy ourselves by using up all of these finite resources in this generation?" Well that seems to be the course of action we've embarked upon. I don't think the crunch will come in my lifetime, I'm old, but I think it will come in my daughter's lifetime. That's been the principle employed by every human society ever recorded. I doubt we will be different. However, either way, growth will end. Either in a crunch or in a stable society.

[@Loathomar]

The effective corporate tax rate on profits in the US is 12.1% in 2011. So, while "Corporations are taxed on PROFITS", effective labor is tax rate was 17.4% in 2009.

[@jetpaq]

That was the most brilliant summary of the human and economic condition of the 20th century I have ever seen. Theres a guy that does 14billion years in human history in 18 minutes that is just as compelling, but this is just an Ideal dissertation for our times. Just Brilliant. Thank God for this perspective, I hope he reaches us all!

[@ajcarpy2005]

My measure of success is not only determined by money or popularity. I care deeply about other people & the evolution of culture & civilization. What I mean be selfless teams is that...like the Internet protocols, we need additional layers for handling high level generalizations of human user experience & all companies need to work together. We need a non-profit foundation to work on the standards. There will be plenty of opportunity for getting rich from the open standards w/ apps on top of it.

[@gasdive]

Because the metaphor (like all metaphors) breaks down when you try to use it for more than superficial understanding. However, the current economic system, if you stop acceleration *does* break down. Completely. There's no industrialised steady state economy. They're either going up or down. Up is out, we can't do that. That leaves down. Unless we invent one and do it soon.

[@arkangeld369]

I think it belittles all the great crucial achievements of these times that are taken for granted simply because they work behind the scenes but really there are cogs and gears that move this modern machine onwards that without them we wouldn't have what we have, Innovation happens everyday just because we don't feel it doesn't mean it doesn't impact us.

[@NthPortal]

The only difference between a phrase and its abbreviation is the amount of space taken up in both written and spoken mediums. They are grammatically identical (except for an occasional difference in "a/an").

[@Starsandfunk]

Interesting stuff. Although improvement to our quality of life in the future may no longer be directly proportional to economic growth, as it has been in the past. So this needn't be a bad thing.

[@gasdive]

Which makes my point. Even with billions of years worth of energy (at current rates) it's all going to be gone in a few hundred years. I think we agree, surely, that growth will stop for far more fundemental reasons that the ephemera pointed out by the speaker. You propose that stasis can work. I've never seen an example of industrialised stasis. Is there some plan you can point to of how we can get to there from here? I can't see it.

[@jacksonlamme]

That's a great insight into conceptualizing and predicting changes in the standard of living but other factors such as the ease with which firms can produce and insinuate products into the marketplace exist that could increase the velocity of money and further blur class boundaries by increasing their purchasing power.

[@Jonassoe]

1950's-2010's will be seen as a golden age by future historians.

[@Jayremy89]

Government has been stifling innovation in the past few decades most but doing so since times like Nikola Tesla. Patents, copyrights, resource monopolies, regulations, handouts, corporatism, militarism, social engineering, complex tax codes, government sector overgrowth, degraded educational system to keep bureaucrats happy, inefficient healthcare system, artificial scarcity, debt based economy, extreme consumerism and massively inflated fiat currency.

[@PolyrystallineLace]

Can you give an example? This is a very interesting solution. As the platitudes go: "waste not, want not." "less is more." "make do or do without."

[@gasdive]

No the average wage in Australia is 75000 dollars. I was talking about change in tax rates. Tax rate went up by 0.26% So for someone paying 30% it went from 30% to 30.26%. Then went down with tax cuts by about 3%. Say down to 27.26%. Overall tax went down. People earning 18 000 per year had been paying 10%. That was dropped to zero, but increased to 0.26% through heat tax. Despite being better off the electorate *WILL NOT* stand for a heat tax. They're absolutely besides themselves with hate.

[@Nitrognhorse]

Commercial supersonic flight isn't a great example of a "failure" of innovation. It's not just the difference between 330 and 350 m/s, it's the difference between being surrounded by a normal particle system and being surrounded by thousands of dangerous shockwaves.

[@panpiper]

Yes, I did. It is a good presentation of how government will in the future continue to have more and more resources to waste and thereby still deprive the people of any real growth in their standard of living, just like they have been doing for the last 15 years.

[@OrthodoxAtheist]

We're on the cusp of cost-effective genetic manipulation, hydroponic farming, biological computing, cost-effective solar power, advanced personal robotics, and... commercially viable 3D printing. All markers point to an absolute boom in innovation, new jobs, fields and growth areas. We may be creating a larger class of laborers than ever before what with the state of our education, but at the same time our innovation is now blooming. I'm optimistic.

[@trizmisce]

thank you for the link, now it will be more easy to forcibly educate people :D

[@gasdive]

The US dept of interior defines how the Secretary uses the term "within the foreseeable future" as "the extent to which the Secretary can reasonably rely on predictions about the future". There's no more reliable predictions than the fourth power law for black body radiation. Determining policy for the future in light of that certainly comes under the heading of "within the foreseeable future"

[@IRMentat]

Resources are finite. Why expect growth to be infinite? Eventually recycling, manufacture and design/concept will all have to plateau or the system will collapse under the weight of its own leftovers. Unless you define growth as alternate ways to reuse what already exists then of course growth will fluctuate wildly between advances.

[@rstevewarmorycom]

3) We now know that just using glass and masonry we can build homes that heat themselves! People didn't know that then, they spent months chopping firewood!! They used to throw their feces out the window in England, but since we now know it's valuable chemically, for fertilizer and chemicals, we save it and treat it and re-use it.

[@hitssquad]

Economic growth is the creation of more resources than are destroyed. Needs satisfiers are resources. Get it? If you're satisfying more needs than you used to, you have grown economically. Period.

[@trizmisce]

yes indoor plumbing>iphone, but also food>protection>mating>indoor plumbing>etc. the fact is that there is a human needs hierarchy and before satisfying the lower tears you will not care about the higher ones. that's where the 100% idea misleads people, it's not the end mark, it's an "exp" amount required to level up to the next human need. it's also partially why the new generation is usually considered to be spoiled since older generations are used to lower satisfaction averages

[@gasdive]

There are also physical limits on running those programs. They require energy to change state and manipulate information. There are physical limits on how much energy is available for that too.

[@Pvemaster2]

The thing he's saying is, our living standards will not improve the same way they did in the 1900s because there aren't as many revolutionary inventions now compared to that time. That's all, that's the whole point of the talk. I don't even see how people are debating in the chat.

[@SuperAtheist]

taxes are an expense and like all expenses (electric, gas, labor etc.) it's passed on to the customer. The goods and services you buy from a corporation are a little more expensive to cover the cost of taxes.

[@tpzlol]

I never said that I'm a fan of capitalism. Even though capitalism is cruel, it helped us to develop faster than we ever did before in human history but I think we reached a point where we need to cooperation instead of competition if we want to take a step further into a future society. Why ? Because research became too expenive for just one/a few corporations/governments to finance it.

[@andrew20146]

Economic growth does not require the consumption of additional resources. You can produce more value with the same resources. For instance, an iPhone does not contain more plastic, etc. than a rotary phone from 1970, but produces far greater value.

[@gasdive]

Yes of course there are. I'm not talking about how much time you have, but a computer program has a low entropy. There are very few ways in which it can be ordered. There must be expenditure of energy to put those bits in order. One of the ideas you linked to was to turn everyone into waves of pure thought. The person who wrote that didn't understand that there is a cost in energy and entropy to create small pockets of very low entropy.

[@rstevewarmorycom]

1) We don't have to match the way we have done things up to now. We have far better ways of doing most all those things, ways that use less energy, or less human energy, or less complexity, and most of it resides in electronics and our knowledge base, and the electronics takes a very tiny fraction of our energy consumption to maintain and improve.

[@drhxa]

Why are you going to award an Oscar to an inventor or scientist? An Oscar is a prize for cinematic film achievements. I want to add, this is the type of thinking we had prior to TED talks, welcome to the future guys. Sorry for all the old and ignorant people who are stuck using 20th century thought

[@panpiper]

There are a great many examples. Oil is perhaps (in a way sadly) one of the best examples. The easiest sources of oil have largely been exhausted, and the price has indeed as a result risen, but so too has output. The increase price of oil has enable previously non-economical sources of it to become economical, such as deep sea drilling, fracking and tar sands.The solution to using oil is that technological development continues with alternatives, and at a certain point they become cheaper.

[@IamTheSherm]

That's more a reflection of how we credit individuals than anything else. Edison's research lab developed the first marketable light bulb, but Edison himself was not the guy sitting in the lab doing it. Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce are not names you hear every day, but the integrated microchip is just as revolutionary as the incandescent light bulb. Name recognition is not a good measure of progress.

[@TheBarnster101]

There is so much innovation happening right now, trust an Economist to just completely ignore all the amazing technology that is right around the corner. As a student Engineer I see enough innovation everyday, that would clearly blow this mans tiny little mind several times over. Superconductors, nano materials, graphene, 3D printers...... So what if the R and D costs a little more, these are all game changing technologies. This man clearly doesn't watch enough TED.

[@camerceru]

you can't afford any of the innovations that you talked about without economic growth. i actually agree that we are at the beginning of the innovations you listed, without a strong economy

[@gasdive]

Ok, this is where we diverge significantly. I do think that a sudden and unprepared for end to growth does hurt. I think it will lead to collapse. You seem to feel that a sudden unprepared for end to growth will result in stasis at that level. We both think the other is wrong but I suspect neither can raise an argument that will convince the other.

[@panpiper]

First off, the planet is not finite, it has an external energy source and we can grow up and down as much as we have spread out over a single surface. Secondly, you CAN grow infinitely in a finite system (which the Earth is not) if you are producing more while using less resources. It just so happens that doing more with less is exactly what technology is all about, and is also the exact formula for running a profitable business. Things are not as bleak as you might think.

[@tpzlol]

Basic research is mostly funded by the government because the combination of horrendous budget requirements and the uncertainty about the profitability of the findings is a too high risk even for the biggest corporations.

[@privacyvideo4u]

if we look through the comments, usually we can at least relate to many of them. we really are all a lot alike. it seems like we've gotten so commercialized that all we can see in each other are our differences. it even seems as though we avoid the similarities. I believe we need to re-connect.

[@patrickbrown1186]

Economic growth is driven by energy. Innovation happens as one of various results.

[@gasdive]

You're right, except the wrong way. He holds out hope that if there was a flowering of innovation, that if we could keep up with Watt and Edison then we could maintain growth. That's where he lacks vision and sees only what's in front of him. He's seen the great things done by great innovation and says that if we could keep up that innovation (which he doubts) we could maintain growth. We can't. there are physical limits to growth that no amount of innovation can overcome.

[@hitssquad]

"The waste heat will kill us all evenutally." ...Then tax heat emissions from parties that don't use space radiators. People who use space radiators wouldn't need to be taxed because their heat would be radiated directly to space. They can make their radiators efficient by using very high temperatures. They can use these high temperatures by using advanced materials. They can use advanced materials because of the improved economies of scale enabled by a larger population using more energy.

[@enyawix]

You listed examples innovating to "scaling existing technology". Making a light brighter vs inviting the light bulb. Creating a base 16 logic gate to replace binary would be an inventing. That would change how all electronics work at the lowest level solving many heat and scaling problems.

[@ManBearPiglet]

Don't forget the 20th century saw the advent of nuclear power, robotics, genetic engineering, vaccines, space travel, personal computers, mobile phones and the internet, all of which have contributed immensely to our quality of life. New ideas are spreading faster than ever. The 21st century has only just started and already there's talk of mining asteroids and colonising mars and virtual reality and self-driven cars.

[@ajcarpy2005]

Smarthouses for instance, ideally need a universal kind of set of protocols on top of the Internet and Web that replace/connect the different proprietary standards that are currently in place for multimedia control and various data handling. There is lots of room for innovation across the board. I am of the opinion that we need a universal type of protocol that is centered around basically user experience as well as "venue, building, location, etc."...as well as Social.

[@gadzometer]

Once you develop your tools further, they unlock technologies and inventions that could not be possible before. e.g. 3D printers, compact thorium reactors, anaerobic digestion, signal over power line. And remember that the washing machine was made of building blocks that weren't new either. Subscribe to a science podcast like ABC science show or even TED. We can't just gauge progress by the technologies that we are familiar with.

[@gasdive]

Energy consumption has been growing at over 10x per century. So as you suggest we block 0.08% of sunlight (3 disks 400km in diameter). That covers the next 100 years. 100 years after that you need to block 0.8%. 100 years later 8%, 100 years later 80%, 100 years later 800% of the sunlight has to be blocked. There's no unlimited growth on a finite planet.

[@MatthewBendyna]

I'm not being pessimistic. Most of the things I have seen you talking about, I actually agree with. I'm only correcting your statement that resources are infinite. A little physics: the planet is made of a finite number of atoms, the sun is itself a closed system, and it's hydrogen will be burned up in about 5 billion years. We can perhaps produce electricity for billions of years, but we must expand to space if overpopulation is not to affect all life negatively. However, I'm very optimistic.

[@655432655432]

The core of any technological advancement is an idea, i dont see how an idea in its basic form can come up from more than one mind, a lot of people will prove the idea true or false after that or bring the idea to life,but it was originated from one person,and we still have lots of examples today in any field.

[@gulllars]

The point he completely misses: The focus of innovation in the 21st century has shifted from physical to digital, and the value of digital innovation may not be showing up in these models. Everyone today has free access to most of the worlds knowledge, way more than can fit in a library, in their own home. 20 years ago that would require a library costing a lot, and looking things up was impractical. I don't care if _physical_ goods only improve

[@hitssquad]

"we're seeing the first signs now [of heat related problems]" Antarctica still has a big block of ice on it. I asked you before and you dodged the question: "How are you planning on melting the ice that soon?" . Do you understand that melting is a cooling process? You can't cook, when you've still got ice. . "I think growth will stop" What would keep people from using heat pumps and space radiators?

[@panpiper]

Resources are NOT finite. They just get harder to find and therefore more expensive, which in turn motivates people all the more to do more with less, find alternatives, and recycle previously used resources. This can go on indefinitely given that external energy source. And yes, extraterrestrial resources are indeed an option. And invoking entropy death trillions of years from now is a pretty desperate excuse for pessimism.

[@MrConorWB]

Why are people disliking this? He is giving his view with evidence.

[@Loathomar]

All money can depreciate. The value of gold can go up or down depending on supply and demand. Gold in 1980 was worth over 3 times the value of gold in 1982. This is a massive depreciation of currency of any currency that was a gold standard. Depreciate a question of what you can buy with a currency so the only think that a gold standard can no depreciate against is gold.

[@hitssquad]

Regarding the tinyurl, read paragraph 9: "(9) If the limits-to-growth people are correct in their basic premise--that resources are finite--then we and the rest of the biosphere are finished. Period. It's a matter of elementary-school mathematics: if you have a finite amount of anything, and you use them at a constant rate, then you use them all in a finite amount of time. Suppose, for example, we have 1000 units of resources. If we use them at a constant rate of 1 unit per year, then we have

[@JZGreenline]

I'd like to see how he calculated negative growth. And I dislike how he compared a century of innovation to ten years. Last century harnessed the power of electricity, we are about to harness the power of computation. And Everything will work a behave intelligently, god-willing people hope to too. The last 100 years dwarfed all the innovation in the history of mankind, likewise the next 100 will too. This video makes me want to watch Ray Kurzweil again.

[@AlaskaFinal]

Yes, by deregulating. Growth slowed down, because we allowed more direct control of our monetary system, and because we have the triangular barrier of regulatory burdens. Without them, growth would have remained constant. You can tell, because his trend ends around the 1930s, the time of the Great Depression, and when the Federal Reserve started to do its "work".

[@aMondia]

He seems to take modern day innovation for granted, while holding the old ones over his head screaming "look at this!" Now, I see what he is getting at, but look at this Mr.Gordon.... Right now I have a quite powerful computer IN MY POCKET which allows me to talk to anyone on the face of the planet who also happens to have one. This is just one of many examples. We are still innovating like crazy, don't you worry.

[@QuantPhilosopher89]

Only if the government funds the research. In a capitalistic system, so basically the opposite of a system in which the government funds research, capital is attracted by profit potential. Currently technologies such as the ones I mentioned, don't get a lot of attention from the markets because the markets are simply too short-term oriented, but that might change in the future due to lack of other investment opportunities or just first milestone achievements in those fields.

[@Jalharad]

that is the link to the meaning of "automated teller machine" which is different from ATM (abbreviation) which is a different function of speech. Beyond that, speech is the conveyance of meaning. If you understand "ATM machine" as an ATM then it technically is correct. At one point in time isn't was considered incorrect.

[@ik04]

The root cause of the loss of growth in each of his examples is the lack of incentive, caused by government handouts. The shrinking of the workforce is the best example of this: Why work when you can get more money from the taxpayer funded entitlement programs?

[@princeofexcess]

populations exponential growth is impossible. (but we could live underground quite comfortably with right technology and in the oceans and we are nowhere near the limit on land, despite what you might hear so the max number could be enormous) but exponential growth of technology is inevitable even with the current recession its still happening. Which is insane!

[@panpiper]

I would say we need to 'de'-tool government. Much of the problem is because the tools of government are essentially for sale to whomever has an interest to lobby. And given that the benefits of government meddling are always concentrated and the costs always diffuse, the system is built to encourage those who benefit to lobby and those who pay to not do so. No single person loses enough from any given program sufficient to motivate them to lobby against the special interests. So grows Gov.

[@hitssquad]

"Maynard Keynes, and shrug one's shoulders: "In the long run we're all dead." In other words, since the entire biosphere inevitably is wiped out after a finite number of generations whatever we do, why bother to have any further generations? Why not just enjoy ourselves by using up all of these finite resources in this generation?"

[@hitssquad]

"Adding 10C to the temperature means they would die." No, because a wealthier world is a world in which people can control their environments better. . "we're going to be seeing significant heat related problems within 100 years [...] 1100y from now." 1100 years from now has no bearing on 100 years from now. The farther into the future, the better able society will likely be to cool itself. The higher the societal energy consumption, the better able society will likely be to cool itself.

[@GeroLubovnik]

Gordon touched briefly on debt... But if standard of living is what we are striving for, he under-stated the harm that debt (credit) has caused us. Having available dollars lets us spend more than we have at the moment, which creates demand- and causes inflation. Look at college tuition after government guaranteed student loans. A student now can be $200,000 in debt after a 4 year degree, yet has no guarantee of a job, let alone one that can afford to pay back the loan! As we now have 6 and 7 year car loans, autos average $40,000 while salaries average $50,000. This is nuts folks. While innovation is important, we need to eliminate debt and cap credit so that prices remain stable so we can possibly catch up within a generation or two.... And I didn't even throw in government debt, now $21 Trillion.

[@hitssquad]

It shows the same thing I showed you here: eia. gov/forecasts/ieo Growth in energy consumption in the OECD countries has virtually stopped.

[@DeltaCommando52]

No one ever talks about what's really killing modern society: slothfulness. We've invented such easy lifestyles, it is difficult to teach children to work hard.

[@holleey]

exactly my thoughts. the described drop in growth seems to be more of an illusion to me. there's no need trying to match the results of the 19th and early 20th century inventors, since we already are on the best way to top them. :P

[@MrAkura1984]

There are many factors that impact growth, and they all must be taken into consideration: economic system, demographics, natural resources, politics, culture and many others. Japan got no natural resources while Russia got more than any country on the planet, yet Japan's economy is twice bigger than the Russian one. Japan's biggest problem is its economic system (bubbles, debt) and also demographics. In the 80's Japan was much more innovative than today and had the best economy in the world.

[@Rumdreg]

You do not make the light brighter, you just use the same technologies for creating the light bulb to create other types of light sources. My point still stands, the complexity for inventing in this era is much larger than before. Research becomes expensive as we dive into new technologies.

[@rstevewarmorycom]

4) Most of the improvements in longevity come from simple public health measures born solely of knowledge, what to eat, bathing, quarantining disease instead of mysticism and terror. Most of what we have now that makes our lives easier is knowledge, and that isn't going to just go away, never has, not if people remained organized and worked together. This fellow's grasp of what "growth" is is a short-sighted Wall Street economist's view, however what was handed to us was done so by fossil fuel.

[@g13iceman]

I generally don't buy pseudo-Malthusian theories. Some say innovation will only increase, with research in nanotechnology, biotechnology, etc. (and the US still leads by far in these areas, read the Post-American World). Also, the US population will still be growing (including the working age population) because we have large immigration (while Mexican migration is slowing, Asian migration is growing).

[@hitssquad]

"a sudden and unprepared for end to growth [...] will lead to collapse." So, if I get in a 2014 Corvette Stingray Z51 with MagneRide option, and accelerate to 60 mph in 3.8 seconds, suddenly stopping all acceleration at 60 mph, the car will "collapse"? Why?

[@ajcarpy2005]

For instance, different buildings like your own house, workplace, stadium, mall, theater, classroom, museum, art show, etc...would have different parameters and defaults, etc. that would help make the digital world a lot more connective and responsive to the situation. At a baseball stadium, I could easily see what kind of vendors there are and what they are selling and order by mobile device and scan the QR code on the armrest and they can deliver the product.

[@hitssquad]

So, if I have a delivery service with a fleet of 1-mpg vehicles, and I switch to 2-mpg vehicles while doubling my delivery mileage, thus using the same amount of energy, I haven't grown economically? How so? . "then the price of energy (a scarce resource) would become abitrarily low" ...Relative to people's wealth, if people gradually got wealthier, the price of fuel could gradually become cheaper. How is that absurd? In fact, over the term, that very phenomenon has happened for all commodities.

[@arktseytlin]

It is a Pareto principle. It would be MUCH harder to move to the next level. Probably depends on better understanding of quantum mechanics, fusion, etc

[@FTLNewsFeed]

That is slightly unfair. The Japanese have less economic growth because their aging population is not being replaced by the younger generation. So their innovation is being lessened and hampered by this "aging" fact. If they had young people to replace their aging out seniors they would, in fact, have economic growth.

[@gasdive]

There's a big difference between just pumping all our atmosphere into tanks so we can radiate fully, getting us down by twenty degrees and dissapating more energy than the sun. At current growth rates we would need to disapate more energy than the sun puts out before Oxford University is 3 times older than it is now.

[@martinez8290]

Although ST does seem a bit 'muddy' and it may turn out to be wrong one day, it doesn't mean that its proponents aren't physicist. To be a physicist you just need a certain degree of official education in Physics. That's all it takes, unless you follow a different definition of the term 'physicist'.

[@Memento_Mori_Music]

Totally. We need to move away from an economy based on debt (& living standard inequality) & replace it with one that's based on natural resource management (& living standard equality). No politician/economic/businessman/-woman/... in the world is going to improve society better or faster than the scientists can, no matter how good his/her intentions are.

[@rstevewarmorycom]

5) We brute forced things with extravagant uses of energy in a way we stopped doing thirty or more years ago. We have gotten steadily more energy efficient by many percent per decade for the last several decades. And in that sort of thing lies actual "growth", and not in the GDP that makes chiefly makes the rich richer. We have discovered the rich don't deserve what they get, and like the Internet with a bad node in it, we are now slowly routing around them and their world pilfering ways.

[@ductuslupus87]

I agree. With the collective mind, there is proberly no limit to what we can achieve.

[@hitssquad]

We don't know a heat tax wouldn't work, but it wouldn't need to. Like I said, people could simply insulate their own environments from the heat-exhaust of others. If they needed those insulated environments cooler, they could employ heat pumps.