Whither Progress?: Is Progress an Insupportable Myth?

[Hobbes' Choice]

False analogy, and you ought to know it.
Those guys were working for money, and they made a bundle. ...

And yet they left with no idea whether they'd live to spend it.

In space there is no search for the trade routes to the Indies, which was the motivating force for it all happening from the 15thC, and not before - though the Vikings demonstrated that it was always possible with the technology they had. ...

And they went for what reason?

There is vast wealth awaiting those who manage to exploit the resources of the Solar System, particularly asteroids.

The discovery of the Americas by Europe and the Near East was possible long before Colombo and the Vikings.

Not sure of Europe? but can see the Bearing Strait would work.

The asteroids are not an economic proposition and never will be - get your head out of sci-fi.

[Hobbes' Choice]

It does not matter what the population does, it is simply easier to stay here than spend 3 lifetimes trying to reach an uncertain future. ...

You're still not getting it, I'm taking about intrastellar travel not interstellar. Orion pusher-plate type ships could make Mars in weeks, Saturn in months.

It would be easier to ring the earth with habitable satellites than try to build a colony on Mars, let alone anywhere else. ...

I agree, Orbitals would be the way to go, colonies would not. But to build on such a scale you'd need the vast resources available in the asteroids first.

The rich will want to stay the the poor will not be able to leave. There is nothing more here. ...

Where?

My guess is that population control, however difficult, is always going to be more economic, and the burden of more people who are less capable of doing jobs done more effectively by machines is going to mean fewer people. ...

Why? Surely they'll have more time and leisure to procreate.

Population growth rate is now close to zero in the West and most places around the world, outside of Africa, are now following that trend. Population growth is far less certain that the failure of the dream of space colonisation. Which is already a dead duck.

It's a dead-duck with rockets but it's been feasible since the 50's but the Test Ban treaty put the kibosh on that.

Population growth has slowed in the West due to wealth and China due to policy but India, et al are still growing pretty fast and China is about to again. It appears to be having a middle class and giving women an education and economic opportunity slows population in the West, so for this to work the rest of the world is going to have to get up to our living standards and that's going to cost and drain resources, where are you going to get them other than from the vast resources of the Solar System?
p.s.
Apparently the US has reclassified Dyson's, et al's, work once again. So looks like they might be thinking of going that way once more.

You are talking bollocks generally. Even if we could matter transmit ourselves to Mars it would still be uneconomic to go there. A pointless vanity project.
We are evolved to live on earth and it has all we need.

On the matter of population I rely on facts, not on Daily Mail bullshit.
Google Hans Rosling

[Arising_uk]

Honestly, as far as the Helium 3 thing goes I've wildly exceeded my understanding by just parroting what I have seen written elsewhere. The fact is that all commercial processes for fusion based power generation are currently speculative and the appeal of H3 is widely seen as a wishful notion to justify another desire (space stuff) rather than the cold hard only solution to our energy woes it is often misrepresented to be. ...

Fair enough. I'm not sure it is posited as the only solution, just touted that if obtainable might well cause a significant jump in energy production methods.

During the 30 odd years of the one child policy, Chinese fertility actually declined at a similar rate to India's, where repressing family planning was a much less centralised sort of deal. It is highly unlikely that China is about to have a big population splurge now. Maybe they will have an uptick back to replacement levels, maybe not. ...

Interesting article and I think it points nicely to unintended consequences but given it is the Chinese I guess they'll be able to change things again if they put their minds to it, just have to wait and see I guess.

I also note that they agree with me that it's increased living standards that causes the reduction in fertility rates.

Millennials having a lower standard of living than some other generation is pretty doubtful. It's another case of analysing a complex subject by drawing a couple of lines on a graph and pretending they cover a range of circumstances they couldn't possibly. In an economics forum I would demand to know which measure (HDI, GDP per C, GDP on PPP basis at constant dollar?) of "standard of living" you refer to. In a philosophy forum I might merely invite you to consider why there are so many available measures, and whether that excess indicates a failure of all to capture the crucial details of the phenomenon they aim to describe?

Hmm... I suppose it may be apocryphal but reports in the UK appear to suggest that the youth(males mainly) are earning less than their fathers were and house ownership looks to be less of a chance for them. On top of that it appears that they'll be having to pay a larger share of the tax-burden in the future to support the old and work longer.

Yes. I can't think of anything we might need to mine from asteroids that makes any significant difference either.

Hmm... so all 10 billion at the standard of an American. As again this maybe apocryphal but apparently the States is approx 5% of the population and consumes 25% of the worlds resources so could we sustain this for 10 billion?

Could you not think what a source of the platinum metals as large as all the PM's that we've mined so far could do to the difference? The same with nickel/iron(although not all we've mined so far) with respect to what appears to be an ever increasing demand for iron because of steel usage. I'm just thinking along the terms of what Texas Oil did to change things.

As an aside, I also think it short-termism to not think that we may very well need a method to divert comets and asteroids in the future.

[Arising_uk]

The asteroids are not an economic proposition and never will be - get your head out of sci-fi.

"Never" is a very big word. I agree with rockets there's no chance but you keep ignoring that we(America) had a method to get around the Solar System that may well make it a feasible proposition and it wasn't sci-fi but physics.

[Arising_uk]

You are talking bollocks generally. Even if we could matter transmit ourselves to Mars it would still be uneconomic to go there. A pointless vanity project. ...

Who are you talking to? As I've agreed that colonies on the planets is not the goal.

Although you are talking out of your arse as if we could matter-transmit then economics would pretty much not matter if you are saying this 'matter-transmitter' is cost-effective.

We are evolved to live on earth and it has all we need.

For how long?

On the matter of population I rely on facts, not on Daily Mail bullshit.
Google Hans Rosling

Do you and yet I've seen no stats from you yet? It is the statistics that are being used to predict future population growth and currently they appear to have high, medium and low estimates, so anything from up to 36 billion down to 2.3 billion people by the C22th but most appear to think about 9-11 billion will be the settled state. So that's 2-4 more billion people wanting better living standards and presumably the kind of lifestyle we in the West currently enjoy. I'm just wondering if this is sustainable or even feasible and if it isn't what could be a solution that didn't involve a lot of people dying or staying in abject poverty.

[Hobbes' Choice]

You are talking bollocks generally. Even if we could matter transmit ourselves to Mars it would still be uneconomic to go there. A pointless vanity project. ...

Who are you talking to? As I've agreed that colonies on the planets is not the goal.

Although you are talking out of your arse as if we could matter-transmit then economics would pretty much not matter if you are saying this 'matter-transmitter' is cost-effective.

We are evolved to live on earth and it has all we need.

For how long?

On the matter of population I rely on facts, not on Daily Mail bullshit.
Google Hans Rosling

Do you and yet I've seen no stats from you yet? It is the statistics that are being used to predict future population growth and currently they appear to have high, medium and low estimates, so anything from up to 36 billion down to 2.3 billion people by the C22th but most appear to think about 9-11 billion will be the settled state. So that's 2-4 more billion people wanting better living standards and presumably the kind of lifestyle we in the West currently enjoy. I'm just wondering if this is sustainable or even feasible and if it isn't what could be a solution that didn't involve a lot of people dying or staying in abject poverty.

You keep on banging on about population, yet you pretend you are not arguing for colonies. Get yourself sorted out!

Even if the world's population were 10 times more than it is today, the rich will always find warm comfy places on earth, and the poor will never be able to afford leaving the earth.

[Arising_uk]

...

You keep on banging on about population, yet you pretend you are not arguing for colonies. Get yourself sorted out! ...

No, you take your filters off, I'm not pretending anything. I'm wondering where the resources are going to come from if 9-11 billion people want to live our lifestyle.

Even if the world's population were 10 times more than it is today, the rich will always find warm comfy places on earth, and the poor will never be able to afford leaving the earth.

Who's asking them to? I'm wondering how we're going to build the cities needed for such an event.

[Hobbes' Choice]

...

You keep on banging on about population, yet you pretend you are not arguing for colonies. Get yourself sorted out! ...

No, you take your filters off, I'm not pretending anything. I'm wondering where the resources are going to come from if 9-11 billion people want to live our lifestyle.

Even if the world's population were 10 times more than it is today, the rich will always find warm comfy places on earth, and the poor will never be able to afford leaving the earth.

Who's asking them to? I'm wondering how we're going to build the cities needed for such an event.

It does not matter. If the resources are not there, then the poor starve. The rich get richer.
Where have you been living? On what planet do you come from?

[Arising_uk]

It does not matter. If the resources are not there, then the poor starve. The rich get richer. ...

Or there's war and massive population movement which destablises things.

My point is that the resources are there and the ones who get to them will be very very rich indeed, with the added benefit that it'll help the poor up a rung at the same time.

Where have you been living? ...

London.

On what planet do you come from?

Earth.

[Hobbes' Choice]

My point is that the resources are there and the ones who get to them will be very very rich indeed, with the added benefit that it'll help the poor up a rung at the same time.

croc of shite.

[Arising_uk]

Except that that is how the world has been working so far, at least as opposed to anything else we've had over the millennia. Although that is just my opinion.

[Greta]

"Never" is a very big word. I agree with rockets there's no chance but you keep ignoring that we(America) had a method to get around the Solar System that may well make it a feasible proposition and it wasn't sci-fi but physics.

Agreed. Moore's law and a huge amount of international competition is in train. Whomever works out how to make off world mining a feasible proposition will be the richest and most powerful person in history. As computing develops, progress will accelerate.

We need multiple projects. Obviously we need to do a much better job in harnessing the free and clean power of the Sun, wind and Earth's geothermal energy. However, with every possible imagined solution for the world's problems, population remains the elephant in the room. There are grim realities ahead - the fact that, increasingly, dead people will be more beneficial to others than living ones.

[Arising_uk]

We need multiple projects. Obviously we need to do a much better job in harnessing the free and clean power of the Sun, wind and Earth's geothermal energy. ...

In the main the problem is not generation but transmission. For the UK I have no idea why the focus is on wind when waves are in amazing supply here and we know that the old generating board fudged Salter's results in favour of the nuclear industry.

However, with every possible imagined solution for the world's problems, population remains the elephant in the room. ...

Funnily enough I'm with Hobbe's and FDP here in that it's not population that's the issue but what standard of living the bulk want.

There are grim realities ahead - the fact that, increasingly, dead people will be more beneficial to others than living ones.

They always have been, war and disease often produce benefits to the next generation if the peace holds for a while.

[Greta]

However, with every possible imagined solution for the world's problems, population remains the elephant in the room. ...

Funnily enough I'm with Hobbe's and FDP here in that it's not population that's the issue but what standard of living the bulk want.

What things should people be giving up? I can't see it happening. I'd like to see people stop over eating meat, to buy smaller cars, walk or use public transport more, not be wasteful with utilities, not fly so often, etc, but what more can be expected of the average person? As it is, it's not easy to get people to do even these things.

There are grim realities ahead - the fact that, increasingly, dead people will be more beneficial to others than living ones.

They always have been, war and disease often produce benefits to the next generation if the peace holds for a while.

Yes, and the more the population increases and resources become less accessible, the more the benefit.

[FlashDangerpants]

Millennials having a lower standard of living than some other generation is pretty doubtful. It's another case of analysing a complex subject by drawing a couple of lines on a graph and pretending they cover a range of circumstances they couldn't possibly. In an economics forum I would demand to know which measure (HDI, GDP per C, GDP on PPP basis at constant dollar?) of "standard of living" you refer to. In a philosophy forum I might merely invite you to consider why there are so many available measures, and whether that excess indicates a failure of all to capture the crucial details of the phenomenon they aim to describe?

Hmm... I suppose it may be apocryphal but reports in the UK appear to suggest that the youth(males mainly) are earning less than their fathers were and house ownership looks to be less of a chance for them. On top of that it appears that they'll be having to pay a larger share of the tax-burden in the future to support the old and work longer.

The tax burden bit is demographically true because of falling populations and lengthier lives, however it has built in a hidden assumption of all other things remaining the same. Many of the same sources are also freaking out about robotic technologies replacing human labour. But to sustain a growing economy with a smaller working age population we must use machines to boost output, so it is rather good news for those sons that we appear set to do so. As for house prices... cities like London, New York and San Francisco have house price issues, but other rapidly growing cities such as Austin do not. The reasons are largely regulatory and the fix is comparatively simple.

Yes. I can't think of anything we might need to mine from asteroids that makes any significant difference either.

Hmm... so all 10 billion at the standard of an American. As again this maybe apocryphal but apparently the States is approx 5% of the population and consumes 25% of the worlds resources so could we sustain this for 10 billion?

Could you not think what a source of the platinum metals as large as all the PM's that we've mined so far could do to the difference? The same with nickel/iron(although not all we've mined so far) with respect to what appears to be an ever increasing demand for iron because of steel usage. I'm just thinking along the terms of what Texas Oil did to change things.

As an aside, I also think it short-termism to not think that we may very well need a method to divert comets and asteroids in the future.

There's a lot of platinum laying around unmined here on Earth. I recall somebody tried, or has plans to launch a space mining company based on the value of platinum they can grab from an asteroid. But the amount they need to get to pay for it with current tech is more than 20 years of global supply and there is no obvious market for their product unless they crash the price of the resource and still go bust. Our civilisation uses very small amounts of the stuff, and extending the gains of that to all people on Earth requires very small extra amounts. It' hard to see what important problem is solved by mining an asteroid for platinum.

Iron remains massively plentiful and is traded every day in phenomenal quantity. If you were to replace Earth based mining with space based mining on any noticeable scale, the space ships you would need to transport your stuff would be the size of ocean going super tankers and you would need many of them.


At a more basic level, I think we seem to be taking for granted a very dubious fact. There is no fixed linear relationship between increasing standards of living and increasing resources consumed. Look at an advanced economy, and then compare it to a developing one. The advanced economy produces more units of gdp per unit of energy consumed (in every case) because as economies advance they need less energy to do valuable work. The amount of arable land required to feed X number of people with X calories per day is far lower in Europe than in Sub Saharan Africa. The steel used to make a Nissan car in Sunderland is all made from scrap metal which was re-forged in efficient arc furnace. Prior to the 1990s scrap could not be turned into automotive grade steel, so the steel in a 1976 Ford Cortina was produced by a messy blast furnace from virgin pig iron.

There are two trends at play. One is the constant universal one from all of human history - people use the available resources. The other is the one which applies to economies in intensive growth* - we use resources more efficiently, starting with the most expensive. The former is dependent on availability, the latter on problem solving. This is why we are able to deliver modern standards of living for all. Some years ago for instance, it was claimed that Indian's would never be able to afford fridges is we stopped using CFCs in their manufacture. That problem was solved, and India has a lot more fridges today than it did back then. These same things play out over and over and over again. Few people seem to recognise the next one as being based on the same faulty rationale as the last.


* Economic growth comes in two forms. Extensive growth comes when you have a growing population and results in more people doing the same amount of work per person. Intensive growth is technological and results in more work being done by fewer people.