The death of innovation, the end of growth

10 Comments on "The death of innovation, the end of growth"

keith on Thu, 2nd May 2013 5:19 pm 



They should have Charles Hall on Ted Talks. All economists believe tech/innovation is a driver of growth, they never consider energy.

keith on Thu, 2nd May 2013 5:21 pm 



It’s a peak oil curve.

J-Gav on Thu, 2nd May 2013 5:33 pm 



I actually found this quite optimistic – here’s why:

Gordon posits a 0.2% growth rate for the future of the U.S. when, in reality, it’s going to be negative. He does bring in the provviso, however, that we’d need to match the level of innovations and inventions we had over the last 120 years just to get that 0.2%. In other words, he doesn’t state his real conclusion very clearly, which is that we are in for a phase change, a paradigm shift, a major transition – whatever you want to call it … To what, when and in what order, nobody knows for sure but it has already begun and will continue such that the next generation will of necessity become more aware of it as they will be staring it in the face every day.

Degrowth doesn’t mean we automatically lose everything innovation and technology have given us for the last 2 centuries though, it only means we lose much more of it than we would prefer and that’ll we’ll need to be very careful about what we decide to hang onto, in terms of sustainability.

Read on Thu, 2nd May 2013 5:40 pm 



Can’t anyone help this guy? His curve fit looks just like the peak oil curve …..hmmmm?

Oldmusher on Thu, 2nd May 2013 6:34 pm 



The dialog on growth is sobering. All things considered (expanding debt, demands of modern technology, demographics, etc.) the picture is not particularly bright. We seem to be on the cusp of an inevitable decline in the standard of living that all now take for granted. That, in turn, portends political turbulence and hardships. Perhaps I am shortsighted, but I really see no clear path out of this predicament.

Arthur on Thu, 2nd May 2013 7:46 pm 



Death of innovation: countries with one leg into third-world-ism cannot be expected to innovate like they did in the old days. Heck, they can’t even maintain the old routine, like keeping a man in orbit, let alone put one again on the moon. Too busy with ‘no child left behind’. The speaker mentions 4 headwinds, the first being ‘demographics’. Uhoh, that sounds promising, but forget it. PC keeps him from speaking the truth and instead mumbles something about ‘retiring males’, which indeed has a lot to do with the ‘death of innovation’, but the speaker does not wish to go into inconvenient detail here, like the color of these retiring males. Quickly, next headwind please.

End of growth: the speaker does not mention energy, the availability of which is by far the most determining factor of growth. Prices for oil were skyrocketing during the Peak West moment (2008) at the eve of the Lehman crash. It is unlikely that they will ever come down again for a substantial longer period of time.

GregT on Thu, 2nd May 2013 10:40 pm 



Energy is definitely going to be a limiting factor to growth. Other major limiting factors will be, resource restraints, and environmental degradation.

Just as our population has grown exponentially, so has our depletion of finite resources, as well as our degradation of all of the planet’s ecosystems that supply us with renewables. Albert Bartlet’s excellent lecture titled; ‘The Most Important Video That You Will Ever See’, clearly explains how quickly the changes that we are about to face will occur.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY

Unless you are over 65 years of age, the limits to growth that will occur in your lifetime will be substantial. What is going to happen within the next two decades will be unprecedented in the entire history of Mankind, and it isn’t going to be pleasant.

Oldmusher is correct to call this a predicament, because there is no solution, and there is no easy way out.

Mark on Thu, 2nd May 2013 11:13 pm 



We will go through a transition all right, just the exact opposite one he is predicting. Robotics, solar, better batteries, nuclear fusion, nanotechnology, biotechnology are all about to explode and change the world dramatically. This guy is so wrong.

GregT on Fri, 3rd May 2013 12:09 am 



Yup,

The world’s leading scientists and educators are just a bunch of dumb asses, and they have nothing better to do with their time but promote doom and gloom. It makes them feel good.

Mark on Fri, 3rd May 2013 2:48 pm 



Not all the worlds leading educators and scientists agree with this one. I bet leading scientists and educators like Ray Kurzweil, Eric Drexler and Aubery DeGrey among others would disagree with Robert Gordon. And didn’t some student recently prove how one of the worlds leading economists was wrong and pointed out his error in a paper? Sure makes me have a lot of faith in what leading economists think!