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Page added on April 7, 2014
And The Next Big Thing Is… Degrowth?
This is not doom-and-gloom for society–it is only doom-and-gloom for the current unsustainable arrangement (Plan A).
The Grand Narrative of the past few centuries goes something like this: from religious authority to secular authority, from agriculture to industrial, from rural to urban, from local to global, from periphery to center, from decentralized to centralized, from low-density energy to high-density energy (from wood to coal to oil/natural gas), from industrial to communication technology, from gold to fiat currencies, from linear to non-linear (complex/fractal), from local scarcity and high cost to global abundance, from islands of prosperity to continents of prosperity, from cash to credit, from collateral to leverage,from productive to consumerist and from sustainable to unsustainable.
Many of these linear trends are running out of oxygen or reversing. Rigid hierarchies are being disrupted by self-organizing systems, centralization is being disrupted by decentralization, lower density alternative energy is distributed rather than concentrated, commodity costs are rising globally due to demand outstripping supply and leveraged credit is destabilizing financial systems across the globe.
In the past few decades, the growth narrative has depended on “the Next Big Thing” –the new disruptive technology that drives wealth and job creation.
In the early 20th century, the next big things were plentiful, and they clustered around transport and communication: autos, highways, aircraft, radio, telephony and most recently the Internet.
The progress of technologies tends to track an S-Curve, with a slow gestation (experimentation that drives rapid evolution of innovations), a period of widespread adoption and technological leaps, and then a maturation phase in which advancements are refinements rather than leaps.
Air travel is a good example: the leap from open-cockpit aircraft of the 1910s to the long-distance comfort of the DC-3 in the 1930s was enormous, as was the leap from the prop-driven DC-3 to the greater capacity and speed of the 707 jet airliner.
But since the advent of the Boeing 727 in 1964 and the jumbo-jet 747 in 1969, very little about the passenger experience of flight has changed (or has changed for the worse): the envelope of speed is little changed, and efficiency has improved, but these are mostly invisible to the passengers.
My 1977 Honda Accord was extremely safe, reliable, powerful, efficient, comfortable, etc. Improvements in the past 37 years since have been modest in these fundamental technologies. (I actually prefer the smaller, older, less luxurious Accords.)
Once computers reached the Mac OS X/Windows XP level, improvements have been of marginal utility. The lack of blockbuster medications–and the skepticism regarding the efficacy and cost of existing blockbuster meds–raise the same question: maybe the low-hanging fruit of present technologies have all been picked.
What Happens After the Low-Hanging Fruit Has Been Picked? (April 2, 2014)
No More Industrial Revolutions, No More Growth? (December 27, 2012)
The costs of our lifestyle continue to rise, due to financialization, cartel/fiefdom skimming, higher energy costs, bureaucratic bloat and related systemic causes. At the same time, more of our collective consumption is being funded with debt, which is another way of saying that present consumption is being paid for with future income.
For the past two centuries, each Next Big Thing magically created more wealth and more jobs. The progression has been straightforward: production moves to lower-labor cost areas or is automated/mechanized, and labor moves to providing higher-value services.
What if we’ve run out of Next Big Things that generate more jobs? What if the next big thing is Degrowth, i.e. consuming less and doing more with less? This is a problem, as the Status Quo has optimized only one pathway: higher consumption, costs and debt.Any reduction in any of these three collapses the system.
TEDx Tokyo: The “De” Generation (8 minutes) (de-ownership, de-materialism, de-corporatism)
Degrowth, Anti-Consumerism and Peak Consumption (May 9, 2013)
The American Model of “Growth”: Overbuilding and Poaching November 19, 2013
When Conventional Success Is No Longer Possible, Degrowth and the Black Market Beckon(February 7, 2014)
Labor-saving software/communication technology has chewed through much of production and is now feeding ravenously on the service sector. As costs inexorably rise, enterprise has only one real way to reduce costs: reduce labor. As a result, the current Big Thing–the world-wide web–is the first technology that is not creating more jobs than it eliminates.
Many smart people retain the faith that technology always creates more jobs than it destroys, but if we look at our daily lives, I see little evidence to support this faith. Thanks to technology, sole proprietors in information/design businesses can create the same output that took multiple people just 20 years ago.
Russ in Redding: The Human Face of The End of Work (September 2, 2011)
America’s Social Recession: Five Years and Counting (August 28, 2013)
The Ten Best Employers To Work For (Peak Employment) (March 28, 2013)
The Python That Ate Your Job (December 11, 2013)
In my view, the Status Quo has no Plan B, not just from habit and the desire of those in power to retain power; we collectively have a failure of imagination. We cannot imagine a world that consumes less, generates fewer conventional jobs and reduces debt rather than creates more debt. The only strategy left in a systemic failure of imagination is to do more of what has failed spectacularly.
Why the Status Quo Is Doomed (June 27, 2013)
A Degrowth economy is not only entirely feasible in my view, it is the only way forward. The low-hanging fruit of Next Big Things have been picked, and wearable computing (Google glasses, etc.) is simply not a global growth engine. Robotic vehicles will eradicate millions of jobs without creating any more jobs at all; manufacturing self-driving cars will add very little labor to the manufacturing process.
Wages are no longer an adequate means of distributing the surplus of an economy. But this is not doom-and-gloom for society–it is only doom-and-gloom for the current unsustainable arrangement (Plan A). Plan B is actually a better plan, though few are able to see that yet.
Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog
7 Comments on "And The Next Big Thing Is… Degrowth?"
J-Gav on Mon, 7th Apr 2014 9:38 pm
In part very interesting, but this?: “A degrowth economy is not only ‘feasible’ in my view .. “etc”
‘Inevitable’ would be the more operative word. Steady State would be nice but that’s still dreamland too. Degrowth will happen (is happening under our very eyes) but it’s unlikely to follow the scenarios proferred by our cherished institutions.
mike555 on Mon, 7th Apr 2014 11:52 pm
Perhaps, the notion that software and communications “engineer people out of their jobs” is incorrect.
Well, being taken without perspective, it may look as true. One hundred years ago, each elevator (lift – for the British readers) in New York had a person in it. To close and open doors, apply breaks, and turn a crank to send power to the electric motors (or whatever they used in those elevators.) An elevator driver of sorts. Over the next few decades, these drivers were replaced. First – by relays, then – by transistors, then – by microprocessors, then by the intelligent building-wide elevator control systems. Engineered out of their jobs? Absolutely. And – for good. Frankly, I feel much better pressing a button and waiting for the doors to open and close – automatically. I do feel uneasy in some posh hotels now, there they have a uniformed old man pressing the elevator buttons for you. What a waste, and what a disrespect to a human being. I can imagine that a 14-year-old boy in 1910 New York would be very happy getting himself a paid job and a red uniform with shiny buttons. Driving an elevator, what could be better! But – making a life-time “career” out of this?
Since the introduction of the personal computers, the society created ever-growing layer of those non-jobs. Sitting at the keyboard all day long, producing a stream of bytes? Well, if the person at the keyboard is a writer, an educator, a programmer, an analyst, this is well-justified and deserves nothing but respect. But what if all your “day production” can be done in under ten minutes by twenty lines of very simple and stupid Python script? Don’t you feel like being an elevator driver? And not without reason: there are plenty of people who are willing to sit at the computer screens and press buttons. But when you start searching amongst them for those writers, educators, programmers, and analysts (those people who have distinct talents, not just well-developed keyboard and mouse skills) – you find very few. Computer and software is nothing but a tool. Saying that the computers engineer people out of their jobs it is like saying that the sewing machines engineer people out of cross-stitching.
On the rest of the post: the “degrowth” is here, and already on-going. But it has nothing to do with the computers and communications.
Makati1 on Tue, 8th Apr 2014 12:46 am
Mike555, your analogy falls apart after the first few words. Electronics have taken millions of jobs once done by humans. And they are on track to take most of the ones still being done by humans if the world does not crash and burn first. I hope it does.
I also suspect that you are an IT nerd, whose income depends on tech continuing into your future. Is a cell phone an advancement or a regression? Is it a connector or a way to dehumanize us? Look around. Personal contacts are mostly replaced with an electronic drug we carry everywhere and attend to like a slave. Well, some do, I don’t. Mine is off when I’m with someone or sleeping. It lays on a table when I am home and is ignored most of the time. It is for MY convenience, not yours.
mike555 on Tue, 8th Apr 2014 4:30 am
Makati1, I have to admit, I love computers. And I hate mobile phones.
I have been working in the oil and gas industry for the last ¼ century, and cannot recall a single specific occupation that has been wiped out by the *electronics* (computers, phones, radio…) The wipe-outs from the industry downturns were “across the board:” from the company CEOs to the roughnecks, and had a lot to do with the oil price fluctuations, but nothing to do with computers.
OK. Some occupations get engineered out by millions. But not because of the computers and phones! For starters, let list those who were engineered out of their jobs NOT because of electronics in the last 100 years:
(1) Doffers (those boys at the wool and cotton spinning mills, once in a while lost fingers and toes to the machinery.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doffer
(2) Riveters (no hearing by the age of 35.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosie_the_Riveter
(3) Binders (Bind books. Fingers can’t feel by the age of 40. Very few remain, and only as a hobby or an old book restoration service.)
(4) Stokers (Throws wood/coal into a steam engine furnace. Guess what he is breathing? Right: coal dust. In Brisbane, Queensland, I personally have seen just ONE left. On the tourist steamer at the Maritime museum.)
(5) Chimney sweeps (No comments.)
(6) Ankle beaters (A young person who helps bringing cows to a market. This is a healthy occupation, for a change.)
I can continue this list for many pages, but half-dozen is enough to illustrate the point.
And, you are absolutely right as the “Degrowth” is progressing, some of the above occupations will be back. But, somehow, I have difficulty imagining my grand-son to be employed as a chimney sweep. Not because it is so hard to imagine, but because it is so sad and really sucks.
About the future jobs, you may want to check these:
http://www.amazon.com/World-Made-Hand-A-Novel/dp/0802144012/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396930684&sr=8-1&keywords=world+made+by+hand
http://www.amazon.com/Houston-2030-Mike-McKay-ebook/dp/B00HRMZIOM
http://www.amazon.com/After-Oil-Visions-Post-Petroleum-World-ebook/dp/B00A323CPU/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1396931163&sr=1-1&keywords=After+Oil
GregT on Tue, 8th Apr 2014 4:53 am
Steady state might be possible, but not as long as our financial systems require exponential growth. Computers and communications, do nothing more than accelerate exponential growth. Infinite exponential growth, on a finite planet, is a mathematical and physical impossibility. The faster we accelerate exponential growth, the sooner we meet the brick wall, of reality. That brick wall is approaching fast, and we still have our feet firmly pressed down on the accelerators.
DC on Tue, 8th Apr 2014 9:10 am
Most of the benefits\gains of the IT ‘revolution’, such as they are(and there are genuine ones to be sure), have already been accomplished. Whatever ‘productively’ gains or whatnot industry or govt hoped to get out of IT-they have them now pretty much. There is really not much more ‘there there’ as it were. While one can never rule our further ‘innovations’ coming along, the idea that IT has a lot of new tricks to pull out of its sleeve simply doesnt add up. The fact that my 5 year old PC with minor upgrades along the way, offers nearly the same speed and all the functionality of a ‘new’ one, tells me a lot right there. Windoze OS’s just keep getting larger and larger, but offer more of the same functionality as the previous versions did-they mostly just add new gimmicks(which many users disable asap) and a few quasi-useful features they had the ability to implement years ago. IOW, dont expect IT to ‘save the world’. Well, maybe it might, if it allows people of good will and skill and intentions to bypass the uS, globalist corporate police state. But IT wont save the world just because someone comes up with a new Ijunk ‘killer app’.
But we can say the same about a lot of other things around us too, not just IT. If anything, rather than things(I define things in this instance to mean durable artifacts), are actually getting worse-not better in many regards. The Star Trek future is not going to arrive on schedule, if it arrives at all. Nothing remotely like ‘tomorrow’s future’ is taking shape anywhere on Earth. Most North American cities are doing well if they can hold the physical decay of themselves at bay-let alone reverse it. Were 3 or 4 empty Earth-type planets short in this solar system to prevent de-growth. And even if they did exist, our ‘tech’ is too primitive to do anything more than send a robot probe to them in any event.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Tue, 8th Apr 2014 10:43 am
Agreed DC! The IT system globally will be lucky to operate as it does now. The WW Net requires stability of local infrastructure in critical nodes. These nodes will increasingly become unreliable and unstable. Just like the grid the heart of the system cannot have instability. We see multiple near failed states today with unreliable grids but they are fringe countries. They are not vital to the matrix so to speak. When vital nodes experience instability all bets are off. The economies of scale that allow innovation and mass production of consumer devices also allow for the extremely complex and important hardware required to run multiple complex systems and manufacturing processes. These items will fall victim to a financial correction. We will see abandonment for economic reasons early on. Some abandonment will take time because of preferences and need. Cell phone have become vital so that system will be held to until the bitter end. The IT system along with its highly complicated AltE industry will take a big hit with resource limits and a financial correction. Huge amounts of capex are required along with huge amounts of consumer consumption to keep the economies of scale functioning. The trend is to higher costs of imputes. When the cost of money rises it will be the nail in the coffin. The Central Banks know higher cost of money will ruin the economy hence the inability to turn the money taps off. The 3 largest trading blocks are all in a straitjacket committed to a Ponzi scheme of debt inflating bubble markets across the globe.