[Lore]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Loki', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Shaved Monkey', '
')Cheap high fat, calorie dense slave fuel.

[glaucus]

Shaved Monkey wrote:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')heap high fat, calorie dense slave fuel.

[dsula]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AgentR11', '
')Thus, the answer to the question, is that there are no limiting factors on nominal growth. Resource constraints provide limits on real growth and produced widget count/per capita; but underneath it all as long as (food Cal grown in the US) > (food Cal eaten in the US), this game can and will continue.

[Pops]

Spent a while writing a response to this this am and was plenty pissed when I got a CloudFlare error instead of a preview and lost the effort.

Anyway, the reason the article ties into po is that there are a boatload of people who firmly believe that money makes resources, not vice versa.

It's talked about all the time here i.e.: "tech" will save us. People act as if 150 years ago our intellect just all of a sudden decided to bloom, leading to massive surpluses (capital) and the resultant explosion of population, all because of capital and human ingenuity - not resources and especially not fossil fuels.

I doubt there is there anything that I will touch today that is essentially the same as it was 150 years ago. By the same token, I doubt that a person 150 years ago could touch many things that had changed substantially for hundreds if not thousands of years. There is no new technology without capital and no capital without surplus. Care to guess what it is that "fuels" our surplus?


In the US the FIRE economy is touted as the future and manufacturing the past. The "FIRE" economy consists of interest, sales commissions and gambling – a derivative contract for example is called derivative because it is secondary, apropos of nothing except as a bet on an outcome where the bet itself influences and produces nothing, not even the thing at the center of the wager.

The upshot is, the new Gilded Age Barons are math geeks who figured out how make money for nothing, producing nothing and in fact I'd guess siphoning of prior surpluses faster than new resources can be extracted.

The huge overhang of debt worldwide is the manifestation of the newfound faith that money makes resources. Basically we're been writing checks that old Mother can't cover because we think somehow we've found a loophole in the Second Law.

Music to write derivatives by...

[Corella]

I suffered the same loosing a longer reply...
Briefly: to a certain extent money in deed makes resources, it´s true pops! It is means of improving systems. Nevertheless the limiting factor at least will be shortage of biosphere. Until there we have plenty chances to make it worse. Just take "trust of Chinese economics into US-currency" or (if you take Agents pladoyer) or what ever.

BTW: reading for a while now my impression is, that we´re in the middle of Europe are more aware about all the inter-nation-dependencies than the mean forum thinking here...

[radon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Corella', 'I') suffered the same loosing a longer reply...

[AgentR11]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Shaved Monkey', 'T')he American dream provides the motivation to work hard for the extremely slim chance of catching the carrot on the end of the stick.
but
Thwarted expectations will be the game changer,you dont have to be starving for that,just knowing you will never catch the carrot will be enough and that will kick in well before climate change has any noticeable effect on cheap food.

[AgentR11]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'I') doubt there is there anything that I will touch today that is essentially the same as it was 150 years ago.

[Corella]

Frozen-Fritz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frozen_Fritz) carried some blackthorne-fruits for his comfort. Mmmh, what a life.

[ralfy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AgentR11', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ralfy', 'B')orrowing, spending, and using less is not the solution to problems affecting a global capitalist economy but the result of those problems.

[Corella]

...the effect of such is decreasing population...! -> @ralfy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition

[AgentR11]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ralfy', 'o')ver a quadrillion dollars in unregulated derivatives

[SeaGypsy]

Barely a few weeks after the Carbon tax was made law in Oz, Victoria's premier announced plans yesterday to open Loy Yang brown coal to un-capped digging.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-05-15/b ... ection=vic

400 billion tonnes in one hole. Ranger is right. Things are going to get very messy in transition and moreso on the way down past that. BTW Oz just had a 20% above record farm output year. Remember 3 years ago we were about to all have to migrate because of drought? The desert has been replenished for the first time since white settlement, with 3 record central desert flood years in a row. Meanwhile things aren't looking too good in the Horn of Africa.

This guy had an interesting take on the state of the world last night:

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2012/s3503553.htm

[evilgenius]

It seems obvious to me that the limiting factor is the percentage of debt which has been borrowed in order to put it into productive use in an asset which returns more than what it cost. To wit, the recent housing crash was a result of too many people thinking that houses are such assets. They aren't because those kinds of assets provide a return outside of their mere resale value. Houses don't do that unless you can rent them. Further, the use of financial instruments based on such non-assets also tanked the investment world. Debt that doesn't contribute that is borrowed beyond some as yet undiscovered level seems destined to shrink the money supply. Maybe that level always floats, like how bad stocks counter balance good stocks to reach a market beta or how rates of return are subject to opportunity (which may speak to the role of resources in this exercise). Maybe that level is static. I don't know. I do know that every time it is crossed in an economy bad things happen.

[ralfy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AgentR11', '
')
As long as you think things like this represent something larger than manageable, you are caught in the trap. Its just a number. Its a number that is the consequence of the size of the economy, but there would be nothing particularly difficult or amazing about a number a hundred, a thousand, or even a million times as large. Its just a number; each single unit of it does not represent some fixed value or resource; but rather, each unit is defined essentially by the quantity of currency distributed over the value of the global economy.

[ralfy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Corella', '.')..the effect of such is decreasing population...! -> @ralfy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition

[AgentR11]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ralfy', 'P')art of the reasons for unemployment problems plus high food and oil prices is financial speculation, of which this issue is involved.

[evilgenius]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('evilgenius', 'I')t seems obvious to me that the limiting factor is the percentage of debt which has been borrowed in order to put it into productive use in an asset which returns more than what it cost. To wit, the recent housing crash was a result of too many people thinking that houses are such assets. They aren't because those kinds of assets provide a return outside of their mere resale value. Houses don't do that unless you can rent them. Further, the use of financial instruments based on such non-assets also tanked the investment world. Debt that doesn't contribute that is borrowed beyond some as yet undiscovered level seems destined to shrink the money supply. Maybe that level always floats, like how bad stocks counter balance good stocks to reach a market beta or how rates of return are subject to opportunity (which may speak to the role of resources in this exercise). Maybe that level is static. I don't know. I do know that every time it is crossed in an economy bad things happen.

[ralfy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AgentR11', '
')
There is no unemployment problem; EMRATIO levels right now are about at the historical norm. The bubbles created unrealistic expectations. The expectations remain, but the bubbles do not; those unemployed as a result will eventually come to understand that they are not worth hiring and find something else entertaining to do with their lives.