That's a limited view of things, but still ...The S&P 500 Index originally began in 1926 as the "composite index" comprised of only 90 stocks.1 According to historical records, the average annual return since its inception in 1926 through 2018 is approximately 10%–11%.[cite] The average annual return since adopting 500 stocks into the index in 1957 through 2018 is roughly 8%.
The 1957-2018 (or 2021) S&p 500 return is over 10%phinds said:On the other hand
That's a limited view of things, but still ...
I don't find "has to end" any more compelling than "doesn't have to end" or see how a completely unknown limit could be "obviously absurd".BWV said:However, trees do not grow to the sky: 2% per capita income growth over 1000 years is a factor of a billion or so, obviously absurd
we are already seeing stagnation in middle class incomes across the developed world, the dynamic of the last few hundred years of every generation becoming materially better off than their parents has to end.
You will find that Geoffrey West agrees with you, i.e. with what he refers to as innovation.russ_watters said:o me, the limiting factor in growth/development/standard of life is the limit of technology.
BWV said:The 1957-2018 (or 2021) S&p 500 return is over 10%
russ_watters said:To me, the limiting factor in growth/development/standard of life is the limit of technology. Maximum luxury comes from owning everything that could make one's life better. So as long as those things haven't been invented yet or not everyone has them, there's more to grow.
gleem said:You will find that Geoffrey West agrees with you, i.e. with what he refers to as innovation.
Yes, I do brew beer. Every batch is a universe-destroying calamity.BillTre said:I think that it would be useful to consider these "Malthusian" type of limits in cases were they do work, biology.
The idea as used in biology is that, unlimited growth will be exponential (as considered in theoretical realm of mathematical population doublings, and in environments where there are no limiting factors to growth), while growth of resources (food, places to live, etc., is at best linear (real world growth of food)) but could be at an unchanging steady state.
Thus, the doubling population will eventually exceed its environments limits WRT (pick at least one): food, oxygen, waste removal, breeding sites, living sites, others.
These kind of things work well in biology, in the short term.
It's sometimes surprising how such issue resolve themselves. For example, food production is NOT linear, if I understand it correctly. Modern farming techniques and better seeds have lead to a considerable jump in food production, particularly in the staples such as rice and wheat.BillTre said:The idea as used in biology is that, unlimited growth will be exponential (as considered in theoretical realm of mathematical population doublings, and in environments where there are no limiting factors to growth), while growth of resources (food, places to live, etc., is at best linear (real world growth of food)) but could be at an unchanging steady state.
Exactly. I think that predictions such as the one that started this thread are based, to be generous, on faulty assumptions about what "the natural order of things" or "business as usual" is. Such things are often NOT a "natural order" or "as usual" and unforeseen events, over the course of 50 years, throw such predictions completely off.BillTre said:When people manipulate biology, non-standard things can happen.
It has always puzzled me that people would expect food production to be linear. Technologically stagnant farming efficiency(output per acre and worker) would be constant, so production output should be a function of...? Population. More farmers = more crops to harvest. The worst case food production model should thus always be tied to population growth, lagging it by, oh, about 16 years. But that still makes the farming output the same shape geometric progression as population.phinds said:It's sometimes surprising how such issue resolve themselves. For example, food production is NOT linear, if I understand it correctly. Modern farming techniques and better seeds have lead to a considerable jump in food production, particularly in the staples such as rice and wheat.
Yeah. There are many flaws, but one of the more common is a faulty assumption about just how fixed or limited certain resources are...and how fixed the demand is. Peak Oil comes to mind there. It did not foresee that new technology would unlock known but presumed unrecoverable oil. Meanwhile, car fuel efficiency has increased by...50% in the past 30 years? In both cases (resource reserve and demand), technology changes the equation.Exactly. I think that predictions such as the one that started this thread are based, to be generous, on faulty assumptions about what "the natural order of things" or "business as usual" is. Such things are often NOT a "natural order" or "as usual" and unforeseen events, over the course of 50 years, throw such predictions completely off.
That one I struggle with. If human population self-limits (unlike the yeast in my beer), we need not reach a limit of usable biological molecules. Maybe for other resources, but even if every human needs to buy their own Death Star, we would just need to mine Venus and Mars for the raw materials. My wildly speculative point is just to illustrate that even the existence of limiting factors is wildly speculative.BillTre said:There ares some limits, but not currently effective.
For example:
but we have probably not reached those limits yet.
- total numbers of available molecules of various elements available for biological use
Already has, but not because the world is too crowded for offspring to survive. It's because there is more individual luxury in fewer/delayed procration(s). I'm honestly not sure how Darwin would feel about that.BillTre said:Well, I think a lot of people expect some kind of social limitation mechanisms to kick in, like its too crowded here to raise a family.
Cap-weighting biases winners - a pure market cap weighted index has similar performance. Who cares if all the original DOW stocks are still around or not? A stock index should represent the aggregate market values of companies operating at that point in timeVanadium 50 said:Yes, but individual stocks go in and out of the index. By biasing towards survivors, it biases towards winners. Look at some of the original Dow stocks: General Railway Signal, Sears Roebuck & Company, Victor Talking Machines...
Certainly tech is a factor, but everything is subject to diminishing returns. The widespread economic growth from the industrial revolution provided radically better material lives for ordinary people, but to the earlier thread, real per capita or household income cannot grow long term at 20th century rates as, in addition to the exponential absurdity of everyone consuming like a billionaire in 3121, that growth encompassed moving from substenance agriculture to getting an industrial job and basics like electricity, indoor plumbing and a car. No future technologies are likely to improve my material standard of living from this point more than running water and electricity did for my great grandparents.russ_watters said:I don't find "has to end" any more compelling than "doesn't have to end" or see how a completely unknown limit could be "obviously absurd".
To me, the limiting factor in growth/development/standard of life is the limit of technology. Maximum luxury comes from owning everything that could make one's life better. So as long as those things haven't been invented yet or not everyone has them, there's more to grow.
Or to put a finer point on it: Earth is an open system. Its only known resource limit is the lifespan (times power output) of the sun. Everything else is an argument from incredulity.
BillTre said:I think that it would be useful to consider these "Malthusian" type of limits in cases were they do work, biology.
The idea as used in biology is that, unlimited growth will be exponential (as considered in theoretical realm of mathematical population doublings, and in environments where there are no limiting factors to growth), while growth of resources (food, places to live, etc., is at best linear (real world growth of food)) but could be at an unchanging steady state.
Thus, the doubling population will eventually exceed its environments limits WRT (pick at least one): food, oxygen, waste removal, breeding sites, living sites, others.
These kind of things work well in biology, in the short term.
Over longer (evolutionary) time periods, biology can slowly adapt, by evolving genetically.
Slower, involving many generations, more detailed molecular level changes.
Individual humans (or groups) can ID a problem and, in some cases, come up and implement with a solution almost immediately. This is much faster than evolutionary time and can be observed my an individual in a fraction of their life.
Compared with people, animals are kind of stupid. They can't think up ways to overcome problems in the short term. Only in humans (and perhaps a few other species) have brains large enough, and organized for "higher" thought, enabling them to plan out ways to overcome problems that they personally encounter during their individual life.
This skewing of ability toward humans is accentuated as problems get more complex and abstract.
Animals, on the other hand can come up with new approaches to achieving their goals (reproduction, making more copies of themselves) over much longer (evolutionary, at least several generations) time periods.
These evolutionary changes, result from selection (for reproduction) of those individuals, with a genetic composition that most enables them to reproduce. (Its a tautology, based in the physical world, manifested in chemistry, at a nano-molecular level of organization, and assembled to make larger physical entities.)
It, of course, is slow to make changes (taking many generations), and usually (but not always) works in small steps.
The available changes will largely be somewhat limited by the starting material (the current genome with the generative pieces that its genetic "design" encodes (beyond protein sequences)).
Some changes are a more likely to result of the various mutational mechanisms available, smaller changes are usually favored, but more drastic changes are not fully excluded, just way less likely.
My view is similar to this:
The steps in a process of biological innovation (adapting to new situations/environemnts) will be a lot like the history of technological development of some kind of equipment or instrument.
In addition, in both biology (as a process) and technology, new functions can lead to a vast array of new possibilities to explore. Over long time periods, this can be an exponential increase of possible new opportunities, or new abilities (functions?), or available environments for doing something in are created.
Over the history of life on earth, there have been numerous examples of changes, which can changes limits on organisms, as well as creating new opportunities for new life forms to take advantage of.
The initial making of cars created new manufacturing niches (which are able to attain the required economic viability for survival), like car radios, tires, transmissions, ..., while endangering competing (horse associated) technologies.
Similar things happen in the biological world, as new species form, modifying their environment (by their presence as food if nothing else), which leads (over evolutionary time periods) to new forms that can take advantage some opportunity for making a living there. (Example; the great oxygenation event: new organism started making oxygen, oxygen level rise (in a billion years or so), older life forms have to retreat to low oxygen environments, chemical changes in seawater result, new forms evolve to occupy oxygenated areas.) If nothing else, a new opportunities for parasites to evolve are generated.
There are not a lot of limitations to biological design, (except maybe physical wheels), but they are ususally slight modifications of preexisting forms (their ancestors). However, new opportunities reveal themselves, building on past advances and can in turn open up new additional possibilities.
I would expect most new engineering designs would be similar to successful ones, that have been used in the past, but the innovations can still occur.
I certainly agree with your last point: if I had the opportunity to show just one piece of technology to an Egyptian Pharoah it would probably be my air conditioner(ehh..maybe a plane, but that's still old by modern timelines). I've also heard the only thing that really improves life when you are mega rich is a private plane. Everything else is just incrementally better. But that point just means there is no need for vast increases in wealth that we can think of. It doesn't mean wealth has to stop growing. Maybe in 3132 we'll all own planet-sized space based solar farms for Bitcoin mining? The super-rich can always find stupid stuff to buy/out bid each other for. .BWV said:Certainly tech is a factor, but everything is subject to diminishing returns. The widespread economic growth from the industrial revolution provided radically better material lives for ordinary people, but to the earlier thread, real per capita or household income cannot grow long term at 20th century rates as, in addition to the exponential absurdity of everyone consuming like a billionaire in 3121, that growth encompassed moving from substenance agriculture to getting an industrial job and basics like electricity, indoor plumbing and a car. No future technologies are likely to improve my material standard of living from this point more than running water and electricity did for my great grandparents.
I know we have discussed this before but since we're discussing it here again I'll just briefly restate my disagreement with your position. I do not agree that those examples constitute malthusian catastrophes but even if I did:BWV said:But we only care about changes human society can adapt to. The history of humans shows Malthusian limits get reached, then some catastrophe hits (climate change, war, pandemic or whatever) and the society cannot react swiftly enough and population declines something like 30-50%. This occurred repeatedly in Europe and China in premodern times. Industrialization did not eliminate the Malthusian limit, it just kept pushing it out faster than the population grew. Today, most every country outside of Africa has birth rates at or below replacement, so maybe its not an issue, but climate or some other disaster could again create a situation analogous to 14th century Europe where population levels fell 50% from climate change then the plague.
Actually, there is another reason they are decreasing in significance: scale/connectedness. You considered civilizations isolated when you say one killed '50% of Europe". Today we are so connected that the same catastrophe/civilization could not be as easily categorized as isolated. The denominator gets bigger, and the same connectedness that increases the denominator can decrease the numerator as well.russ_watters said:3. The significance of these catastrophes is decreasing over time due to development. Maybe they'll stop altogether(or just decrease so much we no longer bother to call them "malthusian catastrophes")? We already agree on why they might.
I have a friend who is hardcore. Grows his own hops. Even he pours entire batches down the drain.russ_watters said:Yes, I do brew beer. Every batch is a universe-destroying calamity.
Instead, it's knee-deep in lawyers.phinds said:Also, there were predictions in the early part of the last century that by 1925 or so New York City was going to be 3 feet deep in horse s-h-i-t
Same thing, so I guess the predictions were right.Vanadium 50 said:Instead, it's knee-deep in lawyers.
Oh, no, even when it's awful it is still beer, and I made it so I'm going to drink every last drop.Vanadium 50 said:I have a friend who is hardcore. Grows his own hops. Even he pours entire batches down the drain.
"the pale stale ale with the foam on the bottom".russ_watters said:One time I brewed a Pilsner that turned out brown.
"Old Frothingslosh?"Vanadium 50 said:"the pale stale ale with the foam on the bottom".
Phinds, no offense but I think your friend did a poor analysis of this study:phinds said:I sent this to a friend of mine who studies this sort of thing as a hobby. I have always found his analyses of such things to be very thoughtful and knowledgeable. Here are his very quick off the cuff comments.
The cited reference refers to a new 2020 study of the original 1970 World3 results done by Gaya Herrington who is an analyst at KPMG, a professional service company providing ESG (environmental, social and governance) impact of business investments. She is credentialed in my opinion.1. In general, at the time this study was done, the Club for Growth was replete with doom and gloom studies.
Gaya's paper Updates to limit to growth is cited in the article and it contains empirical data.2. The article does not give any data or explanation, except for the three graphs (see below).
The graphic data in the plots are scaled to fit on one plot:3. The graphs are very general, with no values on the vertical axis – so it is hard to tell how closely they track current empirical data. Clearly the origin is not zero, which always makes me think the presentation is being manipulated to emphasize a point that the data does not support.
4. There is no explanation for what is driving any of the variables.It should be noted that the numerical scales of the World3 output differ widely between variables. They are scaled in Figure 1 (as in the LtG books) to fit in one plot. This means that relative positions to each other on the y-axis have no meaning whatsoever. What is relevant is the movement of the variables over time in each of the four scenarios. These movements together depict the storyline of that scenario, which unfolds based on the specific scenario assumptions.
Figures from the Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic & Social Affairs (UN DESA PD, 2019) were used for this variable.
Section 2.4 of the paper describes resource data such as coal, natural gas and oil.5. I don’t know what is meant by “Resources”, but my sense is that the known reserves of almost all resources is at least as large today as it was in 1900, while the graphs in all three scenarios show a dramatic reduction from 1900 to 2020. I think that any model that shows ALL resources being depleted in 80 years is just plain silly. Do they expect that the sun will burn out in that time frame?
6. Perhaps global pollution today is worse than in the 1980s (as all three graphs show) but I am quite certain that pollution in the US is actually better now than it was 40 years ago, and I think this is the case everywhere in the developed world. Even China seems to be getting a handle on pollution.
World3 assumes pollution to be globally distributed, persistent, and damaging to human health and agricultural production. CO2 concentrations and plastic production were used as proxies
7. The key variable of the five shown, in my opinion, is population. Most studies I am aware of project world population leveling or declining over the next 80 years (except of course for the RCP85 study used by the UN climate control panel).
Only one of the four models, "Business as usual with a dramatic increase in the pollution variable" (BAU2) suggest "global society would experience a sharp decline (i.e., collapse) in economic, social, and environmental conditions within the twenty-first century."8. Setting aside the unexplained substantial variations of the variables over the next 80 years, and only looking at the end points in 2100, I don’t think even the worst case of the three (BAU2) shows the collapse of civilization. It shows the world being back where it was in (the roaring) 1920s. This triggers another of my “hot buttons”: using absolute numbers when per capita numbers are much more meaningful.
I haven't done a deep dive, but I will at least give the author some credit for this:aheight said:Section 2.4 of the paper describes resource data such as coal, natural gas and oil.
1990 is pretty far back. If they realized their projection was way wrong before the fracking boom, by about 2010 with the death of Peak Oil they must have realized it was way, way, way wrong. So it doesn't look like a non-renewable resource-based collapse is anywhere on any projectable time horizon.Around 1990, it became clear that non-renewable
resources, particularly fossil fuels, had turned out to be more plentiful than assumed in the 1972 BAU scenario.
Wow, fortunately there is a back-up thesis that still works (that wasn't even known/available when the book was written)! Frankly, when the main thesis turns out to be really, really wrong it does not invoke confidence in the back-up thesis/projection being better. Especially when the thesis is postulated -- assumed. They are assuming that collapse is inevitable, not predicting it. The question they are asking is: Assuming collapse due to "pollution" is inevitable under these conditions when would it happen?Randers therefore postulated that
not resource scarcity, but pollution, especially from greenhouse gases, would cause the halt in growth.
Sure. But "significant environmental issues" ≠ "collapse is inevitable". I'm not willing to accept the assumed starting premise that collapse is inevitable. That's something that should be argued/modeled/predicted, not assumed.aheight said:I think we can agree the proxies used for the "pollution" variable, atmospheric carbon dioxide and plastic pollution will continue to be significant environmental issues: carbon dioxide is the highest it's been in several hundred-thousand years and it's not easily (significiantly) sequestered, and plastic is slow to degrade.
