What is growth?

It’s a great question!i

And it’s a great question principally because we so often mix up the different definitions of the term, much to our collective confusion and detriment. I mean, is growth financial?ii Economic?iii Energetic?iv Technological?v Industrial?vi Biological? Moral? Or just broadly speaking the opposite of decay?

Surely, “stasis” can no more exist than can men who give birth,vii not that this mildly inconvenient scientific veritability can anymore shield us from the shared political delusion that “developed” countries are anything other than declining countries, at the very least on a relative basis and possibly (if less critically) on an absolute basis too. Y’see it’s all relative and it’s all relational! So it is that not even mountains of Crypto mining or gigawatt AI training clustersviii can seemingly turn the current tide of degrowth in the Americas.

Now I’m not saying it’s all over and we should just pack our bags and “exit”,ix just that we should do a little honest self-reflection of what the best-case-scenariox is for our collective place in the rapidly-reshaping geopolitical world order. What kind of growth are we really striving for? Because, not unlike the many different ways to Choose Rich™, not all growth is created equal.

Now go read some goddam footnotes,xi work that noodle,xii and have a great week.

 

  1. Questions are important! So, are you the wise son, wicked son, simple son, or son who does not even know how to ask? ↩
  2. To the extent that “financial industry” is a whole lot of merry-go-round-paper-pushing that now makes up a seriously unhealthy and deceptively large proportion of the US economy since 1990, it’s probably not the foundation for growth you’re looking for, no matter how seductive the numbers are:

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  3. Quoth CEBK:

    GDP accounting is useful for managing demand, & it roughly tracks progress when it isn’t the target.* But since we stopped growing energy inputs in 1971, we’ve kept GDP rising thru fraudulent quality adjustments & bureaucratic fake jobs—& so home prices & social problems exploded.

    & now 10% of GDP is officially the rent that homeowners are imagined to pay themselves to live in their homes! Likewise the BEA cooks the books on “quality adjustments,” & on how “great” it is that we’re all spending an extra decade getting dumber & lamer & infertile in schooling

    *Which is essentially Goodhart’s Law is, ie. any metric (ie. output) that becomes a target (ie. input) ceases to become an effective metric↩

  4. Unfortunately, American energetic consumption is in all the wrong places (ie. mouths not machines):

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  5. Power consumption is better than any GDP metric! Power is power yo:

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  6. Industrial production > consumption! Which, dear innocent anglo-reader, is exactly why your government invests in pumping up healthcare, housing, and education, while functional governments pump up MANUFACTURING. To whit via “Red Ink: Estimating Chinese Industrial Policy Spending in Comparative Perspective” by DiPippo, Mazzocco, Kennedy, May 2022:

    Ummm just fuck. What else is there to say but FUUUUUUCCCKK!! New Zaddy indeed.

    Still not convinced? Read Glenn Luk (archived) ↩

  7. No you don’t have to “fix” low TFR, but nor are you free from putting your most excellent gametes to work. ↩
  8. Looking for a slightly more tempered perspective on our AI future? Ask the guy who ISN’T fundraising. Incentives matter:

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  9. Speaking of “exit”, from the chat:

    Pete: civilisation is so so fragile
    Jiran: so true. especially if you stand up for your country
    Pete: we mega take it for granted
    Jiran: and you’re not the states or an ally. natural human tendency to assume things will continue as they are. nonlinear thinking is HARD
    Pete: or that “change” == “better”. very american idea!. very contagious too. or maybe it was a french idea. possible xtian if we keep pulling on the thread!
    Jiran: omg so true dude
    Jiran: I think it’s really hard for us to sit still. It’s like if things are steady and easy suddenly you feel like you need change
    Jiran: you think? they seem very set in ways
    Pete: you’re forgetting french revolution. they killed king first!. gave americans courage to try to the same thing, ie. independence from britain
    Jiran: oh yeahhh I forgot about that. i mean some change is good incrementally. that’s actually a great thing to ponder idk how much change == better
    Pete: very much depends on what kind of change. it’s usually technological
    Jiran: technocrats do love innovation and disruption. change is their religion. some change is just to fix the incremental old. like Uber. was great, then awful and now Taxis made enough change to be just fine for me
    Pete: singapore is technocratic, arguably china too from 1980s to 2010s… but SV? just pure grift
    Jiran: different tech though. manufacturing. industrial. like country wide change for Singapore at all levels. Uber like app to walk your dog? pure SV
    Pete: that’s my point. my point is that “disrupting” taxis isn’t a policy change so… not technocratic. if it doesn’t relate to tangible and enduring policy, it’s just business within the existing framework. not changing the framework
    Jiran: I gotcha
    Pete: for all it’s “revolutionary” zeal and marketing, it was just a business play
    Jiran: not sweeping change for millenia. yeh it was literally just a better Taxi. it wasn’t a total shift.
    Pete: technocratic change would be “this city is only EV now” or “this city is only autonomous cars now”
    Jiran: yeh im with you. aka Singapore. for everything
    Pete: exactly. and largely china too
    Jiran: yeh makes sense
    Pete: and maybe everywhere except americas for that matter!
    Jiran: too democratic to get anything done
    Pete: too individualistic, too grifty. weirdly, too easy to come and go. which is contra the whole libertarian/balajian thesis of “easy exit is important” imo
    Jiran: yeh something to be said of operating as a unit. as in able to check out of a gov/country?
    Pete: ya. commitment and trust make the world go round. like this is also the problem with the whole “israelis are settlers” narrative. the playbook that scared the french out of algeria or whatever won’t work because jews are… home. jerusalem has been home since… forever! so every external attack just binds them closer as a unit. forging their resolve into pure gold… alchemy of the soul!

    All of which is to say that “exit” of an individual is patently ridiculous, though in light of Pesach this coming week, we can’t ignore the power of exit for a group, as long as said group is bound by trust, commitment, and tradition. Relatedly, let’s quote Zohar from his most recent essay “In God We Trust“:

    If you have faith in God, you can be in the desert, or on the edge of camp, and feel secure. If you have no faith in God, you will be placing your faith in human systems that are fundamentally faulty and untrustworthy. Idolatry can be thought of as depending on the wrong source. The Egyptians have every reason to be idolaters—their sources of dependence are mostly dependable and reliable. The Nile flows. Life is abundant. But the plagues interrupt that false security. Tail events expose the faulty assumptions of those who base their faith on standard deviations. “There are no atheists in foxholes” should read that God alone provides security.

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  11. As above, so below, innit. ↩
  12. If this blog post isn’t “growth mindset” in a nutshell, I’m not sure what is! ↩