 The world has become consumed by the idea that growth at all cost is good. It’s normalised now. Businesses should simultaneously make record profits and lay people off to make more profits, human populations should grow grow grow, growth mindset, deregulate for growth, consume all resources for growth. It’s all about this quarters results. Another way of looking at is uncontrolled growth is cancerous. It consumes the host, until the host dies. 63 comments
@viq @GossiTheDog kinda seems unfair to blame "humanity" for something most of us didn't get a say in  @EndlessMason statistically? by working our respective asses off so we don't starve to death or die of exposure... @EndlessMason It has probably gone past that stage though. We had the growth at any cost stage, now we have the oh shit we tried to grow too fast and too much so now we have to eat each other to survive stage. @siobhansarelle @GossiTheDog exactly, but also to a large extent companies tried to lower their expenses in the last century by creating new machines and processes, and now they try to do the same just by underpaying workers instead In my case, the company I have worked for, for 20 years, attempted to install a new enterprise wide system, costing millions, in order to improve the service so that much fewer people were needed. Then they messed it it, so it was costing about a million a day due to problems. Then they had to lay off lots of people anyway, because they couldn’t afford it. Then those who were left did fire fighting, installed inefficient workarounds.  @GossiTheDog I guess we aren't stopping to define "growth" in a proper context itself. Growth of what, exactly? Would it be feasible existentially? What are the costs? Why is a particular growth desirable while the costs are bearable? @GossiTheDog so much of our world is shaped by the great depression, when consumption slowed down too much and the whole economy stalled, like an airplane the lessons learned during recovery and the fear of a repeat of it are still driving a lot of what we see around us  @GossiTheDog the greatest trick capitalists ever pulled, was convincing the world greed is good. @GossiTheDog Not long ago, when my grandparents lived, #business.es were still about providing value for people, in amount necessary for good living & only in that amount, not larger. Good #entrepreneurship was making some margin by the way, but mostly cultivating & passing artisanal wisdom from Master to Journeyman It’s how a 1318 yrs old #hotel, 1220 yr old #restaurant still operate - don’t they? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies Where’ve we lost it?😔 @GossiTheDog I've been using this same analogy for a while now, and people always look at me all bug-eyed...  @GossiTheDog “the share price of Brawndo started to tank and the computer did the auto layoff thing!!!!” @GossiTheDog exactly this!! The problem is that there is no obvious solution to this problem and therefore collapse is inevitable, it’s just how and when… even the most enlightened person is trapped in this system. Bit depressing for a Sunday afternoon! @GossiTheDog On the plus side, population growth is stabilising. The antinatalist malthusians are even starting to get replaced by pronatalist cranks in the twitterati because of the post-peak-population demographic gap. @GossiTheDog @WTL I’ve long said that this goal of perpetual growth is unsustainable. Nothing in the natural universe grows this way. Everything has a cycle — an expiration date. Except, perhaps, black holes. Probably not something we should be striving for. @damien @GossiTheDog @WTL @PJLavatai @GossiTheDog @WTL thanks to this toot I learned something new today. I was under the impression that black holes grew exponentially forever but it seems that they also have a lifecycle according to some recent articles. Thank you!  @GossiTheDog I've said for years that continuous growth of anything.. business, whatever just isn't sustainable. It doesn't mean that people, commerce, markets can't thrive but growth forever just isn't feasible. What's the answer - that's what capitalism is, continuous growth. Barely any talk about improving living standards and rights. @GossiTheDog @Zolt4r_teh_gr8 @GossiTheDog I mean talking heads on the right throw that around for far less. “What do you mean government should regulate the airlines and prevent an operating environment where critical systems can be underinvested in for decades, despite warnings from staff and a precarious schedule due to cutting staff numbers to bare minimum and complete lack of effective competition!? You woke big government socialist commie!” @GossiTheDog sounds rather similar to a conquest based society, like Rome or Mongol Empire. It's a different form of warfare, but the push to expand and grow is the same unsustainable model. @GossiTheDog and when you listen to wealthy economists they often make it sound like growth is required for the economy to thrive... Which sounds a lot like a pyramid scheme when you think about it. Especially as a handful of people seem to be doing much more than thriving. @GossiTheDog It has been normalized for decades. I was ranting against growth in the early 1970s. That was when "The Limits to Growth" came out. We were warned and did not take heed.  @GossiTheDog i mean, there are externalities that should be factored in but of course we want as much growth as possible.  Why? How is this not based on an inherently faulty idea? Endless growth isn't possible, and isn't desirable in most circumstances. @cshentrup @GossiTheDog There are lots of things you could point to about X company's endless growth being the near-opposite of maximizing human welfare. How many people lost their jobs in the last week just to maximize shareholder profits? @mav @GossiTheDog maximizing shareholder profits is what we want them to do. that maximizes GDP. You then deal with distributional effects via subsidy, primarily UBI. it's a common fallacy of the progressive left to confuse productivity effects and distributional effects. @cshentrup @GossiTheDog This is how we end up with catastrophic global climate change and no one willing to do anything about it. Endless profit for profit's sake is psychopathic. @cshentrup @GossiTheDog And if you think UBI will ever happen in the United States you have completely lost touch with any kind of reality. @mav @GossiTheDog we obviously want to address market failures. That is not a "compromise". @cshentrup @GossiTheDog Serious question: when someone you don't know dies, do you feel anything? @mav @GossiTheDog No it's not disgusting, it's just basic public policy. everything just has a cost in terms of net utility to society. we can indeed compare human lives to dollars because we can save a human life for a certain amount of money. You can't be serious about working on public policy if you can't understand this. @GossiTheDog there’s actually a pretty great case for continuing to have the human population grow.  Or bacteria in a petri dish. They want indefinite exponential growth in a finite environment. This is also why Space Karen wants space. Infinite environment for growth. Except for that inhospitable part they gloss over. In space no one can hear you die. @GossiTheDog The real problems does not exist "outside of ourselves",... but? only a few really dare to realize/understand/see this? For any (real) "change to occur", we must "look ourselves in the mirror", and realize the real problems exists *within ourselves*, (in our ego, nowhere else), and no change CAN (ever) happen, until we dare to realize/understand/see this... @GossiTheDog I mean... as an American my ability to live comfortably, even survive, is quite dependent on the earnings of my retirement accounts comprised entirely of this or that stock... at least until I get sick, then the medical industry will clean that out while torturing me and then dumping me off to die in a charity hospice. I realized something was crazy when "beat last year" became the most important yardstick of business success. Eventually, either prices get too high, or you run out of customers to steal from the competition. @GossiTheDog The Last of Us got it wrong: not fungi but greed. @GossiTheDog Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins has a great quote about this in his autobiography, carrying the fire: "we need a new economic paradigm to create prosperity without growth" @GossiTheDog As long as the countries leaders are so obsessed with growth this is going to continue and drive us to self destruction @GossiTheDog "Normalized" is doing a lot of work. Literally every global economy is based on it. Even *North Korea*. It's a poison that has wormed its way into literally every aspect of daily life. I would argue it's the greatest mistake humankind has ever made.  @GossiTheDog YES. It’s not possible— or healthy— to constantly grow. And so often one company’s growth is dependent on hurting another company!  @GossiTheDog Excellent analogy. Perhaps we should start replacing "capitalism" in our vocabulary with "cancerism". @GossiTheDog Do you remember Agent Smith's monologue in the firist Matrix about humans being a virus? He said we just consume and then move on to consume again. I remember seeing that for the first time and being like...MINDBLOWN. @GossiTheDog Attitudes, theories and know-how leading to faster growth become dominant in the course of history. Groups growing fastest will destroy or assimilate others. Their attitudes then become the basis for the next round. The growth ideology is part of this. It is a self-amplifying process. When this ideology started, world economy was smaller by about factor 600. Initially, the limits of resources could be ignored. It seemed to work. Now, we are hitting the limits. |
Gregory's Server
@GossiTheDog no wonder humanity so often is described as a virus.