Every time I read arguments like yours or Tyler Cowen, I feel like we're missing the fact that a lot of economic growth seems proportional to knowledge itself--and a lot of the effects we're describing (such as dematerialization, energy efficiency, and even arguments if it is appropriate to compare stone-age people with folks in Beverly Hills) are essentially artifacts of this knowledge growth.
Consider the simplest case: a bakery. A baker can hand-kneed bread--but the first baker who figured out you could kneed bread in a paddle mixer considerably improved their output of bread. While one could point to the paddle mixer--a material thing--as being the source of the improvements, in fact, it's the knowledge behind the paddle mixer: how to make one, and how to use it, which is behind the improvements.
The material things are simply a reflection of this increased knowledge.
And this increased knowledge has created whole industries--whole ways of doing things, including this very blog--which didn't exist 50 or 100 years ago. Most of the people alive today are doing jobs that simply did not exist 100 years ago--all thanks to our improved knowledge, which led to improvements across all areas of the economy, from business practices to how to make silicon chips.
This leads me to believe that wealth will continue to grow so long as knowledge (and experience, a facet of knowledge) continues to grow. And in areas where knowledge is somehow restricted--where we are not allowed to use our understanding to gain insight and create better ways of doing things, such as you see in large parts of the medical industry thanks to CMS and the FDA, you see slow growth and slow improvements making areas more expensive relative to the rest of the economy.
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Now one could debate if our knowledge and experiences have reached an asymptotic limit. That is, we may be at a point in our knowledge of the material universe that there is nothing left to discover in material sciences, information technology and in business organization beyond insignificant and minor improvements that do little to improve our material lives.
But I doubt it.
Especially as we live through a rather exciting era taking place under our noses, the "softwareization" (for lack of a better term) of nearly every sector of the economy, as corporations increasingly rely on more and more sophisticated software systems to handle every element of their business, from customer support to inventory tracking to control.
Pretty much every business is a software business now--and no-one seems to have noticed that, or the implications of that.
I agree with Tyler's #1 that a move from materialism prolongs how long growth can continue. But, you are right that the amount of information and ability to compute in the galaxy is finite. It becomes larger as the universe cools, but the growth in information capacity is much slower than economic growth.
However, both of you are missing that the time in economic growth passes slower when approaching the speed of light and could be slowed with something like suspended animation. To expand to throughout the galaxy, near light-speed travel and/or suspended animation will be important. The people colonizing the stars will perceive much less time than an observer watching them from the earth.
With known physics, we can get closer to the speed of light by simply expending more fuel and using a larger ship. Both come naturally as economic output grows. In a sense, space-time warps the rate of economic expansion and economic expansion warps space-time.
Taken to the extreme (a few hundred more years of growth), near-light-speed travel would allow colonists to travel to other galaxies. Then the limit is how many galaxies can be visited before the expansion of the universe is too fast to allow intergalactic travel. There are only so many galaxies that can be reached from the earth when traveling at the speed of light.
At the intergalactic scale (the reachable universe), my original statement about a colder universe being better for an information economy becomes relevant. Thermodynamics guarantees cooling. If we can travel between galaxies, we can surely speed up the cooling process. One method to cool faster is to fuse hydrogen faster. If we use fusion-powered rockets to travel between galaxies, this becomes a natural outcome.
I agree there is a limit. But, the speed of light and the size of our galaxy is not limiting relativistic economic expansion. However, the expanding universe does create hard limits. The other limits are naturally bypassed as a result of economic expansion.
What if you translate this whole discussion into levels instead of growth rates? Then we're asking questions like "what is the maximum level of GDP per capita?" and "what is the cost-effectiveness of policies that increase the level of GDP per capita by some amount?"
Every time I read arguments like yours or Tyler Cowen, I feel like we're missing the fact that a lot of economic growth seems proportional to knowledge itself--and a lot of the effects we're describing (such as dematerialization, energy efficiency, and even arguments if it is appropriate to compare stone-age people with folks in Beverly Hills) are essentially artifacts of this knowledge growth.
Consider the simplest case: a bakery. A baker can hand-kneed bread--but the first baker who figured out you could kneed bread in a paddle mixer considerably improved their output of bread. While one could point to the paddle mixer--a material thing--as being the source of the improvements, in fact, it's the knowledge behind the paddle mixer: how to make one, and how to use it, which is behind the improvements.
The material things are simply a reflection of this increased knowledge.
And this increased knowledge has created whole industries--whole ways of doing things, including this very blog--which didn't exist 50 or 100 years ago. Most of the people alive today are doing jobs that simply did not exist 100 years ago--all thanks to our improved knowledge, which led to improvements across all areas of the economy, from business practices to how to make silicon chips.
This leads me to believe that wealth will continue to grow so long as knowledge (and experience, a facet of knowledge) continues to grow. And in areas where knowledge is somehow restricted--where we are not allowed to use our understanding to gain insight and create better ways of doing things, such as you see in large parts of the medical industry thanks to CMS and the FDA, you see slow growth and slow improvements making areas more expensive relative to the rest of the economy.
----
Now one could debate if our knowledge and experiences have reached an asymptotic limit. That is, we may be at a point in our knowledge of the material universe that there is nothing left to discover in material sciences, information technology and in business organization beyond insignificant and minor improvements that do little to improve our material lives.
But I doubt it.
Especially as we live through a rather exciting era taking place under our noses, the "softwareization" (for lack of a better term) of nearly every sector of the economy, as corporations increasingly rely on more and more sophisticated software systems to handle every element of their business, from customer support to inventory tracking to control.
Pretty much every business is a software business now--and no-one seems to have noticed that, or the implications of that.
Why would the civilization have to stop at our galaxy? Seems arbitrary.
I agree with Tyler's #1 that a move from materialism prolongs how long growth can continue. But, you are right that the amount of information and ability to compute in the galaxy is finite. It becomes larger as the universe cools, but the growth in information capacity is much slower than economic growth.
However, both of you are missing that the time in economic growth passes slower when approaching the speed of light and could be slowed with something like suspended animation. To expand to throughout the galaxy, near light-speed travel and/or suspended animation will be important. The people colonizing the stars will perceive much less time than an observer watching them from the earth.
With known physics, we can get closer to the speed of light by simply expending more fuel and using a larger ship. Both come naturally as economic output grows. In a sense, space-time warps the rate of economic expansion and economic expansion warps space-time.
Taken to the extreme (a few hundred more years of growth), near-light-speed travel would allow colonists to travel to other galaxies. Then the limit is how many galaxies can be visited before the expansion of the universe is too fast to allow intergalactic travel. There are only so many galaxies that can be reached from the earth when traveling at the speed of light.
At the intergalactic scale (the reachable universe), my original statement about a colder universe being better for an information economy becomes relevant. Thermodynamics guarantees cooling. If we can travel between galaxies, we can surely speed up the cooling process. One method to cool faster is to fuse hydrogen faster. If we use fusion-powered rockets to travel between galaxies, this becomes a natural outcome.
I agree there is a limit. But, the speed of light and the size of our galaxy is not limiting relativistic economic expansion. However, the expanding universe does create hard limits. The other limits are naturally bypassed as a result of economic expansion.
Please could you add a link to Tyler's post?
Cowen's colleague Robin Hanson should have already explained to him why growth must stop.
https://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/04/murphy-on-growth.html
What if you translate this whole discussion into levels instead of growth rates? Then we're asking questions like "what is the maximum level of GDP per capita?" and "what is the cost-effectiveness of policies that increase the level of GDP per capita by some amount?"