no, economies don’t have to grow… just look how the economy of the soviet union flourishes even today…
-Imp
Economies do not need to [size=117]flourish.[/size]
All that a country’s economy needs to do is the job that it is supposed to do – nothing more.
That was not a communist economy.
That would be tough, but a lot would depend on what level of technology you’d want and the natural resources of the land.
did I say it was?
economies don’t have to grow… populations don’t have to grow… all that is needed is a central (worldwide) dictatorship that controls monetary policy and individual freedom and everyone can be a happy slave.
-Imp
" Wants " - when it comes to man-fabricated goods - should always be the last thing on the list.
Did you mean to say " need "?
God, it just came to me in a flash, how much science and technology have become the new religion.
You may attempt to argue the case for medical science, but how many illnesses are caused by so-called modern living in the first place?
Everyone should sit down right now and - using a pencil and a large piece of paper - start a list of activities or games which don’t involve electricity in any way. It will need to be a large piece of paper because that list will keep getting longer over the days, weeks and months you’ll be adding to it.
Your final search will end here - LINK
" The internet is a lifeboat; when its job is complete it will be pushed from the shore to dash upon the rocks."
Slave . . . Slave . . . Slave.
Like a broken record.
Money dependant.
You’d lose everything wouldn’t you ? . . . How sad.
enjoy your slavery. I hope your master feels you worthy of being kept alive.
-Imp
Pull out your obese wallet and burn its contents . . . I dare you.
Of course you won’t, will you ? . . . They’ve got your balls.
You’re a bit all over there.
A society would need to figure out how much and of what they’d need. Let’s say that it one that has the resources to make an ipod. Then, you have to ask, do we need one every year, or should we make this to last for five or ten years. If we don’t have much fuel in this country, then we have to ride bikes, but we can make ipods. So, we’ll make bikes and ipods and that’ll be how we live.
During the sixties there was a lot of fantasy about going out into space and exploring. Never mind that it’s physically impossible, people wanted it to the point where they didn’t even think about the physics. Wild futurism caused a lot of people to see any the idea of growth as the only way to get to the dream future. There’s no need for it because it’s not going to happen.
The best thing that humans could do is to stop stressing over growth and profit and work on making the planet comfortable and safe to live on.
Yes, sorry about that. It was only the first two lines that were directed at you specifically.
I think your heart is in the right place Mr. Predictable, but if your going to choose ipods as an example of something a country needs to produce, then I must also suspect you of ’ taking the piss '. Todays consumer electronics are fiendishly complicated devices, utilising parts and materials from right around the globe; one of the main driving forces behind globalisation.
I’m confused. Are you suggesting that my vision of a ’ Permacultural Utopia ’ is as unatainable as space colonisation.
That sounds fine.
Don’t get caught up in the ipod example. If the country in question had the right materials it could make one, or whatever, but it would have to decide if it wanted to do so. Deciding on growth would be different than feeling the need for it.
Most of the world (greater than 3 billion people) are struggling just to get some water. Most of the poorer and even not so poor (Brazil etc.) don’t have drinking water, sewers, etc. I mean we are actually still basically in the stone ages. It is amazing how high technology and space exploration etc. is so emphasized when we still can’t get water! And electricity is also a huge luxury in most of the world.
So the truth is we are still very backwards and have barely evolved at all. In the rich west, just see what happens if there is a small glitch in the water supply or electricity (usually both at the same time since they are interdependent). See what happens if Putin closes the gas pipes to Western Europe, etc.
We are very much in the stone ages, that is the truth. How much would it cost and how hard would it be to furnish at least the starting points of water and electricity to most of the world ?
Russia is a mess, most people are drunk, most of the world greatly sucks. It is amazing that those very few organized areas of the world still resist, but they will probably be destroyed by the millions of poor people in the world. Those are only a few areas in the US, in the Northern Western Europe and some areas of Japan. The rest is hell on earth waiting to break loose.
So are we approaching the technological singularity (modifed brains hooked up to computers etc.) or are we heading towards the stone ages ? Or both at the same time ?
An interesting thing is that in the Brazilian favelas and similar poor areas worldwide, people seem to have color tvs, cell phones and other “high technology” gadgets, but don’t have the lowest technology item called water. So high technology is a gigantic myth in the greater scheme of things, it is the most basic systems, circuits like water that really counts and is needed to progress. High tech is mostly toys for the rich, not necessary as much as good civil engineering, plumbing, electrical power generation etc. And mind you these things worked very well also in the 1950s before all the “high tech hype”.
Do you have one?
Does rubbing your tiny member produce a sound?
Talking “to” you would involve me getting on my knees.
Mine ache.
It all depends on what you want to accomplish.
I think many things need to be changed.
I also think change is inevitable.
The paradox is that while there is real work that should be done like the 10 trillion dollars of work necessary to fix up worldwide infrastructure (water systems, dams, roads, power generation, building homes) millions of people in the rich economy just spend all day moving electrons in boxes (computers) or in their heads (thoughts - culture). So many are forced to pretend to work (finance industry - marketing, etc.) while they are really being immobilized from doing the real work that is necessary.
Most work in the advanced economies is becoming increasingly fickle and fussy, not really serving any purpose, like thousands of useless meetings, video game production, cultural creations. It is the result of technology freeing people from having to work in agriculture or manufacturing, the service economy which is mostly the cultural economy of wasting time, excess capacity creating huge amounts of idle time, spending it in front of the TV is much more productive, at least you are not littering the world with other cultural artifacts like this very post (look at youtube or flickr to have a taste of excess capacity).
But then again, it is the old habit of trying to conform the world to some kind of pattern or logic or design when the world is mostly chaotic, senseless and when the left wing socialists try to put it in order, the medicine is worse than the sickness, and so all intellectual analysis of economies is mostly useless and more damaging than none at all.
And they are all totally false including all the above.
You sound like you need a hug, nameta9. 
Societies are based on exchange, so it doesn’t matter what is being exchanged, you can exchange water, food, or symbols, it is all the same fundamentally. So useful or useless work is not even definable.
Work is an organizing principle, it controls people and their behavior in large complex societies. It doesn’t even matter what the content of the work is, it can be anything at all, as long as it keeps people out of the streets and under control because society would break down with too many people having large brains with too much time on their hands.
Even if many people could be (and are actually) being payed for doing nothing at all, it must always be hidden in some way, so as to give it a meaning and role in a society. Technology does automate agriculture and manufacturing but it creates or invents new activities and anyways there are always new problems like wars and the environment that will always keep on creating new activities and jobs.
Hey weird clown, then war is an activity, a job ? So not only are there activities where the product is nothing at all, but you can invent - create wars and therefore have activities that destroy what is built by others. Interesting idea, so create wars that break up everything and then rebuild and then invent another war to tear down everything etc.
Everyone can work for the government in warfare, (communism achieved ?) every now and then and then rebuild everything from scratch. Then again many activites have this local building and destroying mechanism, or cyclical mechanism, like health care (person gets sick, doctors fix said person up etc.) or persons enter litigation and lawyers fix situation etc.
It also reminds me of the hidden or latent potential societies have, the US had more than 5 million soldiers at war during WWII, latent potential societies can use if necessary. Are wars the result of excess capacity also ? If a goal is desired couldn’t rich countries achieve them easily, like the moon program in 1969 ?
To nameta9 and old6598,
I sense elitist overtones within your postings on this topic.
I hope you can find the time to read this famous short story -----> [size=84]The Man Who Planted Trees[/size]
I have been asking myself this question for a while now. Local economies such as the city where I live are following a growth model. This is still viewed as the good and necessary way to go. It means attracting businesses and population and producing increasing wealth. The environment is a secondary consideration that sometimes comes into play in so far as growth is “planned” and regulated to some degree. It seems to me that this model on a large scale it is simply unsustainable. We are observably destroying the environment we live in in the name of an economy model that we have been indoctinated is necessary. This economic model is inculcated, and maintained in order to serve the greedy masters.