I know so awkward

to be fair, there are a few good jokes in there.

They thought the guy would pull off a joke

i was thinking the same thing

I think productivity has walked its walk or at least the way we measure it. Making stuff cheaper actually decreases productivity.

agreed, we need a new measure of value beyond GDP which really tells us nothing about quality of life

We aren't going to realize it because we haven't. Your limits to growth thesis is as fundamentally flawed as it has always been, as it was flawed in the 1970s when it predicted we'd all be dead by now, as it was flawed back in the days of Malthus 200 years ago when he 'scientifically proved' that unless the inferior classes were all forcibly sterilized, the world would run out of food in just a few decades.

It is real, It's Called the Social Progress index. :) www.ted.com/talks/michael_green_what_the_social_progress_index_can_reveal_about_your_country?language=en

I disagree with you there, no need to invent new terms. "Degrowth" as you call it implies that public transport is a hassle for most people - and if so, it is not a positive development. Assuming, however, it actually IS an improvement (and not just a hassle for everyone), it is because the new mode of transportation solves a problem - be it congestion, pollution or something else - and problems can usually be given an economic cost. Basically you put a price on what it would cost (=how much effort it would be) to do something about the problem in the first place. This cost can then be measured against the cost in increased hassle (if any) to the people "forced" to take public transport. It's the same thinking as the classic story about a factory that can produce some stuff dirt cheap, but where doing so will pollute the environment. They sell at a price that reflects the cost of power and raw materials, but not the price of cleaning up their mess - that part of the cost is left to others, possibly without those "others" even realizing they are being sent a big bill. However; the fact that the factory owner managed to sleaze his way out of paying the _true_ cost of production, doesn't make that _true_ cost any less real. If eg. public transportation pollutes less, this is a cost that is now saved and you have achieved an economically measurable improvement. "Cost" in this context can be measured in some specific currency, or you can calculate work hours or some other metric - but unless you find a way to put a number on it, you are necessarily reduced to spouting personal opinion. I think we should aspire to go beyond simple "I-feel-X-because-it's-Monday"- type arguments when we determine what is a desirable outcome for society.

Thank you.

and its a basic, vague point at that. riveting stuff!

haha thanks

dammm 5 years...how u guys holding up

Not necessarily. If you can do more with fewer resources, then you can grow an economy without increasing its demand for resources. Throw in advanced recycling technologies, and your "new" resources can be old resources that have been re-purposed.

I don't necessarily believe in the following, but I'll play the devils advocate and say that all that grown and using resources on the max is going to lead to Singularity and increased automation, which will find solutions to deal with almost all externalities introduced (like climate change, resource scarcity, etc). It's like investing your last dime in something (unsustainable high investment of resources), because you have that then getting your return on investment (Singularity), and then you don't need to invest anymore in it. The only thing that is not potentially reversible is population and occupied physical space. You can, in theory, with sufficiently futuristic technology reverse climate change, recreate ecosystems, etc.

"...we are currently using 150% of the earths yearly resources every year..." I see, so the whole earth is going to run out of all resources in eight months. What is surprising to me is not how absurd your statement is, it is that 13 people as of this point, thumbed up your nonsense.

You could find examples of people making his exact comment every year for decades, and probably centuries

Increasing productivity is not unsustainable, in fact it may be necessary for sustainability. In essense, an increase in productivity is to use resources more efficicently. Less material, energy and labor is required to produce the same amount of value.

this!

It is much closer because technology is advancing exponentially.

***** I disagree, if the government invested in infrastructure such as the driverless cars and automated farming we could be there in the next couple of years. The technology is there, but the government is so reliant on slave labor at this point that they're not willing to make the change. But also it's not something we should wait for until we can FULLY automate, it's something we should instigate now because the displacement caused by automation already is causing so many problems. We're so far beyond the point of needing full participation in the workforce already

***** My toaster does not use microchips and therefore you analogy is invalid. Besides carbon nanotubes are replacing classic silicon tranzistors:phys.org/news/2016-09-carbon-nanotube-transistors-outperform-silicon.html

***** Hammer was invented thousands of years ago but modern technology is still more advanced that technology of the ancient world.

as many recycling manufactures as producing, imagine! clean processes, respected matter having journeys, valued and shared compounds, workforce's training serving individual development stages... maybe...

ahhh the black hole in the room. Yeah, it's never going away.

well, according to hawking radiation...

pentagon said that lost 10 trillion

Eu! Achei muito bom tbm!

Socialism is death it certainly killed Europe and Latin America. Taking people's stuff and giving it to other people so they will love you is an unsustainable 19th-century idea that has never lived up to the hype.

It's def a good idea but it will need to start up something, small something simple like maybe clothing aesthetics to be more eco friendly reusable, now I'm not gonna say I'm a Einstein and know were to start but I think that would still be a perfect place to start since well.. most people wear clothes 😂

@@andrewgordon235 but capitalism is in the end even worse becuse people are just a statistic

*Posted from my Iphone X*

People with low intelligent (like you) wont die, but living with minimum income / gov aids. People with good brain (like me) will find a way to enjoy technology advance instead of whining

:))

***** Glad you are not offended LOL. well seriously, it is unavoidable, we have to deal with it sooner or later

+Pham He probably is offended. He just doesn't want to sink to your level of mental constriction. Can you not see that massively unequal distribution is actually going to neutralise the benefit of technological advances unless it is solved? + I hope English is not your first language

Xifong Christian why bringing English here? How are you gonna define / measure / enforce "equal distribution" ? Are you gonna follow the Soviet style ? Or confiscate Bill Gates, Warren , etc.. income ? Anyway, distribute don't have much ( if any) to do with technology. It is political/economical rules. I hope you know what you are talking about

Growth is improvement, innovation, and higher standard of living for all. You may already have it all, but others do not. Be open minded.

i think human curiosity and the motivation to create drive innovation. competition simply makes me want to win, as long as i can win with less effort than innovation requires, i'll always choose the other way. be it cartels, corruption, patents, marketing, etc. ... innovation is an optional strategy in this game. and in the real world economy we see how corruption strumps innovation like 9 out of 10 times...

+fatalmystic people have always been curious and motivated. Under a free market system it's much easier to achieve your goals. Countries that move away from free market principles always lower the standard of living and ability to succeed

If your job can be done by a robot, you should be using your amazing human mind and capabilities to do something more productive. And yes, I have been replaced by automation before as well. You're allowed to be salty about it, but it doesn't change anything.

time for a Basic Income then

Advanced robots and AI, meaning advanced and complex tasks in a new way than it is currently happening with automation. The more complex it is the AI, the worse is the impact for a lot of families in a long term, more thousands of people will have no jobs or have worse income than currently it is now even when they have multiple jobs, regardless of their capabilities and skills, no jobs or low income in a long term it is not a positive thing at all, I've seen it with many people, increasing insecurity and unstable wealth for a lot of families worldwide, poorer education, among other negative things.

why would there be a need for money to make a living when there are no jobs left? obviously there isn't. so to me, the decline of jobs is generally a good thing. however, the transition might be rough...

+Seiaeka AI can be as intelligent as the humans. In future they can be a lot more intelligent than the humans. I doubt if at that stage humans could actually do something "more". The way I see it - Man + Computer > Computer. Humans must complement computers.

GDP Gross Domestic product How much product a country makes before costs.

You know that will never happen.

Dude,our system works with an economic paradigm , money has to go! And those monster we call bankers and CEO's from big corporations have to pay for what they done to humanity

Universal income sounds nice but it still involves paying taxes to hand out the universal income. Why not make stuff extremely cheap, like their real value. Why does a bread cost money, actually? With all these technology and machinery a bread could be made for 10 cents. The rest of the bread price is tax.

+bock228 I love it...but what will we be doing all day? Utopia I guess...regardless how will the robots conquer greed? The greedy will be creating the robots for us to party?

Because that's how you incentivize innovation. If there is no incentive for the top 10% of people to push themselves to the limit and beyond, the system will stagnate and become corrupt. You can't ask people to cut their personal lives in half for the majority of their time on Earth to make innovation happen while you are at home with your family, reading books and going on vacations and give them nothing in return.

They are a majority and there is no plan for that. It will coma like a surprise. They will want food and other groups will constantly chase them away. Perhaps camps will be reintroduced where billions will live their life.

They don't reproduce as frequently, and a new generation of intelligent humans is formed.

Simple minded produce more offspring.

Death !

There are no "simple minded" humans, unless you are talking about people who suffered brain damage. People who decide to do the least cognitive development and work they need will continue to do so when this minimum changes. Plebs will just have fewer topics they can refuse to learn because "they don't need them".

Cliché, i was doing exactly this.

Why would it be? We represent many emotional complications, not recognized by AI. Any attempt to reprogram AI will be seen as a downgrade of efficiency. Traveling some thousands years to another planet will produce complains amongst humans who want their own wife and family. Humans and AI aren't compatible.

Eh, I'd argue it was less about technology and more about economic models, but I'll agree that if you're a standard TED viewer you've heard a lot of this already.

***** It's just that he built this huge mystery around it throughout the entire talk, I would have preferred it if he just got to the point from the start, revealing the innovation is 3D printing and going right into the economic models. But you're totally right.

Good analysis. In fact, most researchers today agree that while we have growth in the economy through the technological revolution, we are losing jobs. It's called technological unemployment (google that) and most politicians seem utterly unaware of it. They're stuck in the century old 'create new jobs' way of thinking and equating economic growth to more jobs. It's not happening. On top of that, sustainable growth is a oxymoron in itself and consider how money is being redistributed long-term here. Not having a job is a bad thing in today's economy while the fact that not everyone have to work in order to produce everything we need should be a good one. We're in for some foundational changes in how the economy works in the next few decades.

Svante Ekholm Yes that is basically what I tell to my friends as well. If one starts to read up on what's up and coming in terms of tech we are about to face such fundamental changes. I call it the superstar economy. Because of easy and near costless replication only the absolute super skilled stars will remain employed (the 3D modeller,s the exceptional scientist and surgeon). Because much of their output will be so easy and cheap to reproduce that you don't need the mediocre producers anymore. The superstars will earn exceptional incomes while the rest goes .... yeah, were does the rest go?

So any idea how to inorove it and bring more production output?

They told us about those robots when I was a child and teenager in the 60s and 70s. No one would do hard labour anymore and robots would serve us personally. Still waiting... Now I don't see any progress without any chips available anywhere.

Back in the 1960's and 70's, half the world was starving. Nowadays only ten percent don't have enough quality food. That improvement was made solely through growth. We grew the economies of those peoples to the point where they were no longer starving. In the process, also due to the growth that vastly improved their standards of living, we also slowed down the population explosion, massively. By most accounts, the human population growth is expected to stop this century at somewhere around 11 billion people, assuming the increase in standards of living continues. The surest way to guarantee that human population growth does not stop, and the most certain path to the disaster you fear, is to stop the growth in the standard of living of the world's current poor. That is why we need growth.

I agree. we need growth in the standard of living for the poorest in society. But growth on its own is not good or bad. We don't need growth in the rich being marketed ever more tat. We need to grow or reorganize so that everyone has enough and we are using resources sustainability. I suspect that if current resources were used for the common good and shared equally that everyone could have an adequate standard of living.

+Donald Hobson The sad reality is that the instant you start 'sharing equally' for the 'common good', you wind up with a shrinking pie and ultimately everyone worse off, except for the ruling class of course. You need freedom for far more than freedom itself, freedom ultimately is the machine that produces the very wealth socialists want to share. Sadly with freedom comes both inequity and responsibility. A person is necessarily responsible for themselves to the direct proportion they are free, and vice versa, a person is only as free as they are responsible for themselves. Many, if not most people in society, eschew the responsibility side of the freedom coin, and are more than willing to throw out freedom for the sake of not having to be responsible for themselves. Sadly for them, they almost always wind up far worse off as a result, as the state quite frankly doesn't give a damn about the individuals that comprise society. The state cares about the state.

If we need to grow or not depends on what we want to archive. Look at population growth, it seems to start regulating itself in japan but the authorities think its a bad thing. In Afrika people have like 5+ children, Europe 1-2. In the past it was harsher, out of these 5 3 died now it starts to change with help and medicine. When they get to the same level of development as japan they are also going to have only one child. hope this makes sense

Yeah. Every time someone says utopia is the way to go things go very well!

+nikolov901 what are you talking about? Have you even red the book I mentioned? Besides how is thinkin up alternatives to capitalism (or even for that matter that it might end) utopian?

What he proposes is utopian. What he proposes requires perfectly good humans. Humans are not perfectly good. Far from it. They are greedy and corrupt, no matter the political/economical system. Pretending they are good is dangerous. Please don't pretend and don't agitate other people to pretend.

+nikolov901 no more of an assumption that certain capitalist ideologies make assuming that all people are rational actors. Besides that's not the main point of his argument, in fact I struggle to think of anywhere in the book where people are put into arbitrary terms such as "good" and "bad". Have you even read it? I think the analysis on the future of capitalist economics is a far more significant & well developed part of Mason's analysis compared to how he feels about people.

So you are saying that his premises is not important? Got it.