Show-Stoppers; Part 2:
Good Morning out there in the world of reality; your King of Simple News is on the air.
Well, they didn’t do it. California doesn’t have a budget this morning and will begin to issue IOUs rather than good sound freshly printed U.S. dollars; which personally, I see little difference between the two.
Joining California in their frantic search for additional spending cuts or increased tax revenues were a half dozen other states who are also broke. Those states include Indiana, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Arizona, Connecticut and Mississippi.
The question surrounding the supposed mystery of all this financial carnage is “why?” My second post of “Show-Stoppers,” this morning will give you one more reason “why.”
Show-Stoppers (Part 2)
By Mike Folkerth © 2009
EXPONENTIAL GROWTH:
It is important to begin by first stating the most imposing of all show-stoppers and the root cause for nearly all of our economic ills; “Exponential growth in a finite world is both physically and mathematically impossible.” If everyone were able to comprehend this one mathematical principle, the purpose of this entire writing would be captured in that single statement. But alas, it is not that easy.
“Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.” ― Kenneth Boulding, English - American Economist
“Exponential growth,” is growth that compounds at a given rate or percentage of the whole over a given time period, such as growing larger each year in respect to the past year. A good example of such exponential growth is, “Our economy grows at the rate of 4% per year.” In other words, in this instance, our economy grows by 4% and ends the year at 104% of where it began 12 months before.
The 104% then grows by 4% and so on; year after year. In the beginning, this seems harmless enough, after all growth is good; right? But the exponential function is sneaky character. It is essential to have a basic understanding of our most powerful adversary before we continue and therefore I will provide the following vivid example to demonstrate the power of the “exponential function.”
The legend goes that a clever engineer was once able to avert a potential famine in India during a severe drought by designing and building a dam and irrigation system. The king was so grateful that he offered the engineer any of the country’s many treasures as payment. The modest engineer declined the treasures saying that he would instead accept only the amount of wheat equal to placing one grain of wheat on the first square of a chess board, two grains on the second square, four grains on the third square, etc. until all 64 squares on the board were filled up. The King readily agreed, thinking that the engineer could be paid off for a pittance. How much grain did the engineer ask for?
Answer; F = P(1+i)n = 1(1 + 1)63 = 9 x 1018 grains, but don’t worry about understanding the complex math, the answer will suffice to shock, amaze, and stupefy.
This is roughly 400 times the 1990 worldwide harvest of wheat, which is more wheat than humans had harvested in the entire history of the earth as calculated in 1991!
The obvious problem then, when planning for exponential growth, is that our planet does not grow, but instead stubbornly remains the same size. The ever growing quantities of non-renewable resources required to produce that growth actually shrink each year by the total amount harvested worldwide.
At the same time, renewable resources such as food crops, forests, etc., consume more and more landmass to pace the constant demand for growth and also require ever greater inputs in the way water, fuel, fertilizer, machinery, transportation and the like which must be obtained from the non-renewable sector. As the above chessboard example displayed, there are limits to such growth.
The possibility of exponential growth as the basis for any nations ongoing economy could, in a micro example, be compared to fully stocking your home pantry one time and then expecting to eat from the stores for the remainder of your life. After which your children and their children plan to exist indefinitely from the same finite stores.
Micro examples are much easier to consider than those of global macroeconomic examples. The vastness of global resources may appear to be infinite; however, I assure you that they are not.
“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity and I’m not sure about the former.” ― Albert Einstein
Exponential growth can also be stated as “geometric growth,” like a snowball rolling downhill, with each revolution requiring more and more snow to continue the next cycle. A grasp of general mathematics is sufficient to realize that at some point, there simply will be insufficient resources to expand the necessary consumption to the next level.
We reached that level when compared to balance some years ago, which I will demonstrate later in this writing.Our economy is foolishly and impossibly based on the absolute necessity for exponential growth. Each year we must grow in relationship to the past year. To accomplish this, we must increase population and consume resources in ever greater amounts; just like the grains of wheat on the chessboard, doing so has now proven impossible.
When one considers the problems of traffic, congestion, pollution, crime, and employment challenges for cities such as New York, Dallas, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Denver, Washington DC, and Chicago, and at the same moment, considers that growth is the ultimate plan for their survival, the immediate thought should be; that’s insane!
Insane, delusional, a fool’s paradise; regardless of what we may call this misguided quest for growth, it remains a mathematical impossibility in a finite world. “Exponential growth is the plan; it ain’t possible is the problem.” ― Mike Folkerth
Social Security and Medicare are good examples of the fallacy for a plan that requires never ending growth. By government accounts, Medicare is slated to be insolvent by 2017 and Social Security by 2041. Count on these failures coming much sooner as the government provided dates for depletion are predicated on a growing economy, not a protracted recession.
The question for this section is then, “How could we have ever based our entire economy and our children’s futures on exponential growth, when it is provably both physically and mathematically impossible?”
“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” ― Dr. Albert Bartlett, Professor of Physics, University of Colorado
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A better question and a very baffling one is, Why cannot our population see the results of this very flawed policy and choose , no demand it be changed.
What is so difficult about identifying the dangers of following flawed policies such as.
1) Ever increasing population
2) Compound interest
3) Ever increasing consumption by all nations of our natural resources
We as a planet are too worried about how we will feed the masses rather than deal with the growth issues that will eventually strangle us all.
We also are too concerned about who will end up with the most when it comes to money rather than attempt to understand that compounding interest on our monies on this finite plaet is absolutely impossible.
When it comes to ever increasing consumption of our dwindling natural resources, most just ignore the fact that they will run out, soon, with the subconscious thought that it won’t happen in my lifetime.
Greed and selfishness is an ugly thing. But all too common these days. We deseerve the end we are all working so hard to accomplish. -bb
Billyb,
You said, “most just ignore the fact that they will run out, soon, with the subconscious thought that it won’t happen in my lifetime.”
Now that’s a mouthful. “It won’t happen to me.”
Of course the truth is that it will begin to affect everyone. The news today reported that the private sector shed 473,000 more jobs and Freddie Mac is getting another $6.1 Billion from the Treasury. Sure, that oughta’ work.
Billyb, nail hit squarely on head… GREED
When it comes down to it, people get everything they can for themselves, and screw the next guy, or the next generation.
If I had a dime for every time I have heard the phrase “Oh well, I won’t be alive when that happens anyway” …from people with children and grandchildren… that really shakes my faith in my fellow man.
Wanted to share a two minute video that does a good job of putting exponential growth and its results to pictures.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlVczvB4FQk
From a land of plenty to a land of overcrowded and little to offer.
I love Soylent Green, they need to do a modern remake. It is a true prophetic cautionary tale.
See, we have known we have problems since 1973, and 36 years later, we are still making it worse.
Excellent video clip George. All I could think of as I watched it was the elitist sitting down for dinner at the country club, or in their New York penthouse or their third home in Aspen, pretending that none of this exists.
But then, it does.
One of the most puzzling and perplexing thoughts coming out of this whole insane cap and trade tax increase scheme, that the House passed Friday, is that our leadership is no less gullible when listening to the so called scientists decryng ‘global warming’ as they are the economists when describing the need for economic growth.
One is a bogus as the other. In reality, the basis for the solution is recognizing some of those natural laws that you like to quote.
Exponential growth can not continue – it is the law.
Climate change will continue – it too is the law. Always has and always will.
Man’s feeble effort can not alter nor repeal either. All we can do is scheme to delay the day of reckoning. The cost of our schemes will finally become too high and we will collapse under the combined weight of the tax burden and the devalued currency.
In my reading, I’ve seen as much credible evidence that high levels of CO2 cause cooling to a greater extent than warming. There are geologic records of that happening. CO2 causing warming is still theory.
Of the things I feel a need to be concerned about, the cost of the Obama administration’s legislation far exceeds everything else.
An economy in a decades long collapse, borrowing from foreign sources at a record pace and printing the balance of the money needed spell disaster.
Mike said…The question for this section is then, “How could we have ever based our entire economy and our children’s futures on exponential growth, when it is provably both physically and mathematically impossible?”
BillyB said…A better question and a very baffling one is, Why cannot our population see the results of this very flawed policy and choose , no demand it be changed.
There is a very good answer but almost no one wants to hear it, and nobody wants to believe it.
In her book “a mind of its own”, Cordelia Fine spells it out plainly. Fine has a degree in experimental psychology from Oxford and a PhD in psychology from University College London. In case you are wondering, she is completely in step with other psychologists and has boat loads of research to support her conclusions.
In a nutshell, she describes our subconscious brain; the part that really runs the show, as:
vain, emotional, immoral, deluded, pigheaded, secretive, weak-willed and bigoted. Remember, no one wants to hear this, let alone believe it. But if you understand the research, our actions are a lot easier to explain.
In her Epilogue she writes “The secretive unconscious delights in a handful of strings to pull, concealing from us many of the true influences on our thoughts and deeds. Our very own will, temperamental and capricious, weakly succumbs to unwanted impulses and distractions. And, careless of our good intentions, the brain’s ignoble use of stereotypes blurs our view of others to an all but inevitable bigotry.
Many others; if not most, who have studied the subject have come to roughly the same conclusion. They include Timothy B. Wilson’s, Strangers To Ourselves; Tor Norretranders, The User Illusion; Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained and Daniel Wegner’s The Illusion of Conscious Will.
Once we realize how our brains really work; not how we like to think they work, but how they actually work, it becomes much clearer as to how we got into this predicament. Can we find a way out? Perhaps, but our subconscious brain won’t make it easy.
In a word, our leaders are short sighted..
Yup, I can see that.. The wrong people are leading.. The best government money can buy is doing just what it was designed to do..
And the best information media money can buy is doing what it is designed to do..
We need more like Mike..
WmA..
Clyde B made a very important point! Our administration is all over global warming; the cause of which is still highly debated.
Yet, exponential growth which can be clearly proven to be absolutely impossible is the very plan being touted as our way out! Say what?
It was right in front of me, but I never really looked at it that way Clyde.
I need to dedicate a little more thought and ink to Clyde’s comment.
So Greg, how does this work with the psych theory? Why are we willing to sacrifice everything to address global warning and nothing to address exponential growth?
Why are we willing to sacrifice everything to address global warming and nothing to address exponential growth?
Just a wild guess; the “powers that be” probably figure we can mitigate global warming a bit and still continue BAU for the most part. A smoke and mirrors approach is all they figure they will need. Maybe create some jobs in the process and make some more money along the way. Aside from that, it is a good diversionary tactic to avoid addressing the immediate show stopper - that we can’t grow much more, if at all.
People in government (decision makers) and all business people know that if we stop exponential growth, that means life as we know it is over - period. “The good life”, as they define it, will be history. They also know there is no way to make a painless transition, in fact, they probably figure it will kill us, and they may be right.
All of that aside, any rational, well informed person should be scared to death with the prospect of peak oil and the end of growth. It will likely turn out very badly for most of six billion people.
Someone; the name escapes me, was quoted as saying that “people can’t accept too much reality.” Our subconscious does a masterful job of hiding the truth, even obvious truths from us. Like it or not, we are ALL severely delusional, some more so than others. We see what our subconscious allows to see. Just because some of us are able to see this issue doesn’t mean we are some how immune or enlightened. Who knows, maybe we are just as delusional believing there is something we can do about it personally.
I guess a summary of possible reasons could include: 1. They really don’t see it coming. 2. They do, but they are so terrified they are in denial. 3. They see it, but consider delay as the only viable tactic. 4. They are part of a religious group that believes in Armageddon and are secretly saying “bring it on.”
In any event, none of us sees the world as it is. Our subconscious brain protects the ego at all costs, up to and including death in some cases.
Well, there you have it, all of the world’s problems explained by a self proclaimed expert who got his psychology degree out of a box of Cheerios. Now doesn’t that make you feel better?
Greg - What you describe seems to be personal and depressional. It does not have to be. If we live each moment in truth, it matters little what happens around us in the present.
The ones remaining will understand this in time. -bb
Greg,
I can’t come up with the person who said this, but paraphrasing; “The average person only thinks three times per year.”
The gist of the writing was that most people operate on motor nerves, animal instincts, and habit. Get up, shower, drink coffee, go work, come home, watch TV, go to bed and do it all again tomorrow.
As Billyb said, there will be survivors of this mess and planning to be one is the remaining avenue.