> From Milton Friedman: "Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another."
This is actually literally true. There universe's resources are finite. Economic growth comes at the expense of natural resources. Any situation where both parties of an economic transaction appear to benefit, there's a negative externality consuming natural resources making us all marginally poorer.
That said, Friedman's statement is still a useful fiction since "marginally poorer" sometimes is inevitable.
Edit: the reply to mine was flagged and removed it seems, but there's one commonly misunderstood belief that I think is worth addressing:
> When humans had no technology or knowledge of agriculture, this may have been correct to some degree, but we are constantly decreasing the size of the population who create value from the extraction and sale of "natural resources"
Any and all value generation requires energy which necessarily comes from natural resources. We have a whole universe full of raw materials and energy, possibly more than we can conceivably work with for the lifetime of the human race, but it's still literally true that this is ultimately a zero-sum game. The externalities are simply hidden.
> Any and all value generation requires energy which necessarily comes from natural resources.
You're assuming that value only derives from material things. For example, if a hostel arranges people interested in going to an event to go together by meeting at the hostel at a specific time, both parties gain value even though no material resource was lost. The hostel has increased the happiness of its patrons making them more likely to return in the future, and the patrons are happier going to an event (that they may have been going to anyways) with other people so that they enjoy their time more. You could say that the manager of the hostel used energy to talk to the patrons, but he was going to do that anyways.
Furthermore, if we want to talk about technicalities, energy cannot be created nor destroyed; only rearranged. Therefore, it may still be possible to create a process which transforms energy back from another form creating some sort of cycle. But that sort of technicality doesnt really matter seeing as how the amount of natural resource used in a lot of cases is actually minuscule relative to the amount of available energy in the universe.
Also, even in energy consuming businesses, if someone can increase efficiency and get paid for it, both parties do better. The loss occurs in less waste.
So you're arguing that expending energy to reduce the rate of energy loss adds value. I agree, but note that you still needed to expend that energy to create that value. Also, a more efficient value-generating activity still requires more energy than inactivity.
I still don't see how this evades my point. Economics simply can't trump thermodynamics.
> Edit: the reply to mine was flagged and removed it seems...
I "vouched" that reply so it should be visible again (unless it gets flagged some more). If you want to be able to see flagged/dead comments, turn on "showdead" in your settings page.
I'm not sure why the reply was flagged other than the use of ALL CAPS for emphasis. It made some points that people may agree or disagree with, but I don't think mere disagreement is a good reason to flag a comment. So maybe it was because of the all caps.
The largest waste of universe's resources is NOT using them. Even if we assume our descendants will be able to reach the speed of light in their spaceships, each year of waiting on Earth means that whole galaxies get outside of our future light cone.
I would suggest to use a bit more of win/win thinking, at least until we develop the light-speed spaceships. As far as I know, we are nowhere near yet.
> "This is actually literally true. There universe's resources are finite. Economic growth comes at the expense of natural resources."
The idea that "resources" that humans use are a fixed quantity that can only decrease is just plain wrong. When humans had no technology or knowledge of agriculture, this may have been correct to some degree, but we are constantly decreasing the size of the population who create value from the extraction and sale of "natural resources". At our level of technological sophistication today, the vast majority of people are engaged in some form of transforming one or more less valuable capital or lower order consumer goods/services into higher order consumer goods/services of some kind.
This is not even to mention that natural resources ARE NEVER DEPLETED EVER. Using oil as an example, the easy to drill oil is all extracted/sold at lower costs/prices, then the rest of the oil becomes more expensive to extract, and this will cycle repeatedly until some form of renewable energy will INEVITABLY take it's place based purely on it's lower cost compared to oil. Oil will then fall into a more niche market and will still be used, but progressively less and less, especially as the old oil infrastructure is replaced with other(s).
This is very similar to how farms use very little natural resources today. As land has become more scarce/expensive to develop, it's use has gotten to the point where farmers know what crops they can grow that will maintain the soil quality, and whether they have to rotate more valuable crops in periodically that damage the soil but produce more profit. A balance is maintained due to economic factors once again.
Environmentalists spend so much time and effort trying to force renewable energy and sustainable practices, but in fact what they want will inevitably come to pass based solely on economic realities.
Your comment was flagged and dead (hidden unless you have "showdead" on in your settings). But I don't see any objectionable content in it other than the use of ALL CAPS for emphasis, which is strongly discouraged here:
"Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized."
Other than that, you make some good points which people might agree or disagree with but seem worth hearing.
So I went out on a limb and "vouched" your comment so it appears in the thread again.
If I am in error here, I would appreciate feedback from anyone who flagged your comment, so we can all better understand how to comment appropriately. Thanks!
Thank you. I do acknowledge that this is generally an unwelcome point of view, but the reason my comment was originally flagged was I believe for legitimate reasons before changes I made soon after commenting. After I was flagged, I looked up those rules you linked but I must have skimmed over the part about not using all caps.
This is actually literally true. There universe's resources are finite. Economic growth comes at the expense of natural resources. Any situation where both parties of an economic transaction appear to benefit, there's a negative externality consuming natural resources making us all marginally poorer.
That said, Friedman's statement is still a useful fiction since "marginally poorer" sometimes is inevitable.
Edit: the reply to mine was flagged and removed it seems, but there's one commonly misunderstood belief that I think is worth addressing:
> When humans had no technology or knowledge of agriculture, this may have been correct to some degree, but we are constantly decreasing the size of the population who create value from the extraction and sale of "natural resources"
Any and all value generation requires energy which necessarily comes from natural resources. We have a whole universe full of raw materials and energy, possibly more than we can conceivably work with for the lifetime of the human race, but it's still literally true that this is ultimately a zero-sum game. The externalities are simply hidden.