The Future of Economic Growth: TED Talk

Thanks for the talk! really interesting and with some brilliant ideas. lets open up the world for thinkers and scientists all over!

good stuff!

Thanks for the comments, everyone! Much appreciated.

The comments on TED are interesting – much doom and gloom about how the world will end before we get wealthy.

Reading the comments is pretty sad. They remind me of Bush supporters (including me, unfortunately) 2003-06, except way too pessimistic instead of way too optimistic.

For example, many comments excoriate Alex for dismissing the concern of oil running out. But consider this: if plug-in hybrids pan out, then most Americans will use ZERO oil to accomplish their daily commute, while we switch to a source like Nuclear, with a fuel very far from peaking. Not to mention how much oil simply switching to more diesels and manuals will save.

But that kind of point gets little traction among most liberal blog commenters for some reason. There’s just a fanatical obsession now with the end of the world, and I just don’t hope it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Thanks to Mr Econotarian for straightening them out at TED on poverty in China. I love that he did so using gapminder, itself made famous through TED.

Aaron, no I do not believe in a free lunch but I do believe that problems get easier with growth not harder. Convince a billion, poor Chinese to stay poor for the sake of the planet? No way. Convince a billion, rich Chinese to use less coal and more solar and nuclear? Difficult but not impossible.

mulch, I will find a place for the powerpoints.

First of all, I am not the “Curt” who commented above. (Just to be clear.)

Secondly, cool talk! Your talk and Steven Pinker’s are refreshingly optimistic, so they’re especially good for watching on Mondays.

I found this talk (Much like Prof. Taborrak) to be very limited in the discussion of the downside. We currently already use much more resources (including energy, in its current storage form) than can be sustainably reproduced. Therein lies the fact that it is impossible to guarantee the same standards of living for China and India that are enjoyed in countries like the USA or Australia (my home country).
Not only will we witness restrictions on natural resources but restrictions on labour resources. The wealth of Western consumers is partially based on cheap foreign labour. This wealth has been decreasing as (before the recent crash) we were re-importing the inflation we previously exported to China. As China pulls its population out of poverty this access to cheap labour will diminish, decreasing the absolute wealth of the west and diminishing the wealth divide on both sides of the equation.
Additionally your belief in market size is short sighted, populations do not create markets but wealth. You can have a country of 120 Million, but if the power of discretionary spending lies within only 1 million of those people then how do you determine the true market size? Malaria is huge in Africa, but the funding given to those companies researching cures or preventative medicines is mainly regarded as charity, not investment.
This polarisation of wealth is inherent in the free market system that you put so much faith in. Whereby through the increase reliance on entrepreneurial skill, and risked-based rewards individuals can increase their wealth by virtue of being wealthy (through investment geared companies, buying of bonds/debts, or even interest payments).

I don’t share your faith in the current free-market system. I do not think the simple explanation offered is enough to ensure that will we progress to an egalitarian society… However I am interested in your responses to these economic problems.

For those doomers let me list few solutions

a) change c3 CO2 fixation to c4 in most agricultural plants – for rice the significant effort is on the way already. This will alone will make about 50% rise in agricultural output and also will reduce water consuption of agriculture ( now 70 percent of water is used for agriculture)
considering that genetically modified food is not a news – at some point this might come as a solution.

b) use more hydroponics – in Israel most of vegetables are coming from hydroponics . Hydroponics might be economic ( no worse that current way ) and the benefit is – up to 5 times less water consumption, less ( up to 5 and more times ) area used , no soil degradation etc.

So before one start a rant – please explain – why the above won’t work?

There are still more
few years back there was shown a way to produce an artificial meet in laboratory. Some efforts are on the way – and if successful the approach might further reduce a burden on nature.

the same is with water shortage. To desalinate a cubic meter of water costs 0.5 dollar now ( and more efficient technologies might appear – at least there are ways to improve the process ). a cubic meter of water – is what is consumed in africa per month and in developed contres per two weeks per person. So how 0.5 dollar cubic meter of fresh water might make current situation significantly worse ?In saudi arabia a desalinated water pipe goes hundreds of kilometers to Riad. So remote destinations are alsom reachable with this approach. So how with so much salt water we will starve without water ?

I think the list could be continued. Including discussing how much it might take to launch a solar shield to prevent overheat of the earth ( seems less that planned for ‘trip to moon and mars ‘). But personally I cannot imagine that those questions which are asked could not be answered already now. And of cause there would be even more answers in a time.

“Since when did economic growth become the problem. Ugghhhh.”

When you live on Easter Island, on Nauru, in New Orleans, off the Colorado River water shed, (especially those in the artificial outflow basin), off the Olagalla Aquifer.

Not to mention the economic growth based on old growth forests… If forests are renewable, why is it necessary to cut the last 2% of old growth forest in the US to sustain the forestry industry? Will the world’s supply of old growth forests last for another three hundred years so that the replacement old growth forests which sustainable forestry must have planted two hundred years ago become ready to harvest? Old growth forests were set aside for development two hundred years ago, right? And ownership of the land and the old growth forests that may or may not be grown on the land is clearly defined, with 80% of all the US old growth forests that existed in private hands.

The ocean fisheries. And how do you assign property rights to the Atlantic cod that migrate from the New England fisheries to the Mediterranean and Norwegian fisheries as part of their breeding life cycle, for just one example. One of the things so attractive about New England four centuries ago was the ease of catching fish, fish so plentiful it was said you could walk across the water on their backs. And Maine lobster was an annoying catch that was so plentiful and undesirable it was fed to the poor or used for fertilizer.

When I was a kid, Jacques Cousteau was on TV promising the oceans could feed the world and end hunger of only we developed the capacity to harvest them.

Just wanted to say HI. I found your blog a few days ago and have been reading it over the past few days.

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