Conversation on shrinkage and growth
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This is an open conversation (perhaps its about the laws of conservation of energy within ecosystems, human economies and culture)
Doug 10:21, 12 July 2008 (PDT) D: asks the question: if wealth is dependent on the eventual production of consumption goods through productive capital, and depends on growth in stocks, what is an inverse productive wealth in which limits to growth occur, gaining sustainabiity? That is, some sustainability limits?
Newton 10:22, 12 July 2008 (PDT) N: Perhaps we should abandon the term "shrinkage" and assume the value of growth but debate what is growing, which in your question is capital and stocks in capital.
D: Right, so growth might need to be redefined as reciprocal growth, where if you regrow elements of an ecology, you are able to sustain your survival but perhaps as a more limited level.
N: Yes, we have a culture of extraction wherein one system is extracted to the advantage of another and in the long term to its own disadvantage. For instance, the fish population needs to regrow. The world forest needs to regrow. The world's topsoil needs to regrow. The world fresh water supply needs to regrow as we are shrinking our aquafers. This means that reward must be reassociated to the regrowth of these large systems.
Thats the analysis, put in crude terms
D: So the question rephrased is how can reciprocity be reestablished.
N: The world fishing system needs to shrink in order to be profitable agin, both from an ecological perspective and an economic one. And this process is true for all the other examples.
D; So how does this happen?
N: We have to apply supply and demand principles to all this.
D: Yes, to the way that nature works through s&D
N: Apply this to the way that nature and culture both store energy. It is the release of this stored energy that is the question here. Or the way that energy is transformed from one form to another.
D: A difference being nature does not charge a (second) profit. And nature does not provide energy independent of demands made on it.
N: Perhaps stick with the fish for the answer in the form of an example.
Will somebody answer this?
DNA = Doug and Newton
