The lack of growth.

[izentrop]

I would like to see the details of the calculation but it seems plausible

This is a reflection that follows the Fermi paradox.

the time we have before depleting the resources at our disposal, whether at the scale of our planet Earth, or even at the scale of the observable Universe (say within a radius of 10 billion light-years, or about 100 billion billion kilometers).

Under the seemingly reasonable assumption of a growth rate of consumption and resource use of 2% per year, the depletion time of the Earth's resources is a few hundred years, with a large margin uncertainty. For the whole observable Universe, curiously, the estimate is more precise: between 5 000 and 6 000 years, with very little thing ...

... it is very likely that, like ants living on a saltpeter pile, we would grill the day we discover the matches, long before we managed to develop the interstellar journey ... https://lejournal.cnrs.fr/billets/le-pa ... invisibles

Agree with this conclusion:

... the developed countries that are fortunate enough to have already proven research structures, put at the very top priority the development of research and development activities that alone will enable us to face the challenges ahead.

[Ahmed]

The debate over the depletion of resources is affected by a priori of rationality that does not exist. The conclusions about the time required for the disappearance of resources are therefore distorted in a sense of great overestimation. Resources are mobilized to produce abstract value and very secondarily to meet needs (real and especially symbolic). It is therefore in this framework of the production of value that the analysis must be centered: from the moment when it will no longer be possible (as the trend makes clear), whether the resources are still available or not. absolutely does not matter. These are phenomena already observed during the great economic crises of the past; these have, of course, been overcome, but at the cost of ever greater contradictions.
What we see today is that if we stick to official mythology, prosperity should be practically everywhere the rule, since, as well, never the objective factors of production, nor the resources have been so abundant.

[izentrop]

Hello Ahmed,
It would take examples to understand what you just wrote

In a cross-talk with Gabriel Chardin, physicist, and Alexandre Delaigue, economist on growth: "How far are we from our limits? " http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/rue89/ru ... mites.html
Alexandre Delaigue, optimistic:

... economic growth is fully compatible with lower energy consumption.

This has been the case for the energy needed to produce our lighting.
Gabriel Chardin's answer is more realistic in my opinion:

in China, in India, and also in France, the soil is exhausted at a rate 50 100 times faster than what should be done to renew them. And we continue to do it because we have almost no constraints.
... I have the impression that we are only prolonging the instability and that our system can collapse practically at any time. Today, only 1% of GDP is devoted to research worldwide, which means that over a century, only a year's worth of wealth is devoted to it, whereas the collapse good chances to be within a century.

We know the recipe, but will it be too late when we finally apply it? I am afraid and for best practices, only the constraint will be effective.

[Ahmed]

Izentrop, I readily admit that some concepts are not intuitive and a little complex to understand. The question of "abstract value" is certainly the least obvious, yet it is central; without long, too long, developments, I am unable to explain it clearly. I am reduced to giving a few of its manifestations, which is far from being entirely satisfactory ...
Unless you are referring to something else?

When Gabriel Chardin writing:

... I have the impression that we are only prolonging the instability and that our system can collapse practically at any time.

This is exactly what I express in this sentence of the previous message (even if I do not know, if I'm not sure of the context, if we're talking about the same thing ...):

These are phenomena already observed during the great economic crises of the past; these have, of course, been overcome, but at the cost of ever greater contradictions.

[izentrop]

Ok Ahmad,
Instead of "contradictions", I understand better with "complications"

Gabriel Chardin appeared on the program "Extraterrestre, it is Fermi to doubt it" on 20/10 https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/ ... tobre-2017
We can listen to it from 35 mn.

[Ahmed]

These two terms are not really substitutable: it is the systemic contradictions that lead to complications. For example, the 1929 crisis was a liquidity crisis: the state of the art for a company to be competitive involved an investment out of reach of those same companies; the measures of collectivist economics (without saying so!) Roosevelt have remedied this problem. Other examples exist, but nowadays it is no longer a question of facing a simple contradiction, but of Marx called a "terminal". The difference between these two terms being that the contradictions can provide the opportunity for new development of capitalism (as we see the attempt with the energy transition), while the boundary represents a systemic dead end, impossible to cross since it is is a contradiction which applies to the very principle * of the system and no longer to one of its operating factors (always substitutable, as history shows).

* Which is that through the human work, it is possible to transform a sum A initially invested in a sum A 'raised at the end of the process of valorization.

[izentrop]

"paradoxical" then

You involve the value in money of resources and capitalism, this element distorts the reality of the diminution of resources. Gabriel Chardin takes into account the actual resources in his calculations.

The price at the pump of fossil fuels remains very low, which delays the advent of renewable energies, but we know that it will one day go up again when all the producers have finally managed their reconversion.

[Ahmed]

The paradox is only apparent: the exhaustion of physical resources can only be understood in relation to the context in which they play a role. For an Amazonian tribe or African pygmies, this concept of exhaustion of resources is inconceivable, since without foundation *.

Let me specify: in our society, if means of transformation exist, if needs exist, the first will not be implemented and the second will not be satisfied if the real purpose of the economic system cannot first be accomplished (only A => A ').
This is, among other things, why malnutrition will never be eradicated, no matter how much food is produced; so it's not overpopulation that's causing ...

* Cf. Marshall sahelins"Stone age, age of plenty".

PS: the theory of value is an ambiguous formulation, but in this particular context, the "value" does not refer to the price, it is more complicated ... We now prefer to speak of "criticism of the differentiation of value ", which is rather heavy, but more exact insofar as it introduces to the duality existing between concrete value and abstract value (the two coexisting inside the same reality, this making all falsifications possible [including involuntary]).

[izentrop]

For an Amazonian tribe or African pygmies, this concept of exhaustion of resources is inconceivable, since without foundation *.

Today, those who still live in autarky are endangered. Consumerism is the general rule. The race to deplete resources to pay for the latest smartphone ... I exaggerate almost no.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvXDfIhHlW8

[Ahmed]

You are unfortunately right and I was referring more to a past not so old, but they are now only cases of school ...
This video allows you to realize it. I draw your attention to the ethnologist's comments (and their lack of scientific hindsight) at around 28:20, where he mentions the "need"to find new"resources","while sparing as much as possible natural capital"; the expression" natural capital "being particularly tasty ... See also its conclusion at the end of the video ... It is impossible for it to leave its cultural presuppositions (or what takes its place: capitalism being, above all , a mode of social relation).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGiaqMDjlW0