From: dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska)
Subject: Re: Sustainable lifestyles
Organization: VEXCEL Corporation, Boulder CO
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 20:34:28 GMT

In article <JMC.92Oct16113159@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
>In article <1992Oct16.153552.22498@vexcel.com> dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska) writes:
>
>   >Not if people want more goods and services.  The first approximation
>   >to the results that will follow is obtained by looking at how people
>   >with greater than average incomes spend their money as compared to
>   >people with lower incomes.  Typically, the income has to get to several
>   >times present average American incomes before people take shorter
>   >work weeks.  Indeed for many people longer vacations, time off for
>   >personal business and earlier retirement take higher priority.
>   >
>   Ah  - now we move back to sustainability issues.   Even if we assume
>   ZPG, more productivity without more unemployment and the
>   corresponding increased _goods_ and services leads to
>   nonsustainable consumption _unless_ you can show that these _goods_
>   are "virtual" goods (sorry for the computerese) and that they are
>   not correlated with increased _physical_ throughput.
>
>   >--
>   >John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
> 
>		   dingo in boulder	(dean@vexcel.com)
>
>Doubtless, some of them are virtual goods.  The rich don't eat more,
>and their more expensive cars don't involve increased metal in
>proportion to their increased prices.  They consume more services,
>e.g. travel related.

But they do own more cars, larger houses, and more of many things.
They _also_ consume more virtual goods.  
>
>However, increased physical throughput is also quite affordable.
>Remember Ehrlich's intellectual catastrophe over metal prices.
>Do you have in mind some material throughput that you think cannot
>be increased without harm?  There are some, perhaps, but there are
>also substitutes.

Increased physical throughput is affordable today for many people,
especially in the "west".  Ehrlich obviously jumps the gun and is
too spontaneous.  Once again you are trying to disprove something
by isolating a single commodity.  I don't doubt that consumption
of any one or two commodities could be explained away.  The
cumulative cost of the many substitutions will grow, as will the
cost of dealing with their pollution.  If per capita consumption
continues to grow, the rates of substitution increase, and the
overhead of substitution, which is a non-productive cost to
society, grows.  This is the value of studying
consumption with an aggregate model.
>
>By the way, the affordablity of nuclear energy is demonstrated by
>the fact that the French afforded it.  They went from generating
>very little of their electricity from nuclear to 75 percent between
>1973 and the late 1980s.  It was a very big investment, but the
>French standard of living remained among the highest in Europe
>throughout that period.

I don't doubt that the US could afford to convert if it wanted to.
I do doubt the world could.  I have a detailed study about this at
home and will respond to Carl's post sometime this weekend.

>--
>John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
>*
>He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
>

-- 

		dingo in boulder	(dean@vexcel.com)