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The Forum > Article Comments > Economic growth or quality of life > Comments

Economic growth or quality of life : Comments

By Everald Compton, published 6/11/2013

GDP doesn't have to mean Growth Domestic Product; it could mean General Domestic Prosperity.

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"What is clearly evident is that even a very basic living standard will not be achieved just by striving to significantly increase the productivity of every nation."

If such prophecy of doom were heeded in the past, nations would not have strived to increase productivity nor have succeeded to feed the growing world population. There is no reason why productivity could not continue to increase significantly.

"this will happen only if we find enlightened leaders for a new world and put them in charge as a matter of urgency. The current lot are obsessed with clinging to power, not being willing to take carefully planned and calculated risks, and living in fear of failure rather than the satisfaction of kicking goals. To be very kind, a charitable description of them is that they are a very ordinary rabble leading us down paths to nowhere."

Yet , we read that Everald " has taken-up a new role as Chairman of the Federal Government’s Panel on Positive Ageing." Going on the above, a suggested conclusion is that our leaders are unenlightened and leading us down the garden path by appointing him.
Posted by Raycom, Wednesday, 6 November 2013 10:19:29 PM
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<< Mr Compton is not the problem, of course, as he is ... iii) not going to be around much longer anyway. So he is ideally placed to lecture everyone else on what they should and should not do about it. >>

That’s not very nice, Pericles!

Can’t you just appreciate Everald’s good intentions in putting his thoughts out there in the public arena on OLO, and debate them without being offensive?

<< Ok. First question - if the world is currently "overpopulated", how come everyone on the planet today enjoys a longer life, better medicines, greater affluence, greater mobility etc. than they did in 1931? >>

Really?? Lots of people ‘enjoy’ these things…. but there’s a huge portion of the global population that doesn’t!

I wonder how the global average compares to 1931? Not ‘greater’ at all, I would think!
Posted by Ludwig, Wednesday, 6 November 2013 11:06:01 PM
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"I wonder how the global average compares to 1931? Not ‘greater’ at all, I would think!"

Depends what average you have in mind doesn't it, Ludwig? It is possible that everyone on the planet was hoping they would live through bacterial infections for the next ten years to become the first patient for penicillin:

"The first patient in 1941 had been scratched by a rose thorn. Albert Alexander's whole face, eyes and scalp had swollen. He had already had an eye removed and abscesses drained; even his remaining eye had to be lanced to relieve the pain of the swelling. He was given penicillin, and within a day he began to recover. But Florey's team didn't have enough of the drug to see the patient through to a full recovery. Their efforts to recycle the penicillin by extracting it from his urine failed, and he unfortunately had a re-lapse and died."

Okay, it didn't work for Albert. But he had a better chance than everyone else on earth at the time.

I don't doubt Mr. Compton's good intentions, but humanity has proven to only be competent at forecasting and coping with the future in hindsight.

Maybe we're doomed to keep vainly trying until we think we've got it right... but I bet 'other people' will then stuff it up.
Posted by WmTrevor, Thursday, 7 November 2013 5:45:17 AM
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It frustrates me that this population debate has become ideological. Really, it comes down to the number of people the Earth can support at a reasonable (though not excessive) standard of living without drawing down the natural resource base and without going beyond the absorptive capacity of the biosphere. We are certainly exceeding the Earth's capacity to sustain us at the moment with climate change the most obvious manifestation. Our whole civilisation including much of food production is dependent on oil but Jeremy Leggett says in New Scientist this week (Nov 4) that we can expect an oil crisis in the next few years. That has huge implications for our ability to feed even the population we have.
On a more positive note, Prof Thomas Maschmeyer from Sydney University is developing better catalysts such that brown coal my be converted to crude oil. Not good for the climate, of course, but it may stop civilisation crashing.
Posted by popnperish, Thursday, 7 November 2013 9:20:46 AM
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The only way forward for sustainable population growth, is for productivity from those involved.

The problem is that over the past twenty plus years, more and more are reliant on the contributions from others and this simply has to cease, otherwise we are going to continue to head south.

Growth and sustainability rely on productivity.
Posted by rehctub, Thursday, 7 November 2013 9:22:18 AM
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Rehctub, if we put all our efforts into productivity, and just allowed the massive rate of immigration to continue, we wouldn’t get anywhere in terms of sustainability. We’d only achieve a very small improvement in gross domestic prosperity or the genuine progress indicator, if any improvement at all, and then only in the short term.

Forever striving to increase productivity, that is: increase the supply of everything and increase our export income, is not going to cut it for as long as the domestic demand keeps rapidly increasing.

In fact, spending all our energies on productivity in virtual isolation of any other considerations actually promulgates the continuous growth spiral, and will ultimately makes things much worse.
Posted by Ludwig, Thursday, 7 November 2013 11:01:11 AM
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