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zero growth economy.

zero growth economy

Started April 2009,

Begin Rave.

This is a low priority page - I will do a little bit now and then when I feel like it.
I'm sure I will upset some people.
If you are one of those people - relax - the current paradigm is not about to change.
Even when the system falls over all attempts will be made to shock it back into life with as little real change as possible.

Growth will end it is just a question of when. When it does the existing way of doing things (which requires growth) will fail. We need a new paradigm for a zero growth (or more likely contracting) world population. At best the exist model will oscillate with periods of growth followed by sharp declines.

I have sometimes asked people why growth is necessary for a healthy economy. I've never heard a convincing answer.

One imaginary ZPG world.


Here are some ideas.

My pretend economy is a blend of capitalism, socialism and no doubt some other "isms".

I'm told my views are Marxist - I've never read any of his works, if I did I might not agree with everything he says - I'll probably never know.

I suspect many of the Marx haters haven't bother reading his work either. I would agree that taking socialism to extreme is a bad thing but there is a big difference totally removing rewards for effort compared to placing limits to the extremes of wealth and poverty.

The ideas may apply to both local and global economy but some things like balance of payment don't apply to the global view.

Some of the properties are.
Zero population growth.
Zero economic growth.
Zero inflation or deflation.
Zero interest on saving.
Zero interest on "small" loans (if possible).
Zero total money in the system (if possible).
Zero average balance of payments.
A direct or indirect limit on personal wealth (relax you're below that limit).

Personal wealth only produced by real work. Things like share/currency trading are not real work.
A realistic cap on salaries.

Low taxation.
A low cost of living.
A higher average standard of living.
A less paid work done than presently.

ZPG.

Global zero population growth is not going to be voluntary.

ZPG occurs when deaths equal births. It is unlikely this will happens due to lower birth rates. ZPG will occur due to a high mortality rate. We can't be certain what the reason for this will be but we can be fairly certain if will come to pass.
The reason I say this isn't t spread gloom but to point out that when we are finally forced to implement a zero growth model it will be because some serious problem has halted our growth.

So when I say "higher standard of living" I mean higher than what we would have by continuing the old ways. Chances are this "improved" standard is lower than what we have now. The same applies to work hours and so forth.


New rules - NB I may delete this and start again.

I'm going to make some new rules, you probably won't like them but never mind it is all pretend. Nobody really reads this stuff anyway. It can remain our little secret page.
Don't mind the other users online - they are just looking at the pictures. I know these things - I read the logs.

Seriously now - people should be do these thought experiments. We (society) should also be running these scenarios in simulators. I presume these simulators exist - if not then making some would be a better use of money than bailing out the banks.

In "the watchers" I give a simplistic case of a few people with a fixed amount of cash trading amongst themselves. They don't need growth to keep the money circulating. No new money needs to be created except to replace money permanently lost or destroyed. They can't have inflation but can have loans with interest if need be.

One thing that will wreck this micro economy is one or more people hording cash and removing it from circulation. A shortage of cash will cause deflation and people sell cheap to get their hands on cash. You can print more money distorts the market if it is simply handed out. If you inject cash and the horded money is put back into circulation there is now inflation.

New rule - a limit on ownership of cash. Note that I'm not saying a limit on wealth - yet.

I'm rethinking this.
How big a limit? I don't know - my first guess would be enough to buy a modest house. In my pretend world houses are cheaper though.
Another idea that comes to mind is to half that limit but allow a zero interest loan to match it. I just have a hunch that the right amount of money in the total system is zero. I'd have to give that more thought.
This is probably not the best rule but this is just a first pass at a rules set.
I want to prevent cash being removed from circulation and I also want to prevent cash investment growing by themselves.
Cash is a convenient way to save for retirement so this need to be addressed.

In progress, it may take years.




Created by admin. Last Modification: Sunday 15 of November, 2009 09:02:41 GMT-0000 by eddie.

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