[FoRK] Large changes in fiscal policy: taxes versus spending

[Jeff Bone]

Ken says:

> Interesting. But I'm still not onside with the great desire for  
> economic growth as it is currently defined, practiced and measured  
> == ever-increasing consumption. I don't understand why this is seen  
> as a Good Thing. ???

Not making any value judgments in the previous.

But apropos the previous carrying capacity argument, it seems that  
we're a bit "half pregnant."  To mix metaphors here, it seems  
inevitable that there are two options:  forge on at high speed, hoping  
that we hit escape velocity -- and accept *those* attendant  
existential risks and attempt to maintain acceleration while  
mitigating them;  or fall back in tech level and take *those*  
inevitable die-back / extinction risks.  Clowns to the left, jokers to  
the right...

The discussion, though, is a bit futile.  While those are the two  
hypothetical extrema --- and maintenance of status quo seems out of  
the question --- there seems like only one practical course of action  
at this point in historical path-dependency.  Reminds me a bit of Doug  
Adams' forward to HHGTTG:

> Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the  
> Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
>
> Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is  
> an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape- 
> descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still  
> think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
>
> This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of  
> the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time.  
> Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these  
> were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of  
> paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green  
> pieces of paper that were unhappy.
>
> And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most  
> of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.
>

And the money shot, apropos this discussion:

> Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big  
> mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some  
> said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should  
> ever have left the oceans.
>

Now, I will make a value judgment:  frankly I don't care if we  
alt.pave.the.earth, so long as in doing so we get some form of human- 
derived intelligence wave-front spreading outward first.

$0.02, YMMV.

jb