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Swimmy comments on Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist [link] - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: Dreaded_Anomaly 13 April 2012 03:55AM

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Comment author: steven0461 13 April 2012 04:58:10AM *  0 points [-]

The physicist in the dialogue says:

We need to ignore inflation as a nuisance in this case: if my 10 units of energy this year costs $10,000 out of my $100,000 income; then next year that same amount of energy costs $11,000 and I make $110,000—I want to ignore such an effect as “meaningless” inflation: the GDP “growth” in this sense is not real growth, but just a re-scaling of the value of money.

This strikes me as just wrong. If energy prices rise proportionally to GDP but other prices don't, there's still real GDP growth.

Comment author: Swimmy 13 April 2012 05:05:52AM *  0 points [-]

Yes, it's wrong. Relative price increases != inflation. If GDP growth declined but energy production remained the same, the price of energy wouldn't fall concordantly with GDP (as it would if we were talking about all prices rather than relative prices).

Edit: Which doesn't necessarily affect his point, I think he is actually trying to talk about the general rise in all prices.

Edit again: Never mind, I read further on, he thinks rising energy prices growing in accordance with GDP is "not real growth," just inflation. If people's standard of living has gone up, it's real growth.

Edit once more for an example: A crazy new iphone comes out and it's so awesome! But the input prices of all the other things I normally use also go up by the exact amount the new iphone would cost me, so it's not growth. :(

But that's not right. If you like the iphone more than some of the other things you use--WAY more than some of the other things you use--then you ditch those things and you buy the iphone. Win for you. If we're talking about replacing basic inputs like food, maybe energy prices cancel out some productivity gains there, but for the huge swathe of things we classify as entertainment or information, the claim doesn't apply.

Comment author: steven0461 13 April 2012 06:07:04AM *  2 points [-]

he thinks rising energy prices growing in accordance with GDP is "not real growth," just inflation

And this claim is essential to his argument, because he has an argument why (once we have a Dyson sphere) energy prices won't rise much slower than nominal GDP, but he does not have an argument why prices in general won't rise much slower than nominal GDP.