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  • First the video starts with this oversize hamster then it goes to the economy. Mind = blown

  • O.o

  • I wouldn't say continued economic growth is impossible. It is the growth of population, the use of non-renewable energy, pollution and waste that can't and won't go on. All these problems could be a source for economic growth.

  • What a ridiculous video. The basic premise is entirely wrong, and the comparison is inaccurate.

    Economic growth is not equivalent to an eqivalent increase in resource use - it comes in man forms, one very significant cause of growth is a more efficient use of the resources or changing to a more abundat or better resource for the functions we use them.

    And you miss the fundamental difference between human economy and 'impossible hamsters': the intellectual ability to endlessly innovate.

  • @MrJrock331 The spending of recources has grown along with the echonomy this far, despite huge improvements if efficiency. The burden of proof that this will somehow change lies on you.

  • @AngeCord

    That is simply incorrect. The fallacy arises because you talk about 'spending of resources' as if this is some absolute concept. What matters are which resources are used, and the specific resources used has been consistently changing to adapt to relative scarcities and abundancies. When we view things in this framework rather than just leaping to unfounded conclusions about using everything up it is quite obvious that the problem this video suggests does not exist

  • @MrJrock331 No one is afraid 'everything' is going to get used up. The problem is the non renewable resources are going to run out. Our ehonomic growth have relied on cheap fossile fuel for 200 years that will last for 100 more years What people have a hard time to grasp is that ehonomic problems will not occur when resources run out, but when they start to diminish. Energy prices rise when production can not meet demands. Echonomic growth will be stalled and our economic system can't take that.

  • @AngeCord "The problem is non renewable resorces are going to run out" So you have just said that everything will run out except for those things that, by definition, cannot.

    100 years is an incorrect figure just to start with - there are 1000 years of natural gas left, and 100 years of oil by only known reserves though it is almost certain that there are at least another 350 years of oil that is discoverable (able to be found and practically exploited) but not yet found.

  • @AngeCord Conventional nuclear fission - which is non-renewable - power would produce electricity for tens of thousands of years before we run out of uranium. But the timescale is largely irrelevant what matters is that if things are left to the free market when currently used resources grow scarce there will be a gradual and natural adjustment to use more abundant and cheaper resources - and if a time comes that renwables are the best source then that is what would be moved to

  • @MrJrock331 Nuclear power is much more expensive energy source than fossile fuels. Especially if you want to meet todays security standards. To replace fossile fuels with nuclear power on a large scale is impossible for defense reasons. You don't want to have the nuclear plants running all over your country during wartime, and you can't turn them off because you will need the energy more than ever.

  • @MrJrock331 "there are 1000 years of natural gas left"

    ORLY? Let's do the math. If we have 2% growth and increase of energy spending every year, we will need 102% of this years spending next year. We will need 122% 10 years from now. We need 724% 100 years from now. We need 102343% 350 years from now. And we will need 39826465166% one thousand years from now. That is 12 times this whole year energy spending EVERY SECOND.

    Do you really believe there is that much natural gas, oil and coal?

  • Go back to true free markets. The government now causes investors to see false abundance with their economic tinkering. In a true market system, everything would be priced accurately based on scarcity.

  • @Vegemighty It could be priced accurately but if profit is what it matters, farmers who produce with such abundance thanks to modern farming technology, would refuse to produce if they don't get enough profit, therefore such system doesn't put Earth's resources at the service of all humanity which is what we should require of a economic system.

  • 37 people think the world is still flat

  • space hamster. problem?

  • I want to buy this video. And the company that produced it.

  • I get what the video is saying, but I don;t think the ever growing hamster is the best example.

    But yes, it is EXTREMELY foolish, and just all around stupid to believe the economy can just go on growing, and those who believe it can are either just greedy, getting as much as they can before it crashes, or just plain stupid.

  • Apparently Zeitgeist has connections to Scientology, wich makes me sad. Still, the Idea of a science based world is what i like :)

  • @seromaynh No it does not

  • @SecularAnimist It is what i heard, some connections to anti-semitism stuff. Still, i like the ideas, but i will be careful, just like i am with everthing else ^^

  • @seromaynh Equally ridiculous - you go from scientology to anti-semitism? Are you just pulling things out of our ass?

  • @SecularAnimist Nope, its what i read. The Scientology Thing i cant tell much about, but apparently the Movies have strong connections to a anti semitic book. (The Protocols of the Elders of Zion)

    Listen, i like the Idea of Zeitgeist, but neither will i make it the only solution, nor am i saying these things are actually true. All i want is people to be careful. Even Jaque Fresco tells us to misstrust/question as much as possible. Farewell

  • @seromaynh I suggest you seriously question the validity of that source because they are obvious propagandists or idiots. One of the two. You be the judge

  • @seromaynh Second, why did you start with "scientology" and then go to anti-semitism. Was it the same source? It's like you started with a mild insult and then ramped it up when the one did not work. Is there even any connection to protocols of the elders of zion and scientology. If not, then don't you find that odd and not logically consistent using them both. You are not looking to good throwing those two completely unrelated slanders out for a myriad of reasons.

  • This is exactly what I have been thinking for years. Why the hell do people not realize that such forever growth is unrealistically impossible?

  • mmmmm.... nine billion ton hamster...

  • これいい

    

  • +1. But the sooner the human race engineers its own destruction and wipes itself out the better. The only problem is if we go suddently then there will be nobody around to decommission the hundreds of nuclear power plants around the world and when they melt down if will render the earth uninhabitable. Fuck this species. it would have been FAR, FAR better if we never had existed. We are a fucking plague.

  • %

    interest rates

    that's why the economy must grow forever: money doesn't grow on trees. a small elite exploits people because we don't really understand how "money" works

  • this doesn't account for technological advances. This seems quite naive.

  • theres this group called the venus project or zeitgeist movement that have proposed this idea of a resource based economy which is pretty much seeing what we have and make stuff according to our resources and prioritize those resources

  • This is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO true!!!! The economy should stop growing! We have enough economy right now!

  • Venus Project and Zeitgeist Movement for a better world!

    Resource based economy and scientific method applied to solve social problems, we don't need governmentes and money anymore, since today we have the technology to give everyone the needs to have a decent life!

  • Thankfullness for this video! I have started Intelligent Union in order to change things like this. IU is using a deliberate democracy to decide things. People who do meditation and introspection can join. this in order to be able to emotionally make descisions that benefits all in a longer perspective Welcome to join!

  • hahaha this is stupid, so humans will stop (for some reason, i dont know why) inventing new ways to increase food energy etc and stop making things more efficient, etc. what little faith u have in humanity

  • @ThinkingOfUsername It's nothing to do with faith in humanity. It's to do with an appreciate of the laws of nature. We are already pushing up against thermodynamic limits. Unless you think that we will 'invent' ways to break these laws, then there has to be limits to growth.

  • We are investigating a new system of Equality. If you value Life Join to be part of the solution. equalmoney . org

  • Support the solution of Equal Money System to end the unlimited greed of current economic system > equalmoney. org

  • @Zebhallman are you serious? do you really not understand this? I don't think it could be made any more simple.

  • @Zebhallman okay cool. your comparison about the ostrich and car shows you clearly don't understand. maybe give it a few years and come back to it.

  • @Zebhallman Like you I have also learned economics. And like you, if the only thing I had watched about this issue was this amster video, I wouldnt probably didnt get it either. But try to watch "money as debt I" or "money as debt II" here in youtube.

  • There is a solution in economics (see: Price System). Free markets FTW!

  • @MrLibertea There is also something in economics called externalities.

    There are irreversible outcomes we are placing into the pipeline today which won't be felt for decades into the future; and when the outcomes do eventually arrive, the human species, along with every other form of life on earth, will be unable to survive. Free market forces are not preventing this outcome. Only governments today have capacity tax carbon and end fossil fuel industry.

  • @MrLibertea There are differences in credibility between religious zealot nut jobs predicting the second coming of the amazing magic jesus relative to predictions made by the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

  • minimal techno mix.... lets dance to this while the economist bury us alive..

    /watch?v=VaBe3NNe8hY

  • Love it.

  • The solution is to lower the birthrates. Atleast its a start.

  • Economy is a pseudo-science, politics is not science at all... If society were based on real science like physics his would never happen. Greedy politicians and economists are killing our future with unsustainability...

  • Every time an underdeveloped economy starts growing (japan, the tiger economies, china), almost every economist worldwide gets the "everything will always be as it is now"-disease and thinks that tate economy will grow with the same speed forever, marveling at how in twenty years this little country will have an economy greater that all of the rest of the world put together! Thing is, the growth rate will ofcourse drop after a while, just like the hamster...

  • @MacLaurin83

    Actually most economists do not believe the rates will be sustained. Look up the convergence hypothesis. It states that third world countries can experience an explosion of growth to catch up to first world countries because the technologies and techniques already exist for their use, but when they catch up they have to develop new technologies like other first world countries. The explosive growth rates cannot be sustained.

  • simple and elegand analogy

  • The answer is higher-price substitution, improvements in technology, regeneration and replacement.

  • @ashide1 For ever?

  • I have always been skeptical of the idea of never-ending exponential economic growth. It seems that real growth must at some point stop any exponential trend and cool-down to a much more gradual and stable but steady growth rate once the economy is well-developed. That's why I suspect developed economies like Japan and US have stagnated for the past decade.

  • nice!!

  • So simple, still we don't get it. And it's not only politicians and economists fault... it's ours as well... stop consuming carelessly, stop following the media, live your live in your true way, with what you really need, wich should be few things. Work less, enjoy more. We don't know what happens after death, is stupid to waste our lives contributing to something as nonsense as this system is.

  • @pabloguaza Unfortunately, what you have outlined just isn't enough. We need to adopt both a solid state economy and a 2child policy, and soon, our our society will start to collapse. Its not too late to do something. The point is, clean, renewable energy is not the silver bullet most people think it is. It won't solve global warming, pollution, or the energy crisis.

  • Gosh, what would we as a society do without the top-down planners who are so much smarter than all of us little hoi polloi combined? Maybe we would do what the hamster does on its own without the help of any government program - reach a naural size and stability. Maybe that is why global population growth is slowing all by itself and set to halt and then reverse in coming decades, all without the "help" of a utopian global government run by collectivist, liberty-hating know-it-alls.

  • @thomist36 Yes. I think you're right, because of peak oil, peak fresh water, peak top soil and essentially peak everything, in a few years population growth will reverse. In 2025 there might only be 2-3 billion of us left as we are unable to feed ourselves and our polluted environment allows diseases to flourish while we don't have enough resources to treat said diseases (most pharmaceuticals are petrochemicals). No intervention required, we're perfectly capable of destroying ourselves.

  • @cloudsoup @cloudsoup bullshit, increased "value" would either mean inflation, or more people on the planet trying to buy the same thing and raising its "value".

    The economic growth 99.9% of people refer to is more jobs and more stuff= more resources

  • @cloudsoup Ok. How do you create economic growth without population growth, consuming more resources and energy. Give me a real world example how that works.

  • Hi, I would like to add portuguese (brazil) subtitles. I have already downloaded the video to my HD...

    if you don't mind I'll upload it respecting the whole presentation text, credits and so on...

    Im just thinking in make it acessible to brazilians, ass well.

    thank you

  • Econimists dont care about the concequences of their outdated model, thats why they just continue on. They dont care! Until those that run this show on earth are held accountable we can expect to se the continual degragation of our planet.

  • Awesome and simple way to present where the current economic system is leading us. Congratulations.

  • that hamster is trippin if he thinks he could eat my corn

  • ¬¬ -_-

  • improvement between 1965 and 2002. But even this would result in a level of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere of 500 parts per million (ppm). The latest climate science shows that such a level would push temperature rises far past the 2 °C threshold, which is the agreed political objective of the European Union and considered the maximum rise to which humanity could adapt without serious difficulty.

  • I can see the logic in your argument, however you're comparing a biological being to a theoretical construct.

  • two points :

    1) Perpetual grows does not mean that it will get an infinite size. If we have a positive but decreasing growth, we can get a converging type of growth. This is more likely considering the data we have.

    2) Animal size is limited only to the environment it lives in. Economics growth has a lot to do with increase in productivity of labor, and therefore, the only tangible limit to growth is human creativity. Whether there is a limit to that is not yet proven.

  • @4StringPadawan Growth drowns-out efficiency gains. Environmental tolerance thresholds being pushed too far making a growing economy and a safe climate incompatible according to new modelling from nef (the new economics foundation). Even at a growth rate of 3 per cent (low for many developing countries), the global economy would need to reduce its carbon intensity by 71 per cent by 2050 (compared to 2002) or 2.7 per cent per year. This would mean achieving more than double the yearly average

  • So whats the solution? Oh wise and chubby hamster? According to you we would have to stop or reverse all economic progress. Because even slow growth would still be taking us in the same direction. Whats the answer? Communism? Everyone sharing all resources, through massive government force? I'll take my chances with the hamster.

  • @Thisawareness

    So China emits more CO2 than the US, therefore AGW is a lie? Either there's a severe fault in your logic or you didn't articulate your comment very well.

  • @Thisawareness That... still really did not address the point. Obviously we can't control China's emissions but that doesn't mean that 1. AGW if a fake and 2. There's nothing we should do about our own emissions regardless.

  • The argument for continued growth (in the foreseeable future) is that there still are a LOT of people (billions) who are not efficiently employed. Someone looking after his tiny plot of land without owning machinery could be much more productive - i.e. there's potential left.

    Add to that technological progress, which makes processes more and more efficient. People become more productive -> more things become affordable/possible -> the economy grows. Not like there's nothing new to discover.

  • @SirSoriak And what about the technological unemploymency? Where automation will be so high so most of the people wont get any job. Without any kind of purcasing power it wont matter how cheap the products are, they wont able to buy it. But if the companies wont be able to sell their products so they will close down. And more trouble will occure because of this...

    This is a very complex process.

  • point of video: kill all hamsters

  • Capitalism is not sustainable, we need to come up with a better system.

  • @motor78 and what?

  • @motor78 ZEITGEIST

  • @SecularAnimist TZM/RBE/TVP FTW

  • @motor78 There is an Alternative: Resource Based Economy, by Jaque Fresco. (Search for it on Google)

  • @motor78

    Socialism?

  • ...... ahahahahaha :'D

  • Wow, there are some really moronic responses to this video - I'm looking at you 'cheeseUout'

  • I agree with the premise of this video, questioning why economists think economies can keep growing and growing. Same problem with continued human population growth, it is unsustainable at a certain high level.

    Well done video making a point in a very humorous but memorable way!

  • Lol Fat Hamster makes me smile.

  • I love my hamster

  • This animated video is a direct play on the state of the global economy today, which keeps growing and growing, to the extent that it has overwhelmed the whole planet and forced its main contributors, the US and Europe, into major financial stagnation and meltdown.

  • While a noble project, it is unnecessary. The wheels are already in motion regarding the solution to overpopulation.

    Selling Hobson's choice and using a humans strongest evolutionary instincts of passing on their genes and or survival will render the serfs utterly submissive to the plan.

  • Infinite growth is impossible on a finite planet!

  • great explaination.

  • If 50 million South Koreans can fit in an area the size of Tasmania and still have a high standard of living, agriculture, an army, wide open spaces, beaches etc - then SURELY Australia can fit more people in.

  • you missing the point, majority of Australia is desert, without water nothing will survive.

  • We can recycle wateror desalinate it, like London does.

    Drinking water is only about 1%, I don't think this such a big issue.

  • @imre1000 i agree, but unlike London we still got some catching up to do.

  • Fucking great. :)›

  • hahahahahaha great stuff

  • Comment removed

  • First the video starts with this oversize hamster then it goes to the economy. Mind = blown

  • O.o

  • I wouldn't say continued economic growth is impossible. It is the growth of population, the use of non-renewable energy, pollution and waste that can't and won't go on. All these problems could be a source for economic growth.

  • What a ridiculous video. The basic premise is entirely wrong, and the comparison is inaccurate.

    Economic growth is not equivalent to an eqivalent increase in resource use - it comes in man forms, one very significant cause of growth is a more efficient use of the resources or changing to a more abundat or better resource for the functions we use them.

    And you miss the fundamental difference between human economy and 'impossible hamsters': the intellectual ability to endlessly innovate.

  • @MrJrock331 The spending of recources has grown along with the echonomy this far, despite huge improvements if efficiency. The burden of proof that this will somehow change lies on you.

  • @AngeCord

    That is simply incorrect. The fallacy arises because you talk about 'spending of resources' as if this is some absolute concept. What matters are which resources are used, and the specific resources used has been consistently changing to adapt to relative scarcities and abundancies. When we view things in this framework rather than just leaping to unfounded conclusions about using everything up it is quite obvious that the problem this video suggests does not exist

  • @MrJrock331 No one is afraid 'everything' is going to get used up. The problem is the non renewable resources are going to run out. Our ehonomic growth have relied on cheap fossile fuel for 200 years that will last for 100 more years What people have a hard time to grasp is that ehonomic problems will not occur when resources run out, but when they start to diminish. Energy prices rise when production can not meet demands. Echonomic growth will be stalled and our economic system can't take that.

  • @AngeCord "The problem is non renewable resorces are going to run out" So you have just said that everything will run out except for those things that, by definition, cannot.

    100 years is an incorrect figure just to start with - there are 1000 years of natural gas left, and 100 years of oil by only known reserves though it is almost certain that there are at least another 350 years of oil that is discoverable (able to be found and practically exploited) but not yet found.

  • @AngeCord Conventional nuclear fission - which is non-renewable - power would produce electricity for tens of thousands of years before we run out of uranium. But the timescale is largely irrelevant what matters is that if things are left to the free market when currently used resources grow scarce there will be a gradual and natural adjustment to use more abundant and cheaper resources - and if a time comes that renwables are the best source then that is what would be moved to

  • @MrJrock331 Nuclear power is much more expensive energy source than fossile fuels. Especially if you want to meet todays security standards. To replace fossile fuels with nuclear power on a large scale is impossible for defense reasons. You don't want to have the nuclear plants running all over your country during wartime, and you can't turn them off because you will need the energy more than ever.

  • @MrJrock331 "there are 1000 years of natural gas left"

    ORLY? Let's do the math. If we have 2% growth and increase of energy spending every year, we will need 102% of this years spending next year. We will need 122% 10 years from now. We need 724% 100 years from now. We need 102343% 350 years from now. And we will need 39826465166% one thousand years from now. That is 12 times this whole year energy spending EVERY SECOND.

    Do you really believe there is that much natural gas, oil and coal?

  • Go back to true free markets. The government now causes investors to see false abundance with their economic tinkering. In a true market system, everything would be priced accurately based on scarcity.

  • @Vegemighty It could be priced accurately but if profit is what it matters, farmers who produce with such abundance thanks to modern farming technology, would refuse to produce if they don't get enough profit, therefore such system doesn't put Earth's resources at the service of all humanity which is what we should require of a economic system.

  • 37 people think the world is still flat

  • space hamster. problem?

  • I want to buy this video. And the company that produced it.

  • I get what the video is saying, but I don;t think the ever growing hamster is the best example.

    But yes, it is EXTREMELY foolish, and just all around stupid to believe the economy can just go on growing, and those who believe it can are either just greedy, getting as much as they can before it crashes, or just plain stupid.

  • Apparently Zeitgeist has connections to Scientology, wich makes me sad. Still, the Idea of a science based world is what i like :)

  • @seromaynh No it does not

  • @SecularAnimist It is what i heard, some connections to anti-semitism stuff. Still, i like the ideas, but i will be careful, just like i am with everthing else ^^

  • @seromaynh Equally ridiculous - you go from scientology to anti-semitism? Are you just pulling things out of our ass?

  • @SecularAnimist Nope, its what i read. The Scientology Thing i cant tell much about, but apparently the Movies have strong connections to a anti semitic book. (The Protocols of the Elders of Zion)

    Listen, i like the Idea of Zeitgeist, but neither will i make it the only solution, nor am i saying these things are actually true. All i want is people to be careful. Even Jaque Fresco tells us to misstrust/question as much as possible. Farewell

  • @seromaynh I suggest you seriously question the validity of that source because they are obvious propagandists or idiots. One of the two. You be the judge

  • @seromaynh Second, why did you start with "scientology" and then go to anti-semitism. Was it the same source? It's like you started with a mild insult and then ramped it up when the one did not work. Is there even any connection to protocols of the elders of zion and scientology. If not, then don't you find that odd and not logically consistent using them both. You are not looking to good throwing those two completely unrelated slanders out for a myriad of reasons.

  • This is exactly what I have been thinking for years. Why the hell do people not realize that such forever growth is unrealistically impossible?

  • mmmmm.... nine billion ton hamster...

  • これいい

    

  • +1. But the sooner the human race engineers its own destruction and wipes itself out the better. The only problem is if we go suddently then there will be nobody around to decommission the hundreds of nuclear power plants around the world and when they melt down if will render the earth uninhabitable. Fuck this species. it would have been FAR, FAR better if we never had existed. We are a fucking plague.

  • %

    interest rates

    that's why the economy must grow forever: money doesn't grow on trees. a small elite exploits people because we don't really understand how "money" works

  • this doesn't account for technological advances. This seems quite naive.

  • theres this group called the venus project or zeitgeist movement that have proposed this idea of a resource based economy which is pretty much seeing what we have and make stuff according to our resources and prioritize those resources

  • This is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO true!!!! The economy should stop growing! We have enough economy right now!

  • Venus Project and Zeitgeist Movement for a better world!

    Resource based economy and scientific method applied to solve social problems, we don't need governmentes and money anymore, since today we have the technology to give everyone the needs to have a decent life!

  • Thankfullness for this video! I have started Intelligent Union in order to change things like this. IU is using a deliberate democracy to decide things. People who do meditation and introspection can join. this in order to be able to emotionally make descisions that benefits all in a longer perspective Welcome to join!

  • hahaha this is stupid, so humans will stop (for some reason, i dont know why) inventing new ways to increase food energy etc and stop making things more efficient, etc. what little faith u have in humanity

  • @ThinkingOfUsername It's nothing to do with faith in humanity. It's to do with an appreciate of the laws of nature. We are already pushing up against thermodynamic limits. Unless you think that we will 'invent' ways to break these laws, then there has to be limits to growth.

  • We are investigating a new system of Equality. If you value Life Join to be part of the solution. equalmoney . org

  • Support the solution of Equal Money System to end the unlimited greed of current economic system > equalmoney. org

  • @Zebhallman are you serious? do you really not understand this? I don't think it could be made any more simple.

  • @Zebhallman okay cool. your comparison about the ostrich and car shows you clearly don't understand. maybe give it a few years and come back to it.

  • @Zebhallman Like you I have also learned economics. And like you, if the only thing I had watched about this issue was this amster video, I wouldnt probably didnt get it either. But try to watch "money as debt I" or "money as debt II" here in youtube.

  • There is a solution in economics (see: Price System). Free markets FTW!

  • @MrLibertea There is also something in economics called externalities.

    There are irreversible outcomes we are placing into the pipeline today which won't be felt for decades into the future; and when the outcomes do eventually arrive, the human species, along with every other form of life on earth, will be unable to survive. Free market forces are not preventing this outcome. Only governments today have capacity tax carbon and end fossil fuel industry.

  • @MrLibertea There are differences in credibility between religious zealot nut jobs predicting the second coming of the amazing magic jesus relative to predictions made by the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

  • minimal techno mix.... lets dance to this while the economist bury us alive..

    /watch?v=VaBe3NNe8hY

  • Love it.

  • The solution is to lower the birthrates. Atleast its a start.

  • Economy is a pseudo-science, politics is not science at all... If society were based on real science like physics his would never happen. Greedy politicians and economists