[MonteQuest]

Nope. It backs up mine, which indicates that it's possible to make money on things that have very low energy footprint. Someone who buys a song or a mobile app on iTunes are generating money just the same as buying a Big Mac. The carbon intensity of the song or app is far lower for the amount of money generated. This is part and parcel of the information economy. This is not to invalidate your point about off-shoring manufacturing, but we still have GDP by virtue of our IP or digital assets.

I wasn't aware you were trying to make that point. And making money via financial speculation is not the same as buying an iTune, nor did we have iTunes in the 1990's.

[MonteQuest]

I think the question one must ask is: from what will the fat be cut? There are a lot of things that go to waste, but like in Nature, in capitalism, there is no such thing as waste. All waste is bought and paid for before it is wasted, or written off as a loss.

Take the vegetable harvest. It is estimated that anywhere from 20% to 40% of all produce grown is discarded because it isn’t pretty to look at. Let's cut that fat. Now, if we eliminated all that waste, the price would drop and we would have a vegetable glut. Produce growers would go out of business as profits plummeted. The point being, waste is factored into the business plan and bottom line of produce growers. Could the grocery stores even sell deformed produce?

Even today, it is estimated that 50% of all food purchased in a grocery store is thrown away uneaten. Let's cut that fat. Grocery store sales would only plummet 50%.

In the best of all worlds, we would not waste this produce, but we do, and it contributes to GDP and provides jobs.

So, cut the fat, but be prepared for a lot of disruption in BAU.

[MonteQuest]

And then the question arises: what do you do with the fat you cut? You cut the fat to reduce consumption, so you can't use it for something else. That's just robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Or in the case of the produce, who is going to buy or eat the deformed produce?

I have that answer...really hungry people.

A lot of discarded produce is fed to hogs, much goes into landfills. Cut that out from their diet and the cost to feed hogs goes up.

[ROCKMAN]

Ed - You've done well. But I think you missed the point. The discussion isn't so much about personal fat but the fat of folks that provide you with your life style. Do you visit Starbucks or any other fast food joint? Are any of those shops "necessary" or are they all "fat"? The list is almost endless: all restaurants, movie theaters, professional sports, 5 grocery stores in a 1 mile radius, etc, etc. There are tens of millions employed by businesses that are not necessary for our society to carry in. Is the energy consumed by those folks " fat"?

Maybe that's the root problem with the debate here. How many here work in an industry that isn't critical to society prospering? That's a very different subject the driving a more fuel efficient car or adjusting your thermostat to use less energy. Doing such causes little or no job loss. But charging Starbucks and all other restaurants 10X the normal rate for electricity would shut down many of those "fat" consuming operations and put millions of poorly skilled folks out of work.

So would cutting the "fat" cause significant job loses: yes and no. Just depends on how you define "fat".

[MonteQuest]

Just depends on how you define "fat".

I think the OP was looking at how to cut FF use "fat." Since most of the FF use here in the US is transportation, and mostly private cars, it would seem that cutting gasoline use-- via less driving-- is where the meat lies.

What say you, ennui? Is that what you have in mind? Or something else?

[Newfie]

Ed - You've done well. But I think you missed the point. The discussion isn't so much about personal fat but the fat of folks that provide you with your life style. Do you visit Starbucks or any other fast food joint? Are any of those shops "necessary" or are they all "fat"? The list is almost endless: all restaurants, movie theaters, professional sports, 5 grocery stores in a 1 mile radius, etc, etc. There are tens of millions employed by businesses that are not necessary for our society to carry in. Is the energy consumed by those folks " fat"?

Maybe that's the root problem with the debate here. How many here work in an industry that isn't critical to society prospering? That's a very different subject the driving a more fuel efficient car or adjusting your thermostat to use less energy. Doing such causes little or no job loss. But charging Starbucks and all other restaurants 10X the normal rate for electricity would shut down many of those "fat" consuming operations and put millions of poorly skilled folks out of work.

So would cutting the "fat" cause significant job loses: yes and no. Just depends on how you define "fat".

Right on Rocman. These are the unnecessary jobs I've been going on about for a while. The list is, as you say, almost endless.

They do provide a function, but it is obtuse. They provide two functions in no particular order. They provide a means of stealth wealth distribution and they do it with dignity so that the worker thinks they are doing something valuable for the hive.

We also do wealth redistribution through welfare and other subsidation projects, but then the dignity is lost.

[ennui2]

Sorry, I think the main rebuttal here is to prove that if we pull one brick out of the Jenga puzzle that everything goes up in flames. And this has the byproduct of coming across as a FUD-style endorsement of coal-rolling your Hummer down Route 66 rather than doing anything to tread a little lighter or save a little money.

The fact is that the nature of work is going to change one way or another, and right now automation (which is a form of fat-cutting at the corporate level) is already putting people out of work at the low-end of the pay-scale. Society is going to need to adapt to these new realities. So why not also talk about human footprints while we're at it?

[MonteQuest]

Sorry, I think the main rebuttal here is to prove that if we pull one brick out of the Jenga puzzle that everything goes up in flames. And this has the byproduct of coming across as a FUD-style endorsement of coal-rolling your Hummer down Route 66 rather than doing anything to tread a little lighter or save a little money.

No, it's just the reality that in a growth based system, you can't reverse the system without major consequences, especially pulling a brick of any size out of the puzzle.

Major consequences that would be impossible to implement or impose, save a crisis situation where rationing is imposed.

Besides, "we have a glut. It's not that bad." Not mocking you, just that conservation would be a hard sell in that environment. And therein lies the irony; it's in this kind of environment we need to do it.

[ROCKMAN]

Monte - I get your point about transportation fuels. But that was my point: that's a lifestyle change similar to Ed's efforts. Short of the govt drastically raising fuel taxes there's no fat cutting potential there. And if the govt did do that how many would no longer be able to afford to drive to work? I can't even make a WAG.

So again here's the same divide. Lifestyle changes vs changes in the what "fat heavy" employment should be eliminated. IOW by definition the later dynamic would cost jobs. So again two very differrernt areas of fat reduction. Each should be discussed separately IMHO.

[MonteQuest]

Monte - I get your point about transportation fuels. But that was my point: that's a lifestyle change similar to Ed's efforts. Short of the govt drastically raising fuel taxes there's no fat cutting potential there.

Oh, I agree. I was just trying find out where ennui was wanting to cut. When it comes to cutting FF use, I'm not sure there is any "fat" that can be cut without major dislocations. Any "fat" cuts would have to be spread evenly and incrementally across the board to avoid bringing down a segment of economic activity. If we wanted to target a really unnecessary segment that consumes fuel, it would racing of all types. Still a big dislocation.

[ROCKMAN]

Monte - So true. Maybe the best approach is to distinguish between systemic fat and personal fat. All of us could cut our PF without inflicting much damage to the job market. OTOH consider the SF of the single largest fossil fuel consumer on the planet: the US Dept of Defense. Just think of the fat reduction cutting its budget 50%. But now think of the job loss that would inflict on the US defense industry.

[MonteQuest]

Monte - So true. Maybe the best approach is to distinguish between systemic fat and personal fat. All of us could cut our PF without inflicting much damage to the job market.

It took borrowing $19 trillion from the future to grow GDP. Zero interest rates won't spur consumption. Our economy is operating on a thin margin. If spending goes down, jobs are lost. I don't know how you can cut any fat without affecting jobs that would make any real difference.

[Shaved Monkey]

If you clean your own pool the pool boy starves.

[ennui2]

I wasn't aware you were trying to make that point. And making money via financial speculation is not the same as buying an iTune, nor did we have iTunes in the 1990's.

No, but real wealth was generated via bits and bytes during the first dot com boom. A few winners (like google and amazon) and a pile of dead bodies.

I used to work for a company that made it through this cyberspace bottleneck who then went on to cash out later. Not sure I've talked about that in detail, but I consider myself a domain expert on the information economy, at least as much of one as you'll find on this site.

[ennui2]

Take the vegetable harvest. It is estimated that anywhere from 20% to 40% of all produce grown is discarded because it isn’t pretty to look at. Let's cut that fat. Now, if we eliminated all that waste, the price would drop and we would have a vegetable glut. Produce growers would go out of business as profits plummeted.

But if there were that much more productivity, cost of living would also drop, which you'd think would help with people's earning potential going down. You know, maybe the reason people need to work so much in the first place is to pay for things that could cost less if all efficiency improvements were brought online at once. So you have to rethink the jobs piece of the equation. The need to sustain a high paying job is a factor of a high burn lifestyle. Burn through less fat and you can get by on less money.

And isn't that the typical doomer prep strategy? Get out of debt. Reduce your expenses. Reinsulate your house. Try to grow as much of your own food as possible.

So it seems like the jobs market and people's lifestyles eventually self-regulate.

In the best of all worlds, we would not waste this produce, but we do, and it contributes to GDP and provides jobs.

Yes, very low-paying jobs that provide little to no sense of pride for those doing the work. If I were some master planner I would be focusing on how to get people into higher skilled work rather than trying to protect entry-level work that is likely to be wiped out by automation anyway.

So, cut the fat, but be prepared for a lot of disruption in BAU.

We're in 2016. By now I thought we'd have flying cars and hoverboards. Change should be happening in the 21st century. Change can be scary but doesn't always have to wind up being bad in the end.

[MonteQuest]

But if there were that much more productivity, cost of living would also drop, which you'd think would help with people's earning potential going down.

But there is that much more productivity. It's just that no one will buy it, starting with the grocery wholesalers, then the grocery stores, then the consumers. They will have to get hungrier.

And isn't that the typical doomer prep strategy? Get out of debt. Reduce your expenses. Reinsulate your house. Try to grow as much of your own food as possible.

So it seems like the jobs market and people's lifestyles eventually self-regulate.

Yes, to a lower standard of living that can never service the debt required to keep the house of cards from falling. Catch -22

Yes, very low-paying jobs that provide little to no sense of pride for those doing the work. If I were some master planner I would be focusing on how to get people into higher skilled work rather than trying to protect entry-level work that is likely to be wiped out by automation anyway.

Produce production and distribution isn't just entry level jobs, I'm afraid.

[h2]

ennui2, if you consider yourself a domain expert, which itself suggests just tech corporate babble, not expertise, I don't know... What I see when I look at the tech sector is basically mining of the real economy and increasing the consolidation of wealth by de-localizing. uber is the poster child for this, but amazon is not to be discounted. Only the most confused person could believe that shutting down thousands of local bookstores that provided really good and cool jobs for centuries now and replacing them with 'fullfillment specialists', aka, warehouse drones doing about the most unfullfilling work you can possibly imagine is a value add to a society, unless you buy that consumption is the end and be all of human existence, which of course, is the lie we've been brainwashed into believing.

So yes, a 'domain expert', lol. Now I know why I avoid most tech people, allegedly my 'peers', like the overpaid plague they are on our society. But not overpaid for long, lol, outsourcing will take care of that small problem, then you will have just the owners of these big entities sucking money out of the planet, and contributing nothing back, unless you consider bill gates asbergers attempt to corporatize charity in his own corporate image to be progress.

Not to mention anyone who mentions amazon as a positive example is seriously confused, right now, in the middle of a huge market drop in the tech sector, amazon is still trading at about 400 to 1 P/E, ie, they are an economic joke trading at least 20x higher than they should be. Google is an ad server, period. so are most other big tech companies. Ads are to sell things, and you can't buy things if all the real local jobs are being sucked up by the omnivors like amazon. So that's a circle that's going to close fairly quickly. uber is just a few class action law suites away from serious problems in my opinion.

So yeah, domain expert, that's one that belongs on dilbert, if I were you, and I found myself about to start typing some corporate gibberish like that, I'd stop, and say to myself, nobody but a fool uses this type of language. Or not. Your call.

Now I have to go back to generating a new industry leading technology that is leaving the big billion dollar firms in the dust, what is it we call that? hmm, damn, I forget the corporate tech speak for it, you know, it's when you introduce stuff that lets people bypass local businesses and automate the cr@p out of formerly labor intensive and very expensive processes.

But thanks for the laugh, I guess I'm a domain expert too, only I actually have the background (heavily, thank god, non tech) to have a clue what that domain is actually doing globally, and what it's doing is most certainly not wealth generation, it's a big vacuum cleaner sucking up the little bits and pieces into big winner take all sections of the 'ecosystem' (another vile tech speak that refers to something about as toxically far from the real ecosystem as it's possible to get).

thanks for the laugh, now back to the grind. I don't blame anyone from the tech sector from suffering from ennui, it really is a waste of the creative spirit, and no amount of cash can change that.

What's surprising is just how little it costs to pull apart our economy, in absolute terms. For under the cost of just one of their salaries, last year I automated 2 empoloyee's jobs out of existence, massively boosted scaleability, slashed product generation times by about 1000 times, give or take. So yeah, tech... personally I blame the excesses on the sociopathic youth, where they were raised by tv, cable, and now 'smart' (sic) phones, that have to be the most stultifying technology to ever hit the human species. Ok, top 10 at least. So it's not their fault they are stupid and clueless about reality, the matter of our actual existence that is, the stuff the interweb is made out of, all the toxins, the non sustainable bits and pieces, all destined to be replaced in short order, all the true masterpiece of the dream of full scale planned obsolescence. The industrialists of days gone by look on with utter envy, and to think, we actually line up to buy this garbage!

[dohboi]

pstarr wrote: "Manufacturing, distribution and sales are merely value-added accouterments to the essential business of man . . . plundering the planet for free booty. Capitalism is a devise for making sure the profits from that essential business remain among the few at the top of the plundering empire..."

Nicely put!

If we had a different economy than the one pete so clearly laid out here, we could of course provide people moving out of jobs that are based on 'waste' to jobs based on conservation and restoration, and finally to farming--tilling and keeping and all that.

But, short of a revolution, we are stuck with the rapacious robber-capitalism that cares nothing about land or workers except how much short-term capital can be extracted from them as quickly as possible, so no such careful redirection of human labor is likely to be planned for.

(Pedant alert: title should be ...= fewer jobs )

[MonteQuest]

If we had a different economy than the one pete so clearly laid out here, we could of course provide people moving out of jobs that are based on 'waste' to jobs based on conservation and restoration, and finally to farming--tilling and keeping and all that.

But that is just robbing Peter to pay Paul. They'd have to be less energy intensive jobs with less pay to curb consumption.