> GDP is artificial

…all economic metrics are artificial. Society is artificial.

How are you defining an economy? Or is your original statement (“economy is fossil fuels”) just a tautology?

> don't know how you read that from what I say

There is no political system on the planet that can enact and survive economic collapse. If that’s what’s required, this is a fool’s errand.

Fortunately, again, you’re wrong. It’s not required, though I’m sure we’ll keep seeing governments who try the silly route replaced. The best we can do in the meantime is politically sideline folks who believe this stuff.

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palata a day ago | parent [-]

> How are you defining an economy?

I said it above. The economy is what we produce and consume. Because the metrics economists use (like GDP) make no sense does not mean that the economy does not exist.

There are physical metrics to measure how the economy is doing (that I mentioned above). For instance, you can look at how many tons of stuff are being moved by trucks. If many trucks move a lot of stuff, then it means that stuff is being produced and consumed.

Another one you can measure is the surface that is being constructed. When humans in a country build houses and buildings, it is a sign that "the economy" is growing.

And it is difficult to cheat with those "physical" metrics. Whereas cheating GDP is absolutely trivial. Do you know how they correct for inflation? There is no way to "measure" inflation, it's a guesstimate. But depending on how you guesstimate it, you increase or decrease the GDP.

What we see in Europe since 2007 (the peak of fossil fuels for Europe) is that trucks are moving less and less stuff, and the surface built by humans in Europe is slowing down. Those physical estimators show that Europe is slowing down, completely correlated to fossil fuels. GDP is growing, sure... but again GDP is "manipulated" (consciously or not, that's not the point) by the numbers we put in the "inflation" box.

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JumpCrisscross a day ago | parent [-]

> For instance, you can look at how many tons of stuff are being moved by trucks

Gross tonnage is a good input into "what we produce and consume." It's incomplete, however. Grossly. It excludes all services, for example. It's why we abandoned it as a measure after like the early industrial revolution.

(A better one is electricity production, which you can estimate remotely from fuel levels and thermals. It’s also woefully incomplete—the nutters trying to forecast based solely on it are influencers, not fund managers or policymakers, for good reason.)

> Do you know how they correct for inflation?

Yes.

> There is no way to "measure" inflation

This is nonsense. It must be estimated. But so must e.g. "the surface that is being constructed" depending on how one defines surface construction.

There are various measures of inflation of various utility. Some are used to deflate GDP.

Mankiw's Principles of Economics might be a good start if you're serious about your questions. Because by your metrics, decarbonistion is a folly—the measures are probably made up anyway!

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palata a day ago | parent [-]

> Because by your metrics, decarbonistion is a folly—the measures are probably made up anyway!

Not sure if you're consciously being manipulative or not.

Sure, you are more eloquent than I am. But do you understand my point about estimating inflation being a lot more random than other metrics? Making me say that "any kind of metrics is always folly" is just manipulative, I'm sure you understand that it is not what I mean.

> It excludes all services, for example. It's why we abandoned it as a measure after like the early industrial revolution.

Which I'm sure is important for economists doing economy stuff. But I am convinced that there is value in seeing that after 2007, indicators like gross tonnage have been slowing down, and that is correlated with the evolution of fossil fuels.

We cannot eat services, or use them to heat our apartments, can we? Services are a luxury for when everything below works. The risk with the end of fossil fuels is that it will disrupt everything on top of which services are built. I don't think GDP is bringing much in those discussions.

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JumpCrisscross 14 hours ago | parent [-]

> do you understand my point about estimating inflation being a lot more random than other metrics?

Yes. I’d argue inflation metrics are about as easy to fuck with as any emissions math I’ve seen. That doesn’t make either fundamentally wrong. But if one is irredeemably wrong, so is the other.

(In any case, you can deflate your own GDP. Nominal GDP contains zero deflation. There is no similar easy fix for emissions calculations, which I read with much wider error bars than any OECD inflation print.)

> Which I'm sure is important for economists doing economy stuff

Not the billions of people employed in services?

> indicators like gross tonnage have been slowing down, and that is correlated with the evolution of fossil fuels

Global gross tonnage is growing [1]. On the sea, your correlation works because that fleet runs on fossil fuels. If you were trying to measure Chinese economic activity using fossil-fuel metrics, on the other hand, you’d fail.

(Again, your instinct isn’t wrong. Energy is, more or less, the economy. That’s why we can decarbonise without lowering living standards. We can keep energy constant or even growing while reducing fossil-fuel use.)

[1] https://unctadstat.unctad.org/insights/theme/107

	▲	palata 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Global gross tonnage is growing [1] In Europe?