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"Growth and Sustainability" Engineer Victor Liste
100 years ago factories looked like this
Since the beginning of mankind up to 200 years ago
the main concern of human beings was to produce enough food
With the industrial revolution, which is very recent in the history of mankind,
All that began to change.
And 100 years ago we started to produce goods massively, other than food.
The model adopted was a model of steady growth
and work mechanism.
What does this mean:
I produce more every time, to accomplish that more people is employed,
and that same people are the ones who can buy the production
and improve their standard of living.
This at first worked extremely well.
It allowed a growing number of people to consume.
and increasingly produce more goods.
But, what happened over the years?
increased production did not mean an increase in people working anymore,
automation started.
And this began to break the cycle of production and consumption.
The mechanism of the new workers consuming the increase in production,
started to have problems.
And this began long ago.
If we look how the factories were before
and we look what Keynes said
Many politicians say they are Keynesians today.
Look what he said:
"We are being afflicted with a new disease
of which some readers may not yet have heard the name, but of which
they will hear a great deal in the years to come-namely,
technological unemployment. This means unemployment due to
our discovery of means of economizing the use of labor
outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labor"
This means that in 1930, we began to invent jobs
That didn't satisfy any actual needs.
and technological unemployment was already a reality.
And this was one of the causes of the crisis in the 30's.
The famous crisis in the United States.
Many of you may wonder,
unemployment really is a problem,
why cannot it be solved?,
why there is always unemployment?, and it is chronic
and is actually increasing.
And I wonder the opposite.
How can it be that the majority of people have a job?
You may ask me, why do you wonder that?
Because if they had problems in 1930,
when factories were still so crowded.
Today that they look like this,
How is it possible that most people still have a job?
And not only the factories,
where we can say that the productivity ratio is 100-1.
A person driving robots can do the job
previously done by 100 people.
Today a person with a seeder and a combine harvester does the job
125 people did 100 years ago, when they did not have that technology.
Today a person with a computer and an excel spreadsheet,
does the work of 100 or more people 50 years ago when there was not even
calculator, or 70 years ago, when for accounting of any
business an army of people doing calculations was needed.
How can it be that if we have increased our productivity 100 times,
we have generated so many jobs?
And my presentation will try to illustrate that.
Not by me explaining it, but putting together a model, here on stage,
A model of our production and consumption system.
A model is a simplified representation that allows us to experience,
allows us to draw conclusions and make predictions.
To build the model we choose a particular product.
I wanted to choose a product of the growing industry of disposables.
We increasingly produce more disposable stuff. When I was a kid,
almost no disposable products existed and I'm only 34 years old.
But in recent decades, the disposables industry grew a lot.
And in particular I chose a product well known to all.
The disposable cups.
So to make our model we will invite different sectors to the stage.
Different people representing different sectors
of our society, and we will see what happens.
We will experience a little
So I invite the first sectors involved
in the cycle of production and consumption.
We see the consumer
Stand on this side, you're the last in the chain.
The camera can see her there?
Here we have manufacturing, please sir over here.
Merchant, you are in the middle.
Transportation Sector please
and raw materials.
Let's see if you are all well organized?
you have to go between manufacturing and commerce.
Excuse me.
Get together a little bit.
It's a matter of order, just because more sectors are coming next.
I don't know if everyone knows that plastic comes from oil,
is the last thing left in the column of the refinery.
Then we have: raw materials, manufacturing,
transport sector, wholesale and retail, and consumer.
Let's start with the consumer.
In this case the consumer is a clerk.
How many disposable cups do you consume per day in the office?
Well, when I arrive I take a cup of coffee,
Around 11 am I usually drink a glass of water.
For lunch I use a cup
and after lunch I drink another coffee,
and before I leave I drink a glass of water.
I would say I use around 5 cups a day.
Let's see, we can say that an average office worker uses
5 disposable cups per day.
If we think that, for example, this factory in particular,
supplies 1 million clerks,
we are generating and throwing 1000 million cups per year.
If we do the math, 200 working days x 5 cups,
That means every clerk throws away a thousand cups per year.
If there are 1 million clerks then it means 1000 million cups
are thrown into the environment per year.
Are you okay with this?
Well, the truth is, it doesn't look good.
Let's see the other extreme of the chain.
Do we have enough raw materials for this rate of consumption?
I can say that every time
we have to look for oil in more remote places.
The extraction is becoming increasingly complex
but hey, we still have.
Well, what I'm showing is nothing new right?
During the last years, we are realizing
that raw materials are not infinite, they we are running out of them.
That we can not generate so much waste.
And a mechanism has emerged,
which in recent years has grown considerably,
that helps a little with the issue of raw materials,
helps to reduce the environmental impact,
and also helps us feel a little better
when we consume and generate waste.
I ask you to receive with a loud applause to the recycling industry!
Good afternoon, leave the recycling basket next to the consumer.
Get close to the manufacturing sector
you also help there.
Well, now we are improving.
Consumer, look now you have your recycling basket.
So here you have the five cups per day, please use the basket.
Well, one went to the environment
but 80% recycling is not bad!
I don't have to move, I'm sorry, each sector has its role.
Transport, please take the basket to the recycling sector.
Recycling is great!
We are creating new jobs!
Notice that we now have new requirements for truckers.
Tell me recycler, what is your recycling efficiency?
Of all the material I receive,
I can recycle 75%,
the other 25% is wasted.
So, if you receive 4 used cups,
you can recycle new material for 3,
and another one goes to the environment.
But all in all,
From 5 cups we recovered 3
not bad
We are much better now.
Now you have to replace only two cups instead of five.
If you look with narrow eyes,
many of us can smile watching this,
We are saving some resources.
But I have to provide oil
for transport to move
the cups to be recycled.
We have improved a little bit
but we still need a lot of oil.
While we are saving on raw material
now we have to fuel trucks to carry
the cups to be recycled and we also have to provide energy
to the new recycling factory.
but, anyway, we have improved.
The truth is that Global Footprint Network measure the use
of the planet's resources and the rate of regeneration.
And today we are consuming renewable resources 50% faster
than they regenerate.
We would need an earth and a half to be sustainable.
And that is considering renewable resources only
because oil is not even renewable. When we run out there is no more.
Or it can take millions of years to renew.
Then you can start thinking.
What if we stopped growing? and recycle more?
Could we achieve sustainability?
Ha ha ha!
Who laughed?
Excuse me, you can hear me, don't you?
Yes
What you are saying is..., Can I take the stage?
Yes
Financial Sector?
Wow!
Let me see young man, what you have just said,
what you said to all of us, is that we have to stop growing?
I simply said that if we stopped growing ...
You can not stop growing, Indeed, I will say.
The only possible option is steady growth!
Pay attention,
Is there any entrepreneur in the auditorium?
Here he is,
Take the stage.
hang up the phone,
Look all the people who are listening.
The question is this,
What are your production goals for next year?
Well, we're talking about 5% more.
If I decrease my scale and my competitiveness,
the truth is that my competitors will destroy me.
Can you see young man?, Do you understand what I say?
And if we ask the government?
I wonder if there's someone representing the government in the room.
Please, take the stage.
Now you'll see, stop producing, stop growing? ha ha ha
ha ha ha
They will always say, you have to keep growing,
that the growth has to continue. Or not?
You're right, it is true,
Our forecast for this year is to grow around 5%.
We must grow, grow and grow.
Our friend here, the financier said that if we do not grow we are in recession.
and that's bad.
He was very clear!
One year you don't grow and you're in a recession! Do you understand?
But, can I ask a question?
5% you have to increase the production
and you already produce 1 billion cups per year
Who are you going to sell the 50 million additional cups to?
Just when I was interrupted by our friend,
I was talking to the marketing sector.
We commissioned a study to know that.
Marketing! The sector that was missing!
And what did the study found?
And according to the detailed market study,
if we put Disney characters faces to the cups
and make a good advertising campaign,
we will impose the product on children's parties.
But, this is crazy.
If we keep making more and more products that we don't need,
generating garbage,
even if we recycle it,
we are never going to achieve sustainability.
But, why can't we stop growing?
What is the justification for steady growth?
Growth is not the same as development.
Justify? I do not need any justification sir.
The only option is perpetual growth.
Do you understand?
But, if we all have environmental awareness,
What is the logical solution?
We could not make a cup, 10 times heavier,
with a little thicker wall,
we give it to the clerk, he uses it the entire year,
then we can recycle it.
And instead of using a thousand disposable cups a year, he uses a single cup.
That would be a solution.
But if you pay attention, we hear everywhere about recycling.
We are always listening about recycling policies.
My oldest daughter is 4 years old,
She goes to kindergarten and they teach her to recycle.
She once washed the yogurt container, put soap in it and told me:
Daddy, I re-used it, I did a soap dish.
But, making things to last?
Start using the goods efficiently, why we do not hear or read about that?
Why do we read so little about it?
What determines the topics that are discussed every day?
who is there?
The media!
Hello everyone! I am the media.
And we are responsible for implementing the agenda items, basically.
And how we do it, some may wonder.
Quite simply, we have some people that influence us,
they have enough power in society.
They can be corporations, unions may be workers
may be states, governments, etc ...
But we do not only talk about what they tell us
or influence us,
we also talk about several things that are news for themselves,
motor vehicle accidents, a heavy snow ,
any natural disaster.
Great! I have my model here!
I'm going to find out which sector would be interested in
making things to last.
Because it is the logical solution.
Entrepreneur. Look, if you make the cups 10 times heavier
you are going to be able to sell the 10 times more expensive.
Let me see darling, because you are an engineer,
but it seems that you weren't thought math very well.
You're asking me to, instead of selling
1000 cups per year per office,
to place one only.
Okay, I can sell it 10 times more expensive.
But that would decrease my billing 100 times!.
It is a complete madness what you're asking.
Well, let's try another sector.
You that are a proud manufacturer and work in the company of the entrepreneur,
and have a very strong union.
Aren't you interested in making products that are not
unnecessary crap?
Will you make cups to last?
In that case, I have to say no.
I should make one cup instead of the 1000 we do now.
We have to take care of our jobs.
Yes, of course. And the carriers?
Don't you want to save the planet? Your union is strong.
No, no, look. The weight to be transported now would be reduced to 1%.
That means that in every hundred workers only one will remain. No.
We don't want to reduce our billing 100 times either.
And governments? Governments have to take care of us.
This is killing us all.
The environment. We're all on the planet, we can not leave it.
Sir, we can not make decisions that
reduce our revenues
and that also destroy jobs.
Now I understand why nobody talks about this.
No sector of society will ever speak of
planned obsolescence, to make things to last.
Excuse me just a second, Don't you want to ask me?
Don't you see? Don't you see? that the only possibility
is perpetual growth? You are so stubborn!
But, this is crazy, you see?
I innocently built a model
and now they are against me.
What we are basically saying is the most logical thing on earth.
We have one planet and we have to use resources efficiently,
but now I understand how we, as a society
managed to create enough jobs,
how we created jobs after increasing our productivity 100 times.
We are manufacturing waste and then recycling it.
And while we do this, we are sinking in the boat. All together.
From this model and this experimentation,
which became quite complex, but
allowed us to draw some conclusions.
The first thing we see is that our economic model
fails in 3 key areas
First, we have only one planet and if we have to continually increase
the rate of consumption of raw materials
obviously we will reach a collapse at some point.
If we do not collapse there,
if we continue to consume more and more,
we'll get to environmental collapse, environmental degradation.
Many organizations are saying that the point of no return
may be in 30 years. It is unclear what will happen,
but we are influencing our planet in a strong way.
And if every year we grow more than the previous one, obviously,
we can not determine when, but it will happen.
And it is a matter of decades, no more than that.
On the other hand,
this strong defense of jobs,
is a losing battle anyway.
Because technological unemployment continues.
And you truckers who have a very strong union,
autonomous vehicles already exist.
and they are cheap,
We have already a Volvo car, the Google Car, the Stanford University.
They are cheap, no driver is needed and most importantly is much safer.
You heard about the train accident in Spain recently.
I do not know if you heard the statements of the driver.
He said, "No way, I got distracted for an instant.
I said that this route was dangerous,
humans can be distracted"
he said it crying,
feeling responsible for causing the death of 80 people.
But what he said was very logical.
We can not put a person that can be distracted to make a decision,
if today we can put a machine with a lot of redundant systems.
There are already autonomous trains and no one heard of an accident.
If there had been an accident, the first thing been said
would have been that machines are dangerous.
The mechanism of labor is decreasing
and the problem of technological unemployment is rising. And is unstoppable.
Even workers in manufacturing
which are much less than they were before,
Today only 20% of jobs are in manufacturing,
are also at risk. Automation continues
I work on that, I leave out of job a lot of people
every year in manufacturing, installing robots.
And on the other hand also traders will lose their jobs.
More and more people are buying online.
Adding that there are autonomous vehicles
and that they can make automatic delivery of stuff.
Today an autonomous flying vehicle, a tiny helicopter,
a drone, costs USD 300.
You can do a pizza delivery if you want.
There are videos already showing that kind of thing.
One could buy a pizza online and the drone brings it to you
and leaves it in your backyard, or on the balcony.
It sounds like science fiction, but today we have the technology to do that.
It's crazy what we are doing to preserve jobs.
We are prisoners of a socioeconomic system that was wonderful at first.
100 years ago, without the current technology,
the steady growth was wonderful allowing more people to have access to goods,
more people worked in factories and those same people consumed.
But there comes a time that you can not grow anymore.
If you make refrigerators in a country where
there aren't any, at first the demand continually increases.
But if you do them well, when all families have a refrigerator
no one will buy you anymore. It's that simple, then what do you have to do?
All you have to do is make them not to last that long.
It's it not due to a conspiracy,
What else can the employers do? They have to preserve the jobs.
And for example, if peaks in line voltage damage refrigerators,
Do they include a tension protection that can cost a few bucks?
No. We don't need a conspiracy to understand it.
I don't think that appliance manufacturers
from all continents meet in a room,
smoking cigars and make a deal. Planned obsolescence can be explained,
understanding the mechanisms of the system in which we live today.
We have technology that allows the 7 billion inhabitants of earth
to live with a high standard of living.
Without the need to work.
Then we have to see what we do with our free time .
But technology is sufficient to generate wealth for 7 billion ,
living in a high standard without working ,
or working a few hours well organized to
produce goods efficiently .
And doing it in a sustainable way .
But instead, we have a socioeconomic system
where 1 billion people are hungry .
Of the rest, those who have jobs , most have jobs they do not like
and that don't satisfy any real need .
I showed an example of that. We could leave 1% of these jobs,
do glasses to last and achieve sustainability.
But you can not do that.
It seems that from no sector of society
will emerge the solution to these problems .
We have just seen that, experimenting a bit .
It seems that only from the awareness of a critical mass of individuals
the building of an alternative will emerge .
The Zeitgeist Movement proposes a resource-based economic model
A RBEM is not even completely defined .
All we're saying is ,
why don't we produce goods using the planet's resources efficiently.
All tasks that can be automated, let's automate them.
Of course, there are a lot of things yet to solve.
But that does not mean that it's a whim
of a group of young people far away from reality.
There is no evidence that it would work,
but there is no evidence showing the contrary either.
And even with problems,
do you imagine that it would be worse than what we have now?
Don't expect that solution to come from any traditional institution.
That solution will come
if we become aware.
Excuse me.