I agree that there is a tendency be self-serving in people's ideas about not wanting more growth. The overwhelming majority of these people have no problem at all with continued economic growth---they just want to preserve their privileged position that comes from 'being there first'.
But beneath this there is a real issue. Our economic system is based on a the ideal of unlimited, exponential growth---which is plainly impossible on a finite planet. The question is, where do we want to stop? If our population continues to grow, it will hit some sort of physical limit. But long before that, we will have totally destroyed a lot of very nice things that are worth preserving and greatly diminished people's quality of life.
So yeah, as long as people keep reproducing (and that includes immigration in Canada) we need to find housing for them. But I think we should all be wary to dismissing out of hand the idea that there are limits to growth.
"Our economic system is based on the ideal of unlimited, exponential growth---which is plainly impossible on a finite planet."
Fair enough, but I don't think limiting housing in Vancouver is a good way to try to limit the use of finite physical resources worldwide! The usual mechanism for making better use of resources is that prices reflect scarcity: if a resource is scarce, prices rise and we use less of it. I would also point out that globally, as people have gotten richer, birthrates are down. https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/06/01/global-fertility-has-collapsed-with-profound-economic-consequences
The US, Canada, and Australia are traditional immigrant destinations because we have so much land. The difficulty is that people go where the jobs are, and in specific cities like Toronto and Vancouver, we haven't built enough housing to match the jobs. Besides allowing more housing, another suggestion (from Mike Moffatt and Hannah Rasmussen) is to deepen labour markets in mid-sized cities, so that we don't all have to crowd into Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. https://web.archive.org/web/20161109021437/https://canada2020.ca/labour/
I don't argue with anything you've said. I just think that all people of good will should acknowledge that there really are limits to how large our population/economy should grow. We've already overshot the optimal population of the earth, as far as that goes. Unfortunately, it's been my experience that many orthodox economists just shove their fingers in their ears and hum loudly when someone from another discipline points this out. And that is a significant long term problem that needs fixing.
I agree that there is a tendency be self-serving in people's ideas about not wanting more growth. The overwhelming majority of these people have no problem at all with continued economic growth---they just want to preserve their privileged position that comes from 'being there first'.
But beneath this there is a real issue. Our economic system is based on a the ideal of unlimited, exponential growth---which is plainly impossible on a finite planet. The question is, where do we want to stop? If our population continues to grow, it will hit some sort of physical limit. But long before that, we will have totally destroyed a lot of very nice things that are worth preserving and greatly diminished people's quality of life.
So yeah, as long as people keep reproducing (and that includes immigration in Canada) we need to find housing for them. But I think we should all be wary to dismissing out of hand the idea that there are limits to growth.
"Our economic system is based on the ideal of unlimited, exponential growth---which is plainly impossible on a finite planet."
Fair enough, but I don't think limiting housing in Vancouver is a good way to try to limit the use of finite physical resources worldwide! The usual mechanism for making better use of resources is that prices reflect scarcity: if a resource is scarce, prices rise and we use less of it. I would also point out that globally, as people have gotten richer, birthrates are down. https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/06/01/global-fertility-has-collapsed-with-profound-economic-consequences
The US, Canada, and Australia are traditional immigrant destinations because we have so much land. The difficulty is that people go where the jobs are, and in specific cities like Toronto and Vancouver, we haven't built enough housing to match the jobs. Besides allowing more housing, another suggestion (from Mike Moffatt and Hannah Rasmussen) is to deepen labour markets in mid-sized cities, so that we don't all have to crowd into Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. https://web.archive.org/web/20161109021437/https://canada2020.ca/labour/
I don't argue with anything you've said. I just think that all people of good will should acknowledge that there really are limits to how large our population/economy should grow. We've already overshot the optimal population of the earth, as far as that goes. Unfortunately, it's been my experience that many orthodox economists just shove their fingers in their ears and hum loudly when someone from another discipline points this out. And that is a significant long term problem that needs fixing.