Perpetual growth in a finite system is impossible, and anything that relies on perpetual growth to function is doomed to eventually fail.
For instance: social services that rely on perpetual population growth (especially youth population; e.g. Japan/South Korea), companies that rely on perpetual increase in users (most publicly-owned companies; e g. basically every social media company ATM), industries that rely on perpetual advancements in technology (e.g. industrialized agriculture, which constantly needs new ways to fight self-induced problems like soil depletion and erosion), housing as wealth generation (to be a wealth generator it has to outpace inflation, but at a certain point no one will be able to afford to purchase houses at their inflated prices no matter how over-leveraged they get; e.g. Canada). [Note that these are merely examples where these issues are currently coming to a head; they are by no means special cases, they’re just in a more advanced state of “finding out.”]
In other words, a lot of the modern world, in both public and private sectors, is built around a series of ponzi schemes.
Knowlegde growth may be sustainable, but it is also impossible to grow forever. (Supposing knowlegde is finite, which is, as far as I see it, the case as long as we make the definition of knowledge depend on characteristics like repition-free and new. For example, you could learn the number pi to even longer lenghts forever, but doing that is not necessarily something new to know as it’s just a manifestation of a repition which was already discovered.)
I’m intrigued how you would explain that economies could grow independently of resources. From my perspective, it looks a lot like each and every form of economy relies somehow on some form of resource or resources. As resources are finite, economies can’t grow forever.
Perpetual growth in a finite system is impossible, and anything that relies on perpetual growth to function is doomed to eventually fail.
For instance: social services that rely on perpetual population growth (especially youth population; e.g. Japan/South Korea), companies that rely on perpetual increase in users (most publicly-owned companies; e g. basically every social media company ATM), industries that rely on perpetual advancements in technology (e.g. industrialized agriculture, which constantly needs new ways to fight self-induced problems like soil depletion and erosion), housing as wealth generation (to be a wealth generator it has to outpace inflation, but at a certain point no one will be able to afford to purchase houses at their inflated prices no matter how over-leveraged they get; e.g. Canada). [Note that these are merely examples where these issues are currently coming to a head; they are by no means special cases, they’re just in a more advanced state of “finding out.”]
In other words, a lot of the modern world, in both public and private sectors, is built around a series of ponzi schemes.
I wish I could upvote more.
You can by creating more accounts.
You found the loophole for perpetual growth!
But you’re assuming the type of growth will never change.
They literally said:
I don’t see how your comment applies to that.
Knowlegde growth may be sustainable, but it is also impossible to grow forever. (Supposing knowlegde is finite, which is, as far as I see it, the case as long as we make the definition of knowledge depend on characteristics like repition-free and new. For example, you could learn the number pi to even longer lenghts forever, but doing that is not necessarily something new to know as it’s just a manifestation of a repition which was already discovered.)
I’m intrigued how you would explain that economies could grow independently of resources. From my perspective, it looks a lot like each and every form of economy relies somehow on some form of resource or resources. As resources are finite, economies can’t grow forever.
There are already trends showing economic growth disconnected from both resources and energy. Welcome to the service economy
Service needs workforce performing the service. Workforce are usually human resources. Thereby, limited again. Or did I get it wrong?
We already have many cases where a very small number of humans can manage automated services for millions. It’s extremely scalable
While you could argue the electronics and power are also a resource dependency, it again scales extremely well