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This seems not to address the arguments made in the article - for example, that economic growth, beyond a certain point, is mostly about "doing more with less".
by dash2 5y ago
This seems not to address the arguments made in the article - for example, that economic growth, beyond a certain point, is mostly about "doing more with less". Maybe those arguments are wrong, but they need responding to.
- berkes 5y agoThe article adresses all these points on a small timescale. Just population growth alone, using the current curve (1.1%), will hit 118 billion people in 250 years and 5,812,724,005,588 billion (not a typo) people in 2500 years. Compounding exponential growth is quite literally unimanigable. We cannot continue on current curves. No matter how efficient you make houses, produce iPads or food: exponential growth is unsustainable. Literally and figuratively.
- harryh 5y agoThat's not what the current curve actually looks like though. The rate of increase is declining every year. There are a number of developed economies that already have shrinking populations. There are a couple of different population projections out there and, of course, predictions about the future are hard. But all of them show a population peak around 2100 of maybe 10-12 billion people.
- dash2 5y agoIt's hard to see why "economic growth involves doing more with less" would work on a small timescale but not a big one. Indeed the main point of the article is that if you wait long enough, this will kick in, but that in the short run we have a problem. The same holds for population growth. As countries get richer the birth rate reduces. So there's very little chance that we'll stay on the current 1.1% curve, any more than we stayed on the analogous curve defined in 1950.
- OneEyedRobot 5y ago>It's hard to see why "economic growth involves doing more with less" would work on a small timescale but not a big one. I would guess that the marginal value of cleverness or technology decreases over time
- betwixthewires 5y agoSo one thing was addressed in the article that is a fundamental axiom of your argument, which is that historical curves are not laws of nature. You have no reason to believe that this is actually exponential growth into the future. On a note addressing your population growth numbers, I just want to say that your numbers demonstrate that you are very unfamiliar with population growth dynamics and you should research the topic more. Those numbers are impossible and not going to happen (on earth) in any scenario whatsoever.
- berkes 5y agoI know they are not going to happen. That was my entire point: that there is no way our current path can be kept on a longer timescale.