At the most basic, production is defined as resources_in x efficiency. American energy consumption stopped growing so all growth has to come from efficiency in

At the most basic, production is defined as resources_in x efficiency. American energy consumption stopped growing so all growth has to come from efficiency increases, which has a physical maximum of 1. Energy efficiency of computation has been increasing exponentially - and orders of magnitude increases are still possible before the Landauer's bound is hit. Cooling and heating is close to physical efficiency limits. Transport in theory could be near lossless, but required infrastructure makes that impractical any time soon, and open-air transport is close to efficiency limits. Therefore, in the absence of an increase in energy consumption significant productivity gains can only happen in sectors where compute/storage/bandwidth expense is a significant factor. This very lopsided growth profile is likely to lead to an increase in social tensions. The only other sector I can think of where exponential efficiency increases are also possible is biotechnology, and, by extension, medicine. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#/media/File%3AUS_energy_consumption.svg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#...