While the world has numerous issues that need to be solved - I think we've, for the time being, been able to classify exhaustion of materials as a problem we wo

While the world has numerous issues that need to be solved - I think we've, for the time being, been able to classify exhaustion of materials as a problem we won't have to deal with for a long time. The earth has a lot of matter in it - it is absurdly massive - technological advances in replicating necessary raw resources (and your topsoil one is particularly good to demonstrate this) have pushed us from looking at an absolute limit to instead viewing the perpetual creation of new components as a steadily rising economic burden. One raw resource that is actually quickly depleting is river sand for concrete - our current consumption trends are extremely scary here and some governments (CoughIndiaCough) are doing an absolutely terrible job at properly enforcing externality costs on extraction leading to mass habitat destruction. But, if we suddenly found ourselves without easy access to rough river sand we do have alternative construction materials including processed wood in various forms that can be extremely resilient. I don't really like the wording of the article in defining all resources as artificial - but the natural components driving the economy are quite abundant.