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Malthus was wrong isn't an argument. > But the deeper reason is that there’s really no such thing as a natural resource. All resources are artificial. They are

Malthus was wrong isn't an argument. > But the deeper reason is that there’s really no such thing as a natural resource. All resources are artificial. They are a product of technology. And economic growth is ultimately driven, not by material resources, but by ideas. That sounds far-stretched. The climate isn't an artificial resource, it's very natural and messing it up is going to seriously hinder growth. The fossil fuels that drove our growth for two centuries aren't artificial either, nor are they idea. The limits to growth is still valid today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth There's no scenario in which growth is perpetual. If people want to argue about perpetual growth, they should come with numbers based on known estimates of the resource available today. Otherwise, it's just faith and holds no scientific value.

PostOnce 4y ago
The fossil fuels are pumped out (and refined) with billions (and billions...) of dollars of high tech machinery based on complex ideas, though, rather than just being natural pools of gasoline you drive your car up to.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  There were pools of gasoline (or at least light sweet crude) you could roll up to, at one time. Those turned out to be scarce and limited, and were used up quickly.
titzer 4y ago
Just to take computing as an example analogy: the problem is that some physical limits are close at hand, like the heat dissipation possible per square or cubic centimeter, which constrains processor improvements more today than say, 30 years ago, and some limits are far away, like the number of bits that can stored per unit of volume given the inherent quantum noise, which is an enormous number of bits in a tiny space, and we are nowhere near close to this limit. So we can reasonably assume a long growth trajectory for storage density but a short and slow growth trajectory in compute. Malthus wasn't really wrong, we just pushed back the boundaries farther than what he imagined. For example, there was a lot more farmland available than he thought or calculated; we grew up to and past that. We also increased yields per acre roughly 4x in the 20th century. There's no realistic 4x happening for that again; in fact, soil quality has been depleted to the point that yields are flat or even falling. (plus climate change supercharges weather patterns and lots of crops are lost). Though his words were clunky, he was basically saying that exponential growth will outstrip polynomial growth in the end. And that's inescapable. Some resources on Earth are in tight supply, like helium and lithium, and others are super abundant, like uranium and water (though fresh water is tight!). But they are all limited and eventually the "ideas" we keep coming up to utilize them better will be no substitute.

PostOnce 4y ago

The fossil fuels are pumped out (and refined) with billions (and billions...) of dollars of high tech machinery based on complex ideas, though, rather than just being natural pools of gasoline you drive your car up to.

dredmorbius 4y ago
There were pools of gasoline (or at least light sweet crude) you could roll up to, at one time. Those turned out to be scarce and limited, and were used up quickly.

titzer 4y ago

Just to take computing as an example analogy: the problem is that some physical limits are close at hand, like the heat dissipation possible per square or cubic centimeter, which constrains processor improvements more today than say, 30 years ago, and some limits are far away, like the number of bits that can stored per unit of volume given the inherent quantum noise, which is an enormous number of bits in a tiny space, and we are nowhere near close to this limit. So we can reasonably assume a long growth trajectory for storage density but a short and slow growth trajectory in compute. Malthus wasn't really wrong, we just pushed back the boundaries farther than what he imagined. For example, there was a lot more farmland available than he thought or calculated; we grew up to and past that. We also increased yields per acre roughly 4x in the 20th century. There's no realistic 4x happening for that again; in fact, soil quality has been depleted to the point that yields are flat or even falling. (plus climate change supercharges weather patterns and lots of crops are lost). Though his words were clunky, he was basically saying that exponential growth will outstrip polynomial growth in the end. And that's inescapable. Some resources on Earth are in tight supply, like helium and lithium, and others are super abundant, like uranium and water (though fresh water is tight!). But they are all limited and eventually the "ideas" we keep coming up to utilize them better will be no substitute.