> There was a post on Hacker News a few weeks back claiming that "natural resources" don't exist and there are absolutely no limits to economic growth. I don't

> There was a post on Hacker News a few weeks back claiming that "natural resources" don't exist and there are absolutely no limits to economic growth. I don't disagree per se, but a resource is really a material that human ingenuity has been applied to so that it can serve a useful purpose. There are lots of lots of materials that used to be turned into resources that we no longer bother with like whale oil, or current resources that used to just be gunk like crude oil. There are also resources which don't come from nature directly like computation, money, and so on. There is a lot of potential to find new uses for materials and resources in the future that could lead to further economic growth. Growth can be defined as as the increase or improvement in the inflation-adjusted market value of goods and services produced over a period of time. Services don't necessarily require pulling things out of the ground. Improvements in computing that increase productivity lead to growth. Making a person to person service more efficient or inventing a new service could allow for a lot of future growth. Is this likely to be infinitely sustainable? I have no idea.