> Malthusian ideas kept coming back of course—they still surround us—but the growth genie has been out of the bottle ever since and the mindset of abundance has

> Malthusian ideas kept coming back of course—they still surround us—but the growth genie has been out of the bottle ever since and the mindset of abundance has been a part of our culture. Never again can the concept of progress be dismissed as impossible. Mathusian ideas are to the current concept of Planetary Boundaries and the need for a sustainability transition what Aristotelian physics was to modern physics: A flawed but directionally correct early recognition and internalization that in material terms (and for the foreseable future) we (homo sapiens) form a closed biosphere system that must satisfy certain constraints. The constraints that this ground truth puts on the human condition are variable, technology dependent and still somewhat poorly understood (e.g tipping points) but they cannot be eliminated. Unhinged "free market" enthousiasts, technosolutionists and assorted economic growth-uber-alles ideologies are decoupled from reality and (given this mind set is the dominant political and decision framework globally) increasingly terminally dangerous. Their simplistic agenda hiddes fake and unsavory axioms such as trickle-down-economics and being relaxed about destabilizing inequalities that if further aggravated will be the primary path towards a new dark ages. A certain form of abundance is logically possible. We can obviously have in abundance anything that is compatible with long-term biosphere equilibrium and that is quite a lot. The missing catalyst are social technologies that will help us collectively create and enjoy what is plenty and equitably share what is not. The ideology expressed in this article, the adulation of past social inventions will never get us there. To use the physics analogy again, it is akin to Newtonian physics (it did solve many problems within its domain of applicability) whereas we actually live in a quantum mechanical and relativistic universe. The toolkit needs to be replaced or expanded as appropriate. Unfortunately there is no hint yet that we are in the process of inventing new and adapted socio-economic and political systems that will get us to a sustainable abundance phase. The world is run by vested interests that will gladly sacrifice the future to maintain current privilige.