> We're used to the world economy growing a few percent per year. This has been the case for many generations. This is a thing that has been puzzling me for a

> We're used to the world economy growing a few percent per year. This has been the case for many generations. This is a thing that has been puzzling me for a while. Isn't "growth by a few percent each year" already exponential? E.g. if you had a constant economic growth of 1% per year, that would mean that this year's GDP would always be 101% of last year's GDP, which is exponential growth. So even with a "constant" relative growth rate, the plot of "absolute" GDP over time would eventually become a hockey-stick curve - things would be expected to get weird at some point if the steepness of the curve crosses some threshold.