I sympathize with your concern but I don't personally share it. Just to share my perspective (which is not the same as trying to argue that you're wrong...) Fi

I sympathize with your concern but I don't personally share it. Just to share my perspective (which is not the same as trying to argue that you're wrong...) First, this concern is as old as the world[1] - and I experienced a version of this in the mid-90s when people were freaking out about peak oil[2] using much the same language/tone/concepts as you're voicing in your message. My point isn't that past performance guarantees future returns, but that there's something about this type of idea/anxiety that is inherently "sticky" in people's minds, separately from how it has actually panned out. Second, I think you're missing a logical step between "we aren't going to be able to just keep building new tech" and "rampant level of consumption companies have been training them on." Companies have been able to "train" consumers to the current level of consumption precisely because resource availability has made it possible. If a resource became scarce, the price of goods based on that item would go up and thus consumption would go down. For example, see the graph of oil consumption in the US that naturally dropped by quite a bit around the supply shock of the Iranian revolution. [3] The fact is obvious that humans can shift our consumption patterns, either by consuming less of something or shifting our consumption to a different type of thing. We naturally do this all the time as resource availability (and thus price) determine what is and isn't economical to be consuming. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil [3] https://www.ourworldofenergy.com/vignettes.php?type=introduction-to-energy&id=8 https://www.ourworldofenergy.com/vignettes.php?type=introduc...