On 8/11/2020 at 11:23 AM, PoignardAzur said:
Also, the economy doesn't actually need infinite growth. Like you said, at the end of the day people want goods and food to eat. At some point the economy has grown enough that you're essentially in a post-scarcity society with regards to the bottom of Maslow's pyramid. We're arguably already there: being homeless in a 21th century western country is not the same thing as being homeless in the 18th century. Demographic growth creates a demand for economic growth, but demographic growth also plateaus as contraception becomes cheaper and social systems become stronger.
The way our current economy is structured, I think it does. Publicly traded corporations earn most revenue in the economy. Their CEOs have fiduciary duties to maximize profit. If they're lax in that duty, they can be sued or fired. This means there's no "enough" revenue. They need to increase it year after year to satisfy shareholders. If growth STOPS or REVERSES for most companies, we have a recession or depression which can affect billions negatively, leading to more homelessness, hunger, inability to afford basic goods and services, etc. So in order for things to be "okay" under the economy, there has to be ongoing growth. Our economic system simply isn't designed for anything else. I'm not saying you can't design an economic system that doesn't rely on growth, I'm saying that's not what we currently have, at all.
Regarding the homelessness comment, we've also had the greatest extraction of resources at any point in history also. This makes anything look better by comparison for the short term. As demand outstrips supply for essential resources, this could unleash poverty like we've never seen before. My point being is you say homelessness now isn't as bad as in the 18th century. That may not be the case by the end of the 21st if enough systems collapse.
Demographic growth may be leveling off, but my understanding is it would settle at 11 billion. If that's still WAY past the carrying capacity of the Earth, that's still unsustainable. A figure I remember when I did Oil's Well is that without oil, the carrying capacity of the earth is about 1 billion. Now technology may have made that number better, but considering the ecological impact we're having on the planet right now, I think all signs point to us being overextended.
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Someone on reddit put in a way I really liked: "The only resource that's actually scarce for this century is how much we can afford to fuck up the planet before it becomes unlivable". For everything else, we haven't even scratched the surface.
(well, technically we're running out of oil and some rare earths, but alternatives exist, and eg hydrogen is not running out any time soon)
We're collapsing ecosystems also and many biologists argue we're in the sixth mass extinction. I honestly don't know how that plays out for the survival of humanity other than "probably not great." Even without that though, much of the progress and breakthroughs and population explosion we've had for the past 150 years or so can largely be traced back to oil. It's what fueled the machines we used to develop better technology and even now, is absolutely essential for transportation. Alternatives do exist to oil. However, there's nothing even CLOSE as far as the SCALE we use it at without massive, massive infrastructure changes that are decades off in good times.
I mean I think I get what you're saying. We have absolutely copious amounts of resources that if they were wisely managed, could probably last us millennia. That's not what we're doing though. An analogy I make is to imagine a pioneer colony like Jamestown. Imagine they hunted all the game in the area and harvest all edibles and had enough food to last the winter if they were careful about it. Now imagine instead of rationing, they decided to have massive feasts every day in celebration and ended up going through all their food stores in a month. Things would look GREAT and promising in that first month. They would probably all be dead by the third month. Even though the situation is more complex, I see that general kind of dynamic playing out on a much larger and longer scale.