How can continual growth work as a stable economic model when we live on a planet with finite resources?
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Because the only true resource is human labor.
What you consider ‘natural resources’ aren’t of any use until human labor somehow extracts it and creates a use for it. The involvement of human labor is the most important part of the process and it’s the reason that even poor people today live with luxuries the kings of old couldn’t even contemplate.
Another way to consider this is that human development may be bounded in space but infinite in time – there is no set end point for it so we can continue to grow indefinitely.
It doesn’t. Look at Coke or Pepsi. They haven’t grown much in the past 20 years or GE. They just have stable profits. And you get paid a dividend on the stock. Companies grow the stall and people freak out just ignore that. Other companies flame out go bankrupt and then a new one starts and you start the cycle over again.
TLDR: It can’t
Hustle culture and continued growth are not sustainable and culturally speaking it’s a big part of the problem.
Sooner or later our economic system will simply collapse because fractional reserve banking, excessive government debt, and corporations that put quarterly profits in front of sustainability is an economic disaster waiting to happen
Future generations like look back on the excess of the 20th and early 21th centuries with disgust
We are nowhere near a Type 1 civilisation and by the time we get there, we will almost certainly be harvesting resources from space.
In theory yes, but in practice it’s a bit more complicated than this.
1) There is 3 sectors of the economy. Primary is natural resources, Secondary is production and Tertiary is services. The first two are limited by resources so indeed you are right that continual growth is impossible. But for the tertiary sector the limiting factor is human resources. In that case, more humans mean more people to receive and provide services. It’s not 100% true because even services will need some natural resources and manufactured goods, but to a lesser extend. Developed economy are in majority made up of the tertiary sector (70%+).
2) Resources are indeed finite, but there is a LOOOOT of resources. Far more than we would realistic need. We currently extract about 90 billions of tons of material from the earth, but the earth is freaking massive. At our current pace we would need 16 quadrillion years to run out of Uranium, 2 quadrillion years to run out of copper and 234 quadrillion years to run out of silicon.
Now obviously, we can’t extract all of what exist on earth. Some material will just never be accessible no matter what, but it give you a scale of what we are talking about. We find more source of material, we develop new technology to reach new sources of material, we find alternative material, alternative method of extraction can become financially feasible as price of certain material increase, we find new way to recycle material or decrease the need of specific material. So the question to you question depend only on weather or not our technology progress can keep up with the increase in demand. And if it can’t, can we find alternative.
And then you need to take into account our solar system. The asteroid belt for example is just a fraction of the mass of the earth, but most of it’s material is far more accessible than on earth. You have the moon, other planets and satellite. We might not be able extracting those resources right now, but do we really believe that it will be impossible to ever do so? The moment certain material would be profitable to extract from asteroid, we will do it. And if we don’t have the tech, we will develop it. Might take a long time, but I have no doubt that it will eventually happen.
Now will there be moment of lag better the moment we start running out of specific material and the moment we can develop new technology that would resolve that scarcity? Probably. Could our constant hunger for more resources might create more harm in other sector? Probably. And could there ever be a moment in the future were limiting our constant growth might be the better alternative? Maybe.
It’s a complicated issue. But what is sure is that we have at our reach more than enough resources for the entirety of the human future. What is important is our technological capability to get to those resources and what is the cost of doing so.
Economic growth isn’t just about using more resources. It’s what we do with these resources and the increase in knowledge and time we have available to us.
Resources can be said to be finite, given present technology.
But we are constantly improving our ability to access new levels of supply based on improvements. Consider something as simple as oil wells. How many offshore wells were in existence 100 years ago? ZERO. So, “finite” oil resources in 1922, is a far different definition than it is in 2022.
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