I often see statements in the news from economists saying things like “only 0.2% growth reported, which might have bad effects on the economy”. In my eyes infinite growth is simply impossible when we have finite resources, or is that a misconception from my part?
Edit: thank you for all the detailed an in-depth answers! Learned a lot of new things 🙂
In: 96
Nobody needs INFINITE growth, because the world will not be here FOREVER.
You’re also missing the fact that value is measured in lumps of resources. A wooden log doesn’t have some fixed value. If I do some work on the wood, then I can turn it into any number of things that might be of more value. A chair, a table, a picture frame, or a million pencils. Put those objects in a movie and suddenly they are collectors items with even more value.
And pretty much anything that is universally considered good (like reducing poverty or curing a disease or building a school) is going to add value.
Growth isn’t the be all and end all, but it’s an indirect window into many of the things that we care about.
Even if we decide that some how each lump of “resource” has some fixed value (which isn’t true), we have a ridiculously large planet. We barely scratch the surface of it to get the resources that we use and we have many processes for replenishing our supplies. If you need more wood, you can plant trees.
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