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
It’s not a misconception. It’s a fundamental flaw in modern capitalism. The only value of a publically traded company is it’s ability to generate returns, which it needs to grow to do. It’s a death sentence that makes a few people rich at the start. And then, inevitably, it collapses. Over and over again because that’s the way the system is designed to work. It’s simply not practical in the long run. Infinite growth is not physically possible. People realized this a century ago, though they may have had different motives when crafting their solutions to it.
I’ll also add that SOME growth is, or was, needed. As populations and societies grow, economies have to grow to match them. A growing population but a stagnant economy means each person will get progressively less of the pie. However, populations do not grow indefinitely. This was a baseless, early 20th century fear that has since been proven the exact opposite of the real issue. As countries develop, their populations actually SHRINK or stay the same. Many Asian countries have already advanced into population decline and most developed western nations are at the point of stable replacement. So a perpetually imploding economy is just going to become and bigger and bigger issue as its just not needed anymore.
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