The question of what IS happening versus what SHOULD happen with population growth are certainly two different things. My point is that arguments for growth ultimately need to address the questions of how big should we grow, and what happens when we reach that point. If our economy depends on continued growth, that’s going to stop working at some point.
While the physical limits of the universe are a long ways off, there are other limits that we could hit much sooner. Underlying your pro-growth arguments, there is an assumption that collective intelligence can continue to grow without limits, leading to technology that can grow without limits. I would question those assumptions.
And of course, your post is ignoring the costs of growth. Ideas are non-rival goods, but space on this planet, and physical resources, are rival goods. If intelligence (and the resulting technology) reaches a point of diminishing returns, but the costs of growth hit an upward inflection, you quickly hit a limit. For example, larger, more complex systems risk becoming less stable, while coordination problems can grow factorially.
Reasonable people can disagree on whether the current population is too big, too small, or about right, but “ever larger” is not going to work as an answer. At some point, we need to either figure out how to have a stable population, or deal with the less pleasant alternatives.
While ever larger obviously can’t work in the theoretical sense, I think the original post still stands for why the ideal population is larger than it is now.
For the past 150 years, the prices of resources have been falling, and their availability rising.
When this trend stops—there’ll definitely be an argument for halting growth. But as things stand now, it seems clear that we’re still below capacity.
The question of what IS happening versus what SHOULD happen with population growth are certainly two different things. My point is that arguments for growth ultimately need to address the questions of how big should we grow, and what happens when we reach that point. If our economy depends on continued growth, that’s going to stop working at some point.
While the physical limits of the universe are a long ways off, there are other limits that we could hit much sooner. Underlying your pro-growth arguments, there is an assumption that collective intelligence can continue to grow without limits, leading to technology that can grow without limits. I would question those assumptions.
And of course, your post is ignoring the costs of growth. Ideas are non-rival goods, but space on this planet, and physical resources, are rival goods. If intelligence (and the resulting technology) reaches a point of diminishing returns, but the costs of growth hit an upward inflection, you quickly hit a limit. For example, larger, more complex systems risk becoming less stable, while coordination problems can grow factorially.
Reasonable people can disagree on whether the current population is too big, too small, or about right, but “ever larger” is not going to work as an answer. At some point, we need to either figure out how to have a stable population, or deal with the less pleasant alternatives.
While ever larger obviously can’t work in the theoretical sense, I think the original post still stands for why the ideal population is larger than it is now. For the past 150 years, the prices of resources have been falling, and their availability rising. When this trend stops—there’ll definitely be an argument for halting growth. But as things stand now, it seems clear that we’re still below capacity.