7
Saying It Out Loud Isn't Enough
(www.newsweek.com)
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this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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Losing 3 billion people would destroy the global economy. Capitalist economy needs constant growth to survive.
Well, do I have some bad news for you! The world population isn't projected to peak until 2080, but the U.S. population is projected to peak in 2052 (<30 years). We have one generation to figure out the alchemy of prosperity under population stagnation.
FWIW: there's nothing written in stone that says you must have growth to sustain capitalism. A shrinking labor pool can be replaced with improved efficiency (i.e.: AI & automation). A shrinking consumer base can be replaced with increased per-capita consumption (i.e.: more consumerism). Love it or hate it, capitalism in an extremely adaptable system that will readily adapt to changing tides -- necessity is the mother of invention.
Or you can just abandon some of your old productive capacity. Depending on how you define capitalism a market with private ownership but little investment might still count.
I don't really have feelings towards it. Your analysis is obscured by rose-colored glasses.
Get rid of the taxes and the growth requirements are way down. Technology seems to have stabilized and we are now realizing that the whole internet boom was a bubble.
Is that capitalism, or just our taxes-entitlements Ponzi scheme?
Interesting. I wonder if there are any economic models that recognize that infinite growth can not be achieved when resources are finite.
May not even require economics. Space in Earth is finite and each human requires more space not just to live but for food, products, schooling, hospitals, government offices, restaurants, etc.
I seem to remember reading a blog post from a physicist about this. He was talking to an economist who though growth would continue forever, but then he pointed out current levels of energy consumption growth would take only a few centuries to get to the point of cooking the Earth just with waste heat.