230
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] fireweed@lemmy.world 81 points 6 months ago

Perpetual growth in a finite system is impossible, and anything that relies on perpetual growth to function is doomed to eventually fail.

For instance: social services that rely on perpetual population growth (especially youth population; e.g. Japan/South Korea), companies that rely on perpetual increase in users (most publicly-owned companies; e g. basically every social media company ATM), industries that rely on perpetual advancements in technology (e.g. industrialized agriculture, which constantly needs new ways to fight self-induced problems like soil depletion and erosion), housing as wealth generation (to be a wealth generator it has to outpace inflation, but at a certain point no one will be able to afford to purchase houses at their inflated prices no matter how over-leveraged they get; e.g. Canada). [Note that these are merely examples where these issues are currently coming to a head; they are by no means special cases, they're just in a more advanced state of "finding out."]

In other words, a lot of the modern world, in both public and private sectors, is built around a series of ponzi schemes.

[-] TokenBoomer@lemmy.world 7 points 6 months ago
[-] Zacryon@lemmy.wtf 3 points 6 months ago

You can by creating more accounts.

[-] OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 1 points 6 months ago

You found the loophole for perpetual growth!

[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago

But you’re assuming the type of growth will never change.

  • population growth is not sustainable and we’re past that point, but knowledge growth is
  • resources growth is not sustainable and we’re past that point for many resources, but economies can grow independently of resources
[-] Zacryon@lemmy.wtf 4 points 6 months ago

They literally said:

Perpetual growth in a finite system is impossible

I don't see how your comment applies to that.

Knowlegde growth may be sustainable, but it is also impossible to grow forever. (Supposing knowlegde is finite, which is, as far as I see it, the case as long as we make the definition of knowledge depend on characteristics like repition-free and new. For example, you could learn the number pi to even longer lenghts forever, but doing that is not necessarily something new to know as it's just a manifestation of a repition which was already discovered.)

I'm intrigued how you would explain that economies could grow independently of resources. From my perspective, it looks a lot like each and every form of economy relies somehow on some form of resource or resources. As resources are finite, economies can't grow forever.

[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

There are already trends showing economic growth disconnected from both resources and energy. Welcome to the service economy

[-] Zacryon@lemmy.wtf 2 points 6 months ago

Service needs workforce performing the service. Workforce are usually human resources. Thereby, limited again. Or did I get it wrong?

[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

We already have many cases where a very small number of humans can manage automated services for millions. It’s extremely scalable

While you could argue the electronics and power are also a resource dependency, it again scales extremely well

this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2024
230 points (94.9% liked)

Ask Lemmy

27258 readers
1659 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS