• fireweed@lemmy.world
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    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.

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
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      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