The counter perspective is that some amount of degrowth will happen eventually. And in the west, decades of austerity have led to oppressive working conditions to the point people aren’t having children. We’re already seeing this effect on the workforce; my hypothesis is that much of the worker shortage is due to older workers dying from Covid or simply retiring and there aren’t enough millennials and Gen Z to fill the jobs at the bottom of the hierarchy after everyone shifts up.
We cannot continue increasing productivity exponentially forever, and likely not for a whole lot longer. We’re already seeing the system collapsing in on itself — the supply chain woes we’re seeing right now are IMO the result of over-optimization over the last 3 decades. Infinite growth assumes there’s an ample workforce. When birth rates are below replacement levels, that’s not a good assumption.
We need to take a mindset of “what is the most productive way to optimize the limited and shrinking resources we have” rather than “how do we keep productivity growing forever”. Otherwise unrest will grow, and it’s a lot easier to smash a broken system than it is to maintain one.
We cannot continue increasing productivity exponentially forever, and likely not for a whole lot longer. We’re already seeing the system collapsing in on itself — the supply chain woes we’re seeing right now are IMO the result of over-optimization over the last 3 decades. Infinite growth assumes there’s an ample workforce. When birth rates are below replacement levels, that’s not a good assumption.
We need to take a mindset of “what is the most productive way to optimize the limited and shrinking resources we have” rather than “how do we keep productivity growing forever”. Otherwise unrest will grow, and it’s a lot easier to smash a broken system than it is to maintain one.