Limitless Growth Is Possible If We Run Our Economies Correctly | Economics Explained

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"ANYONE who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist,” Kenneth Boulding

The problem here is that selling jackets that will last a lifetime is not as profitable as selling jackets that will only last one year or two; even if you sell that first jacket for 10 times the price of the second. Companies will always try to increase their profit; but governments could tax polluting material like plastic, and then use the money from this tax to subsidize companies producing durable goods. The more of these sustainable companies we have, the more likely people are to realize where their money should go.

"Even Switzerland has the good sense to diversify into dodgy banking" 😂😂😂😂 I just about died of laughter 😂😂

The worst part about this recession is that consumers are racking up credit card debt. In April alone, credit card debt went up 20% while rates have doubled in a year. Inflation is so high that consumers are literally taking debt for basic life necessities. Collapse is near.

I think you need to challenge the initial assumption...that human demand is infinite. You can see that this is challenged later in the video...fast fashion is the clearest example. Fast fashion exists in order to CREATE demand. We make cheap garbage clothes and new styles every year for only one purpose...so that people will buy them. If we built quality clothing that was durable and lasted a long time in styles that were not tacky after a few times wearing then we would consume LESS CLOTHING. I.e., our natural demand for clothing isn't infinite, consumption is artificially created through branding, advertising, and cheap disposable goods.

More important than GDP is GDP per capita. If you just measure GDP it looks like an improvement to have a higher population who are poorer on average.

There is a danger in prioritizing "infinite growth" or growth in general. Marketing especially is guilty of "creating desires," even desires that are harmful to its customers (like smoking), all in the pursuit of growth. If economics is to be used to help "society," then examining our desires (manufactured or otherwise) may need to be a part of the equation.

Manufacturers want to lower quality, not improve it, because it's both cheaper and creates repeat business.

How tremendous an impact can an idea like paying more attention to Material Productivity/GDP per material use, rather than other GDP based Metrics, can have on our own personal perspective of Economic Growth! Amazing!

The problem with limitless growth in a finite world is if demand would ever intersect ultimate resource availability. The problem I have with economics is the assumption that human wants are limitless. They are not. Even in the most materialistic sense, life has finite timespan in which to express those desires. Additionally, awareness of what could be desired is limited by the experience and exposure of those capable of desiring. Would you desire an iPhone if you lived in 1888? The result is a complicated matrix of social conditioning, cultural expectation, resource availability and ingenuity in exploiting available resources. Something even a supercomputer could never calculate for.

Even by making current resource use more efficient, we’re still using the same finite resources, so infinite growth is just as impossible. Growth may continue a bit longer but it doesn’t fundamentally change the equation.

"Infinite growth" always reminds me of Asimov's "The Last Question". We'll keep going until we suck up all the energy in the universe.

A few thoughts. Increasing material productivity through a greater digital economy will still be tied to material resources, like you've pointed out. The digital transformation definitely increases the value of those materials but its acting as a multiplier or exponent on the value but its still coupled to the production of the materials. I don't really think it makes to think that this multiplier could or would reach infinity. It would need to reach infinity to take limited resources into unlimited value. The base issue of finite to infinity is still there. At best it increases the material value maybe even exponentially but doesn't over come infinity. I wonder if a better framing for the fundamental problem of economics is humans have desires beyond our resources. This doesn't necessarily have to be an infinite amount. Doesn't decreasing our growth based on producing more materials have the same issue as zero growth for impoverished economies. As in how much comfort is watching Netflix when you don't have a home or know where your next meal is coming from. Any suggestion to address these material realities in infinite growth based on a digital economy model I would think could be applied to zero growth model maybe with some slight changes.

The fundamental issue with modern day 'economy' is that it's completely based on 'number go up'. Focusing solely on the monetary side of things is why the world is getting rekt for starters; the true price is presented to future generations, who might not even be born at the rate we're destroying things. Filling the need should ever come before fulfilling the greed.

The tricky part is how we actually use this information. Material productivity measurements won't do much to sway those with the means of production if they're still profiting from our current unsustainable model.

Something I found interesting when looking at history is that things tended to get cheaper over time. There may have been some production increases but while hand made good are very expensive they often were built from the highest quality material because the best way to get economy was to go for longevity. Since the population stayed static there were actually deflationary pressures. The overall amount of good was low at the time and it was one thing that really helped to increase the standard of living. We would have to have a major shift in policy but it's a smart thing to do on a personal level especially since you get to have nicer stuff although less new stuff.

The premise of humans having unlimited [material] desires cannot be taken for granted. This is taught as a maxim in Econ 101, but it is only a maxim for capitalism - not economics as a whole. It is extremely difficult for me to imagine most of our ancestors agreeing that they had infinite material desires. I would say human nature's most foundational desires are for purpose; community and family; survival and comfort; and the pursuit of art, intellect, and spirit. Materially, plenty of us would be satisfied with a limited amount.

I recently independently realized that I want to have the best things that I use consistently rather than a lot of things that I don't really use. For example, I have a set of earbuds that I find to be fantastic and I use them nearly every day. Rather than having more earbuds, I'd rather just spend good money on those. There's some way to turn this into a minimalism argument, and while that's not exactly where I was going, it's not wrong in the context of what we're looking at.

Why has growth decoupling from resource use been present in theory but absent in the real economy for many decades? You gave the answer: People want more. So whenever there is a jump in material productivity, we don't produce the same value with less resources or more value with the same amount of resources - we produce more value and using up still more resources. These are called rebound effects and largely mediated by price mechanisms, production capacity and availability. The same applies to labor: We could easily all just work half as many hours and still enjoy the relatively comfortable lifestyles of the middle class in the 90ies. Instead, we work as much as back then and rather consume more. We are not even reducing by 40 or 20%.