It’s surprising to me how little scrutiny this claim receives.

Maybe it’s true, but haven’t many species had stable populations for millions of years? Basing it only on human history seems like a sampling error.

musician & dev gigameshmusic.com github.com/gigamesh

also: society ≠ sharks 🙂

It seems possible to me that tech enables continued increase in well being without infinite growth, and maybe declining birth rate is evidence of it.

Growth is important for human psychology. Hedonistic adaption.

The most underappreciated benefit of economic growth is that without it, the economy becomes a zero-sum game. The only way of improving your standard of living is at the expense of someone else. Predictably, recent generations, who have seen slower growth, are more prone to… https://t.co/05FexHmsM4

growth is a moral imperative for democracy

will minshew

https://x.com/wminshew/status/1873946739226665440

Growth is good! 

But I think what's more relevant to democracy is social cohesion. If the majority of growth is going to the top 0.01% in a given society, social cohesion and democracy are still cooked.

I haven't read it but its my understand that this book makes a strong case that econ growth is being constrained specifically because of too much wealth inequality.

I haven't read it but its my understand that this book makes a strong case that econ growth is being constrained specifically because of too much wealth inequality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Century

the results were debunked when you separate out the return on unimproved land from the rest of capital. Turns out the major issue isn't capital at all but land reform. Land reform IS a major issue, and would actually unlock a tremendous amount of growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax

in a very real sense, our inability to handle land properly is killing our society. You can see it in rents and housing prices directly, and indirectly in the cost of services (which must be high enough so that providers can live locally)

if you look at the chart again, a lack of growth is about the absolute worst thing we can do for social cohesion