[psadri]

Same goes for food, etc. my point was that not everything has to be for financial gain -- we have basic needs that are higher in the priority stack and will always be there.

About homes specifically - they have a life span too so they eventually have to be rebuilt or, as others have pointed out, maintained.

[allendoerfer]

But who would want to own a company producing food, when owning cash would be a better investment?

[vivekd]

There has got to be some ways in which this basic economic assumption is wrong. Like with cars, I can buy a car and when I sell the car it will be worth much less. But I will buy that car anyways because I need a car.

Or for a business perspective, I buy a dairy cow as an investment, when I sell the cow it will be worth much less than what I bought it for, but I don't mind because the cow has provided a steady stream of milk based income over the years.

So in these ways at least, it doesn't seem like economic prosperity is always dependent on growth.

Maybe in some economic circumstances cash might be a better investment or worth more than my dairy cow, but such a circumstance can't last for long because supply and demand affect money too right - so if enough people get rid of their dairy cow for the cash, eventually that would decrease the supply of milk, increasing price which would put me and my milk business back on top again would it not?

[allendoerfer]

Owning a new car seems like a good investment. You get a bit more car than when buying a used car plus you get a bit more status. When prices of cars drop and better means of transportation arrive you would just keep your cash and use an Uber for example.

With the cow I think the problem is that many people would buy a cow to fulfil the basic need so margins would be extremely thin. People would soon stop buying cows again.

I think this would be generally the case in such a situation: Everything would be a commodity and margins would approach zero. You need only very few people to produce commodities. The majority of the population would be unemployed.

This is not a bad outlook per se, my argument is just that our current system needs growth. We would have to gradually adjust the system once we realize that there is now way to create growth any more.