[formerkrogemp]

> But, on the whole, one should expect the stock market to rise over time so long as society is not dying.

That's the rub, eh? Are there limits to the growth on a finite planet? Is climate change posing an existential threat? Has technology produced highly scalable and entirely altogether too interdependent international production systems?

[nootropicat]

>Are there limits to the growth on a finite planet?

Yes, but we are 4 orders of magnitude away from them. Adding the potential for space industry, this grows to 13 orders of magnitude. That's ~1000 years of 3% annual growth assuming no efficiency gains, but we still have about 8 orders of magnitude available in computation efficiency, which gives us about 1600 years of 3% growth until hitting 2 on the Kardashev scale. Only close to it limits to growth become a real consideration.

Anyone claiming we are hitting fundamental limits of growth now is a doomer. We may be hitting limits of growth given currently deployed technology, but that's a completely different statement.

[david_shaw]

> Yes, but we are 4 orders of magnitude away from them. Adding the potential for space industry, this grows to 13 orders of magnitude

Would you mind providing a reference for this? I don't doubt your statements, but it would be great to be able to research further.

[asadawadia]

+1