[count]

The uh, entire economy of the world depends on some level that people are going to need to buy more shit.

[silicon2401]

Hence the catastrophic environmental damage that goes on every single day

[rossdavidh]

They could shift to buying more services and less (not zero) shit, so this isn't necessarily true. Not that "dropping off a cliff" sounds great...

[lkbm]

Yes, it's easy to read this as an "Oh no, our economy!" article, but it's not. It's an "Oh no, our sector!" article for people in shipping and consumer goods.

If you look at charts of consumer spending, the pandemic caused an explosion in spending on goods, while spending on services "dropped off a cliff". Now stuff is going back down to pre-pandemic levels. What are services doing? Climbing back to pre-pandemic levels: https://www.statista.com/chart/23574/consumer-spending-on-go...

Obviously, we "should" be about two years of growth higher than pre-pandemic levels, and I'm not saying the economy is 100% fine and dandy, but this article needs to be understood as being about a sector of the economy, not the economy as a whole.