[friedman23]

> an infinite expansion of the economy is fundamentally contradictory to finite planetary boundaries

This is a stupid premise. People illiterate in both physics and economics seem to think that economic growth is bound by the laws of thermodynamics.

This is easily proven false by contradiction:

Let's say you have a few 2x4s and nails, by rearranging them into a chair you've created economic value. No extra raw materials were required to get from the planks of wood to the chair but value was created anyway. Find a better use for the wood and nails than a chair and we have economic growth.

[cauch]

I don't think you have demonstrated "an infinite expansion of the economy is fundamentally not contradictory to finite planetary boundaries", you've just shown that SOME growth is possible without using resources.

In fact, you mention yourself the reason why growth is somehow in contradiction with the finite planetary boundaries: you say that if the carpenters do 1 boat instead of 100 chairs, they will create growth because the value of the boat is bigger than the value of the 100 chairs. So, you acknowledge that growth is led by "the more valuable thing to do, the more profitable". The problem is that, by construction, exploiting resources are way more profitable than not. For creating a boat, it's way easier to chop trees to get new 2x4s than to disassemble chairs (if it was the case, recycling would be the go-to process, and it is clearly not the case in reality. on top of that, some fabrication processes are not recyclable).

So, yeah, technically, we still can have some local growth after all resources are consumed (by just disassembling chairs to create boats), but in practice, this local growth is compensated by the negative growth of losing the big gain of consuming the resource.

[dTal]

It seems rather disingenous to list all the raw materials for making a chair and then claim that because no extra materials were needed (because you listed them all) that infinite growth is possible. Okay, setting aside the question of where you got the planks and nails - you've made the chair. Now what? That's not "growth", that's a chair. You can make it once. Maybe you can recycle it into something more valuable - modern art, say. Great! How many times can you pull that trick? Eventually you'll reach the economically optimum configuration for those planks of wood. Then what? Eventually, if you want to sustain infinite growth, you're gonna need to make a second chair.

[friedman23]

Are you trying to critique the use of simplified models for analyzing systems in general?

> Now what? That's not "growth", that's a chair

If somebody finds use from the chair that was growth, if it sits unused it was waste. Something of value was created from a bunch of useless pieces of wood and metal.

> How many times can you pull that trick? Eventually you'll reach the economically optimum configuration for those planks of wood.

Really? There is an economic optimum for the most valuable configuration of materials? This also ignores that while growth is occurring other things are being created which will impact the supposed equilibrium state that exists for wood and nails that will change what the most valuable configuration of those materials will be.

Anyway, let's go away from wood and nails. What about ink and paper. Or just words? Or just thoughts? What is the economic value of the observation the F = ma? Newton probably created infinite economic value by putting the observation that F=ma to paper.

[Nomentatus]

A less constructed example showing this even more strongly:

I used to buy distilled water from my grocery store. The water had to be shipped to the store, that took gas. Not green, not efficient compared to: Now the same store has a reverse osmosis machine, available because of new technology, that uses regular city water and filters it. It's half the price. No gas is used to transport the water to the store, it flows through a pipe to get to the store. This increases GDP, the same amount of water (at least) is bought, but lots of peole have some extra money left over. GDP increased, pollution decreased substantially.

BUT. The discussion does go on from there. The people with extra dollars might spend that on something polluting - maybe even as polluting as trucking water around - but they might well not.

Even so, as with the original example, only better, this is an example of economic growth that actually decreases consumption, taken by itself. (Now comes the argument about knock-on effects such as what the freed bucks get spent on, and the named law (word) saying that when you make a good more efficiently, demand for it increases.)

If you're a Marxist you can substitute "freed labor is spent doing" for "freed bucks is spent on" above, I suppose.

[popara]

You are excluding human labor, which requires energy, which brings us back to thermodynamics.

[friedman23]

Your claim is that growth is bound by the law of thermodynamics because of human labor?

Is your claim that growth in human population is required for economic growth?

Ok, I'll do another proof by contradiction using the chair analogy:

The carpenter uses the materials that would have been used to build 100 chairs to build a boat. That boat is then used to transport goods up and down a river. The economic value of that boat is greater than the 100 chairs but the carpenter has not done more work and they have not used more materials.

If all the human carpenters switch from creating chairs to creating boats you can get economic growth without using more materials or labor.

[legutierr]

> No extra raw materials were required to get from the planks of wood to the chair but value was created anyway.

The labor required to build the chair is one additional ingredient. The transformation of wood and nails to chair does not happen spontaneously.

[friedman23]

The labor is a small fixed cost. Depending on what is done with the labor the leverage is potentially infinite (eg. many internet business that earn a million or more per year for every employee they have hired).

Growth can happen by getting the same labor to do something more valuable (maybe building houses instead of chairs?)

[sdflhasjd]

Labour is people, which need food and water.

[friedman23]

I don't see the point of your statement. Economic growth can happen even if the population remains constant (or even shrinks but that would be a headwind to overall economic growth and at that point it might be more instructive to look at gdp per capita).

[badpun]

You're technically correct, in the way that infinite growth is possible if we only limit ourselves to efficience gains, i.e. getting more value out of the same set of contrained resources. However, in practice, many things that people want cannot be obtained this way. Sure, a nicer chair or improved iPhone are good, but people also want summer houses and exotic vacations and a car for every family member and these things are massively resource-dependant.

[RhodesianHunter]

Sure, but with a declining population in most modernized societies the kind of growth expected by our current economic model simply isn't forthcoming.

[dotluis]

Sure we can find a better use for the wood and nails. But the point is that the wood and nails are finite.