[scotty79]

But my question still stands. Can we have infinitely growing economy if we make the real world part of it increasingly small?

We managed to reduce food production from something like 90% of the economy to 5%, industry to 15%.

Maybe at some point all of non-virtual part will be like 1% of our total economy?

[koyanisqatsi]

It's theoretically possible, the question is who would want to live in that world? What you're asking is more of a sci-fi question that anything pertinent to our current set of problems. Profit motives need to be re-oriented to account for biospheric damage. Right now it doesn't matter what you're doing as long as it is legal and making profits by extracting natural resources as quickly as possible in order to convert those resources into consumer gadgets and weapons. This is not a viable model for a sustainable global civilization.

By most measures the biosphere is close to ecological collapse and the markets have not taken any notice of this fact because quarterly profits do not require a livable and ecologically stable planet. As long as this quarter's profits are the same or higher than last quarter's it doesn't matter how much damage was done to the biosphere to achieve those profits. Most large scale organizations are effectively accelerating ecological collapse because they operate by an economic model that is completely at odds with the reality of biological existence on a finite planet. Instead of being concerned about AGI, recessions, and infinite markets people should really be concerned about unsustainable business models at odds with the physical constraints and dynamics of the planet. There is no economics without a sustainable ecology and more people need to wake up and notice this fact.

[scotty79]

> Profit motives need to be re-oriented to account for biospheric damage.

I completely agree with that. I think markets should be informed of the total cost of their activity through taxation of resources (like energy, metals and such) and damaging activity (like manufactureing of plastic bottles and other things that become the problem at their end of life or CO2 emissions).