[frankreyes]

Growth is the natural consequence of capitalism. More humans solving more problems means that we have more choices. Instead of going to your local post office for sending a telegram we now have smartphones. It's a choice that people did, to stop using paper letters to communicate.

Consumption is the basic principle of any modern economy because that's how you create jobs. Otherwise we have BS jobs, where what people have useless jobs they don't solve any problems.

For every thing you produce, someone has to buy it, and for every thing you buy someone has to make it.

In the USSR they didn't understand this concept and they just had jobs for the sake of jobs. Then you'll end up with warehouses full of useless products that none buy. Just to create jobs.

One example from the book Basic Economics of Sowell: the Ushanka hat where the skin of some animal would be used to make those typical Russian hats. The government would pay you for each individual animal skin you hunt. But there was a disconnect between animal skins killed, and hats sold. It's easier to hunt the animal than to sell the hat , and they'll end up with warehouses full of dead animals that would rot and never be used for hats.

What has growth to do with it? Capitalism would tell you to stop killing animals and do something else instead. The same thing that happened with sending paper letters and instead using smartphones. That's growth.