Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by coldbrewed 812 days ago
When it comes to the personal and intangibles, then grow all you want; read the books, develop the skills, and so on. But when it comes to consumption of resources and economic growth then cancer is the right word as unbounded growth fundamentally results in unbounded growth of waste products and overconsumption of inputs.

There is no system or ecology that can support infinite growth; as long as we're stuck in the "coasting is dying" mentality we'll see productive entities develop dysfunctions as they outgrow their ecosystems or kill themselves trying to expand. If coasting leads to gradual decline then over expansion leads to catastrophic failure.

1 comments

That's not true. You can indeed create value out of thin air.

Emissions decreasing while economies grow: https://time.com/6632271/climate-emisisons-and-economic-grow...

IP is a type of property that can infinitely increase in value without consuming more resources.

Not to mention all this assumes that we are stuck on Earth, which isn't true.