[ernst_klim]

> The economic system itself is incompatible with the physical reality of a finite planet

The economic reality is perfectly compatible with finite reality, because growth is not a function of resources.

An email is more economically valuable than a paper mail despite requiring much less resources (and leading to a much less CO2 emission)

[typicalset]

> growth is not a function of resources

This is a bold claim: I do not believe that if all remaining fossil fuels had vanished overnight that growth would remain identical.

[uv-depression]

To believe this, you must believe that the economy can become arbitrarily decoupled from any physical good. Do you believe that food can become an arbitrarily small proportion of the economy (and so arbitrarily cheap relative to income)? Steel? Purified silicon? Infrastructure like bridges?

I don't. Perpetual growth is incompatible with finite resources. Fortunately, human flourishing does not depend on infinite economic growth; there is, for example, enough food for everyone on the planet. Capitalism is just bad at allocating resources by any metric other than its own. (Yes yes, it's better that feudalism was. I think we can hold ourselves to a higher bar than that.)

[AlexandrB]

> Do you believe that food can become an arbitrarily small proportion of the economy

This is not necessary at all for economic growth to be infinite. Food prices can "inflate" and so stay at, let's say 20%, of the economy while the amount of physical food being produced remains flat year after year. That's sort of what's happening with housing, education, and healthcare already.

I think seeing prices go up like this makes people unhappy, but what really matters is what portion of a person's income this stuff occupies.

[uv-depression]

If physical goods remain a constant proportion of the economy without having more of them but get more expensive, all that's happening is inflation, not economic growth.