this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2025
54 points (93.5% liked)
ShowerThoughts
2365 readers
1 users here now
Sometimes we have those little epiphanies in the shower.. sometimes they come from other places. This is a home for those epiphanies.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yes, and growth is sustained by striking a balance of quality and quantity in terms of the human population. If this balance becomes out of whack you will decline into what they refer to as "malthusian stagnation". So the population does need to grow in order to sustain economic growth, along with the quality of the individuals that make up the population. What they refer to as "economic darwinism" beings to truly take place as a population has the extra resources to put more into children than parent, creating generational progress. Post industrial economic darwinism gets a buffer, so-to-speak, due to the increased per capita productivity introduced by technology. However this is also not infinite, and so, at some point this will plateau, and the population will need to begin rising again to spur growth. We are likely in the midst of this plateauing.
The argument is going round in circles, but never explains if nor why capitalism requires economic growth. Therefore it also does not explain if nor why it requires population growth.