No need to task a random redditor with devising a new economic paradigm, turns out one or two discerning experts spotted the trouble with the whole "the economy can grow forever!" concept. They spotted it pretty early, in fact. Adam Smith literally wrote about this problem.
Not really, no - western nations aren't growing. Most have birth rates below replacement rates. If populations are increasing in those countries it's often through immigration.
The human population will stabilize and won't continue growing forever.
That we WILL transition to a steady-state economy is a foregone conclusion, reality has already made that the only possible outcome that works in a future where humans would like society to continue existing in a manner similar to today (let's ignore the possible future where we choose total biospheric and economic collapse instead, however much more likely that seems from our current vantage point).
What's not a foregone conclusion is the timeline. This isn't going to be a switch that flips overnight, but rather a slow transition - the reality of living on a finite planet means that infinite population growth and infinite economic expansion just doesn't work. We will simply destroy ourselves if we keep pretending that's an option.
I'm not sure if we'll adopt this steady-state system in time for it to save us from ourselves or if the world is ready for a full-bore implementation of it, I was just pointing out that a solution does exist and it's not infeasible.
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u/crankaholic 8h ago
Sure, we're listening u/Captain_Pumpkinhead