Quote from: rahl on June 06, 2011, 08:36:43 PM

The economy can grow until we know everything about everything and all mass and energy in the universe is allocated to the being capable of reason that values it the highest and used for the highest possible value for said being.

What economics growth means is simply that we do more with less. Less resources and labour are needed to maintain the same standard of living when we have growth, this is quite beneficial to the environment and everyone in the economy. This ofcourse also frees resources and time that can be utilized elsewhere increasing the standard of living, but it is up to you if you wanna do that or not...

I quite don't fit the phrase "we do more with less".
The part of reducing the labour force needed I can see, machines are more profitable than humans by a wide margin. We have been able to mechanize agriculture and industry so people in the first world now quasi-entirely work on the service sector (not sure if thats the correct english term).
That thought leads me to a paradox though, when we have robots taking over the one working sector that is left. So, in a future all-automated world the only work to do would be to design robots (if they don't just design themselves). So no people working = no salaries = no consumption. Am I missing something or from this perspective the paradigm is also doomed in the long run?

The part about reducing the resource consumption. How do you make a chair with less wood? You just can "spawn" matter. How do you produce more energy with fewer fuel, whatever the fuel used is?

"A UN environment panel said the world cannot sustain the tearaway rate of use of minerals, ores and fossil and plant fuels. It called on governments to "decouple" economic growth from natural resource consumption.
With the world population expected to hit 9.3 billion by 2050 and developing nations becoming more prosperous, the report warned "the prospect of much higher resource consumption levels is far beyond what is likely sustainable.""

"Total world resource use has risen from about six billion tons in 1900 to 49 billion tons in 2000 and has already gone up to an estimated 59 billion tons now."
source: http://wires.univision.com/english/article/2011-05-12/global-resource-consumption-to-triple

So the UN thinks economic growth and natural resource consumption are indeed coupled. Not only that, resource consumption has effectively rocketed since 1900.