zlacker

>>anigbr+(OP)
>> It’s a natural process for people from areas experiencing population growth to move to other places experiencing decline

This strategy works as long as there are more places (by volume) experiencing growth than decline. Since the trend is slower growth overall, there will be a point where global growth stops, and clearly then the strategy will start to fail.

Frankly, from a planet point of view I'd hope that point comes sooner than later.

This will play out in obvious ways (lifting retirement age etc) but ultimately the quality of life will increase overall until some sort of stable population number emerges.

>>bruce5+wj
There will be a period of massive upheaval when the fundamental tenet of all economic models and assumptions (perpetual growth) is completely chronically invalidated and we run out of resources as the models reset to something that’s absolutely zero sum (as it should be). Great suffering and fighting can be expected during this period.

>>ramraj+Tk
while the question is open if economic growth will continue forever neither resources or population are an issue. The German economy say, has grown by 400% since the 1970s in real terms while the population has stayed stable. Energy use has slightly fallen over the last few decades.

Economic growth is technologically driven and developed economies are at or already past peak resources consumption.

>>Barrin+jm
More fundamentally I’m not convinced that we are not in a zero sum game as seems to be assumed under all economic theory.

>>ramraj+AA
Entropy is inherently a zero sum game. We have a given level of energy reserves and all we do is transform what we have into a different form.

Economists confuse an increase in the extraction rate as some kind of "creating something from nothing" but actually a better analogy is "traveling to previously unreachable places".