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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  2986 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Why Growth Will Fall

None of this is new, though, no matter how much the author and reviewer want it to be. There's an entire cosmology of economists who start any treatise with a throw to the Limits to Growth, and then usually follow up by pointing out that over a 30-year period World 3 was spookily accurate and that's why, in the words of Kennith Boulding,

    Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

If you're Paul Roberts you'll point out that Adam Smith figured the explosive growth after the Newcomen engine was a one-time thing and that "stable" was his default, not "growth forever". If you're Bill McKibben you'll point out that growth rarely benefits the proletariat as much as the bourgeoisie and that limiting growth is the choice that benefits most citizens the greatest. If you're Paul Gilding you point out that massive growth leads to massive overextension leads to massive contraction leads to a happy new steady state. If you're Thomas Piketty you argue that unless growth is limited it leads to oligarchy and serfdom. If you're Strauss and Howe you argue that growth is cyclical on an 80-year calendar and that of course the current generation is overusing resources they're "nomads" or what-thefuck-ever.

And all of these books can be had for less than $40 all in.

I'll just say this: if you were a grad student in '67, and Limits to Growth came out in '72, and the 30-year-update came out in 2002, and you're just now coming around to the central thesis of the alt-economists, well...

...you're a long goddamn way from being "without peer."