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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ralfy" data-source="post: 1456253" data-attributes="member: 8438">Continuous growth in capitalism is neither a feature nor a bug but part of its very meaning. It refers to capital gained from various sources, including profits, and reinvested to increase production, with what is produced purchased by growing consumer markets.The market for all sorts of goods and services is huge on a global scale because 71 pct of people worldwide live in less than $10 daily. They want to and intend to earn more, and the other 29 pct are counting on them to do that because their own income and returns on investment are based on the same. This also puts to question claims that demand for oil should drop and that "green" energy will dominate because much of the world has not reached industrialization, and thus needs lots of oil and minerals to achieve that, let alone use alternative sources of energy.Given that, what capitalists want is not decreasing population but a slowly increasing one because the first will lead to lower demand, among others, and the second to poverty due birth rates that are too high. This also puts to question claims that various rich people, organizations like the UN, etc., want population decrease, as that would lead to lower demand.The catch is that capitalism also has cycles, starting with the beginning of industrialization to a peak, and on to late capitalism and decadence. At that latter stage, birth rates start to decrease as more become more interested in careers, etc., which are part of prosperity. With that, richer countries start relying on poorer ones not only for labor but even for consumer markets. Eventually, as poorer countries become richer, they also experience the same problems.The other catch is that increasing amounts of energy and material resources are needed to maintain that growth. That means more oil and minerals are needed to support goods and services produced and sold, and the money used to capitalize on that and buy them. The world is not an unlimited sphere, and factors like gravity increase energy needed to extract minerals take place. And as goods and services become more sophisticated, then even more energy is needed per person.There is no "we're lucky we'll do fine even as most suffer" argument to consider here because capitalism is not the same as feudalism. Much of the wealth of capitalists consists of credit, or essentially numbers in hard drives, and the value of those numbers can only be maintained if more oil and minerals are extracted to provide more goods and service to growing numbers of people who need and want them, from which profits and returns on investment are achieved. In short, everyone is part of it, and "magic technology" ideas like automation does not help because robots aren't consumers and more energy and minerals are still needed even with that.What capitalists hope is that technologies which can increase energy return plus decrease pollution can be developed in order to meet continuous growth needed for more prosperity, such that the world population will reach a peak because of that prosperity (which leads to lower birth rates) and slowly level off with a minimum of conflict. But the resources needed to accomplish that is huge: the equivalent of one more earth in order to meet just basic needs, and much more to meet wants, which is the goal of most human beings.On a much lower scale, countries experiencing population aging due to prosperity will have to rely on poorer countries with much younger populations for not only workers but even consumers.</blockquote>

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