Can the economy grow forever?

Is infinite economic growth possible on a planet with finite resources? Explore how countries can balance efficiency with sustainability.

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Many economists think that an eternally growing economy is necessary to keep improving people’s lives, and that if the global economy stops growing, people would fight more over the fixed amount of value that exists, rather than working to generate new value. Which raises the question: is infinite growth possible on a finite planet? Explore how economies can balance efficiency with sustainability.

Directed by Kevin Herrmann, AIM Creative Studios.

This video made possible in collaboration with World Economic Forum

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[somerandomguy___]

4:00 Just wanted to note that the reason why German's emmisions decreced was because, instead of producing goods from their own borders, they instead made Asian countries like China and others produce those goods, and then import them back. This is known as "exported emmisions"

In the end, the world's emmisions increased along with the GDP, because GHG emmisions and economic growth are *very strongly* correlated.

[davidtitanium]

The problem is, only looking at the total value produced doesn't show who's benefitting from those values. Infinite growth doesn't necessarily benefit everyone but the toll on the planet WILL be felt by everyone

[tonikpun]

I was first introduced to economics in secondary school. I still remember when I first opened the academic book of economics, the first page read, "Wants are unlimited, but the resources are not." I didn't get what it really meant back then, but it is starting to make sense now more than ever.

[leondonald]

The best way to describe the present economy is 08' 2.0. Yes stocks are at a discount and things will eventually get better but my monthly living expense is up $3750 from $1600 and I'm left wondering what retirement have in store for me 5years down the line, I'm ill-prepared tbh, my 401k gains are zero-nothing and my stock portfolio?...OH WELL!

[dosadoodle]

As someone who now buys less, I find my economic utility has gone up (I'm happier). In a sense, this means the economy has grown in my individual experience, because my utility is higher. But my contribution to GDP had gone down.

It is our perpetual obsession with using GDP that pigeonholes this conversation. We need to appreciate how bad GDP is as a metric. As one example, GDP could imply many people dying could be constructive for the economy, as long as we spent enough money in a hopeless endeavor to try to save those lives. GDP is purely about spend, not outcomes. It mistakes spending for happiness, and that is only partially true some of the time.

[KrisRyanStallard]

I always found it odd that a company could be consistently profitable but have its stock price drop because they weren't growing.

[shirazull]

The biggest benefit to post growth economy is the fact that products can be developed to perfection, as for today, most products are designed to break down after an estimated time period to force customers to pay more.
This is why the right to repair movement is so important as it is taking a step towards post growth economy by making product breakdowns less profitable for the company.

[ankitnmnaik]

" *The earth has enough resources to fillup everyone needs but not everyone greed* ."
-*_MAHATMA GANDHI_*

[dmzpruh]

Well, logically, in this finite world, we should be recycling the less valueable to create more value out of them. For example, the old phones, cars, etc., that has been so outdated or not being used because there's simply not enough people on the planet to use them, can be recycled and the material can be used to create items with higher value. This however raise another question, what is valuable? We humans are very bad at valueing something, and value is a relatively vague concept after all.

[VinhNguyen-wkqz]

Of course most economist would believe that new ideas would solve everything, they love growth.

[one_field]

Changes in time allocation illustrate this beautifully. A family in America used to spend multiple hours every week on tasks such as manually washing and hanging laundry (even though they owned fewer clothes), carrying buckets of water, prepping meals and cooking them, etc. There are also a lot of tasks that people even further back in time had to tackle: combing wool, spinning, weaving and stitching to make blankets and clothes, for example. It's amazing how the invention of new technologies changed how we use that time resource; we gained so many hours every week that no longer need to be spent on providing food, potable water, heat and hygiene. If we were content to live at that level now, we could spend 90% of our hours idle.

Of course, culture changed and modern industrialized societies view that level of lifestyle to be horrifyingly impoverished. With increasingly efficient conveniences came increasingly acquisitive habits. Apparently we'd rather spend 50hrs a week working multiple jobs to be permanently indebted for objects that didn't even exist a century ago but are now considered basic necessities.

We'll need to overcome that if we want a sustainable economy.

[KTP_]

When people say about a goal of 0 carbon emission nation, I wonder if they just forget about the supply chains that relocation to or still exist in their foreign nations. Because then the campaign would mostly mean pushing the responsibility of handling climate change to the nations that rely on production and resource extraction industries and are less prosperous, meaning they will be less likely to be able to invest in tech to reduce the emission rate. In a lot of cases, I just find these campaigns very shallow.

[woowooeopoookg]

There was some good moments in this video, but I'm disappointed that whenever infinite growth is discussed, it's merely seen as something abstract that some people want to achieve or just a thing that has its own will. The video never addresses the issue *why* infinite growth is really happening.

Surely if there constantly more people on earth and more products/services are created that leads to growth, but ultimately infinite (specifically economic) growth starts from the creation of majority of money (not cash, but zeros and ones) by banks granting loans. As money is created from thin air with interest, it automatically creates a situation where there is constantly more debt than there is actual money to pay off that debt. That leads to a situation where everyone needs to get more money to survive as "the game" basically forces a portion of its players to eventually run out of money.

[DCaseyTucker]

Without infinite growth "people would fight over the value that already exists".

*stares in the last 100 some-odd years of nonstop warfare*

[snowcold]

I'm all for a post growth economy.
As an example, in Belfast, a shipyard that could've been used to build polluting yachts for billionaires, was turned into a wind turbine building facility; the jobs were kept, and both the engineers and the shipyard were repurposed in a beneficial way.
We need a lot more of this, at every level of our economy.

[trishasaoirse]

a yes, the two economic opinions of "hey guys the planet is dying maybe we should do something" and "im sure we'll figure something out later".

[browk]

Perhaps most importantly of all; should we listen to the rich elites who run the World Economic Forum, or should our futures be decided by the majority of people who don't attend a yearly conference in the swiss alps?

[RyanCoomer]

at a buffet, i personally sneak corndogs into the buffet so others can enjoy them. I hide 6 corndogs in my jacket pockets. it then, is a joy for me to see other patrons of the establishment eat my corndogs thinking they were part of the buffet.

[enviousleaf]

It's amazing how our entire worldview and philosophies are built around a construct some humans created. The fact that global corporations that are still incredibility profitable are firing people because they missed growth targets is insane. I personally would love to see a world where we put human ingenuity into reworking out views around economy!

[jacobjones]

Really like how this video is about economies producing value and labor is mentioned all of 1 time.