Timo wrote:Perhaps the better question to ask, instead of the relative severity of our current economic doldrums is to figure out what, if anything, can fuel a new economic recovery. The first question to ask is: 1) is an economic recovery possible? The next question, then, would be: 2) What will fuel a new economic recovery? The last question would be (if we can even get that far): 3) How significant would that new growth be relative to our status quo?
These may seem easy to answer, but i highly suspect that growth is possible ONLY given HUGE technological advancement. Suppose, for example, that fusion is proven reliable, efficient, and unlimited. That discovery would tend to all of our energy needs. But, this discovery would also put tens of thousands of coal miners and oil companies out of work. I know this situation isn't likely at all within our lifetimes, but one persons gain is another persons unemployment.
Have fun.
It depends on the nature of the growth.
Where it is premised around the functional waste of capitalism, sustainable growth is only possible where there are mechanisms to comprehensively replace the indigenous resource depletion, where that be by some method of all round resource alchemy or the opening up of foreign resourcing frontiers, in the case of a planet, other planets.
Failing this, small magnitude growth in communistic steady states (the voodoo communism of China excluded) offers the only other hope of a modernistic civil society.
Failing all of this, say hello to barbarism.
edit: there is the other thorny issue of functional waste and the overwhelming of the planet with non-biodegradeable waste where capitalism meets the criteria of resource sustainability. This will need addressing of course.