The End is Nigh

Capitalism requires growth. It simply cannot exist in a steady state, and thereby it approaches its end. This arises from two causes: the first being the necessities of paying interest, and the second the inherent severity of zero sum games. Companies must return profits to their investors which are comparable to what would be earned from savings. This would be compound interest, which is an exponential. So a company's profits must be on an exponential curve, or investors will flee it for some more profitable investment. These sales will most often involve at least some increase in materials, so the consumption of environmental goods will be pushed towards an exponential curve. Any exponential curve which involves consuming matter rather than mathematics, does not go on very long, and the result of its end is rather drastic. Now, it might be argued that greater efficiencies will enable us to produce more with less, and so avoid any sort of inconvenience and unpleasantness. Indeed cars get better mileage, strand board replaces plywood for homes, (of course the trees really have all been cut down, making plywood too expensive for homes). The market finds some more efficient substitute. Yet the consumption of material is on some sort of increasing curve regardless, and the Earth is finite and fixed. At some point in the not too distant future, these curves will inevitably intersect.

The second requirement of growth for the survival of Capitalism is due to the severity of zero sum games. Growth softens this severity, it actually makes The Future. You do not need to grab whatever you can right now, you can put it off till The Future, when there will be more than enough for everyone. The Future will always have more of everything so nothing is lost by saving, or spending time on a futile job - The Future will inevitably produce much more of everything, so everyone can eventually be happy, even if they aren't right now. Without Growth The Future becomes a wil'o the wisp, a complete fantasm. Without Growth, if anyone is to have more, the food will have to be taken from someone else's mouth. Any gain is someone else's loss. (In fact, I wonder if some of the poison of present American politics is not due to stagnant incomes of the middle class gradually filtering into people's emotional response, bypassing reason. They are now fighting for the scraps and are in the emotional state one might expect). Without The Future the emotional underpinnings which make Capitalism possible disintegrate.

We might perhaps even save ourselves by using all the knowledge we have acquired by tracking every single purchase that every single person has made for their entire lives. We could perhaps use this incredible amount of information to see what will actually produced happiness, but instead we will use it for Marketing, and so hasten our own downfall.