Growth in power consumption of laptops, is falling.
Growth in total material consumption for say cars will fall too, as less maintenance is required for electrical engine vs internal combustion.
Many people believe we've reached peak oil, as demand will decrease. So it's not so clear.
> The expansion in the productive possibilities linked to tech was combinatorial, but even in a period of ten years it barely improved your business.
If you are focusing on one business, there's little change between barbering now and not just 10 years ago, but even 200 years ago. But small changes are enough - even taking appointments online frees the barber time. So there's some growth.
> The expansion in the productive possibilities linked to tech was combinatorial, but even in a period of ten years it barely improved your business.
However, you are missing the 99% of businesses that are impossible with 1800 technology.
This cause growth, and much more than the little growth seen in barbering.
> The truth is that every frontier has a point of diminishing returns
Diminishing returns are perfectly compatible with asymptotic behavior.
> We might still see a lot of economic growth left in the future, but it's clear there will be plateaus and it's clear that we are nearing one
You don't understand (or you do, but don't want to see it): as long as f(yu) >= f(yt) for yu>yt, there's infinite growth.
It may be less and less, if it's asymptotically going to 0, but it will never reach g=0.
Plateaus are fine - just like recessions. Yes, the economy is not strictly increasing with a time granularity that too small. But group years by pack of 20, do a moving average and you'll see a strictly increasing function. g>0 which means infinite growth is possible, even if g may not be to your liking.
Perfect? No. Good enough? Yes!
Combinatorial explosion in production possibilities does not mean anything close to combinatorial expansion in possibilities for growth. It's an increase, but nowhere near factorial.
Here's an example. Imagine that you are a barber shop. What advantage does 10 years of computing advances give you? You might be able to save 15 hours in accounting time and lower appointment friction by 20% over phone calls. The expansion in the productive possibilities linked to tech was combinatorial, but even in a period of ten years it barely improved your business.
The truth is that every frontier has a point of diminishing returns. Your point is that you believe that we can iterate on the value - resources front indefinitely. Well, empirical data just disagrees with you. We're at 2% annual growth on average and slowing down, despite increases in consumption, and even less than that when correcting for population growth.
Yes, Malthiusianism is wrong. You can't equate Malthiusianism with the belief that infinite growth is impossible, that's just a total non-sequitur.
We might still see a lot of economic growth left in the future, but it's clear there will be plateaus and it's clear that we are nearing one.