I would suggest that the increased throughput comes from the technological advance. We're getting ever more efficient at converting energy and raw materials into stuff we want. That means it's cheaper. That means we do it more.
And yeah, "the economy" includes services as well as goods. But services are performed by humans, and humans need to eat and live in houses and wear clothes etc.
Re:This Can’t Go On
by AstralStorm on Wednesday August 04, 2021 @07:22AM
(#28059697)
For now. The sink analogy does not quite work, they're closer to empty containers that you fill with gas, which get harder to fill above certain pressure and can even explode.
Economic growth due to technological advance is completely swamped by economic growth due to increased throughput.
It is the throughput, the increase in entropy, that is at issue. Almost all economic growth comes from increasing the flows from sources to sinks. E.g. Turning coal into CO2