I find the Malthus argument amusing because populations simply stop growing if there isn't enough food. The worst thing that will happen is that there are lots of hungry people. I don't see how that is different than today.

Meanwhile, in the reality we live in today, our economies are actually struggling because of a lack of population growth. Lots of economists simply assume endless exponential population growth to justify endless economic growth.

The dependence on growth relies on our insistence to work full time. Technology reduces the need for labor. So to give everyone full time jobs we have to grow the economy. It's quite stupid.

Imagine a simplified dishwasher economy. We have a replicator that generates food for free but it doesn't clean dishes. To increase labor efficiency keep building bigger and bigger dishwashers. For some strange reason we still insist on working 40 hours per week loading and unloading the dishwasher. There is something strange about this. Every time we build a bigger dishwasher, we have to eat more (=have more children) just to keep the 40 hour work week filled. This is the dependence on growth.

We have to keep growing just to stand still at full employment.