Re:Tech Companies Keep Falling for the Forever Fallacy. Lead...
by dukeyukey on Wednesday May 24, 2023 @06:27AM
(#36056079)
"Infinite" growth is funny, cos infinity is funny. Eventually there's gonna be some hard cap, but for all we know that's thousands of years away, so it's not really worth talking about. But we're still getting way more efficient at growing food and building infrastructure.
Like, about 150 years ago an American farm could get about 26 bushels of corn per acre. The last few years, we've gotten 174, about 6x more. And that's in a very favourable agricultural zone, chances are it's even greater in more marginal areas!
Source: https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2022/07/perspectives-on-na...
1. Yes, the resources consumed to make software are smaller, but they're still non-zero and will never be zero. So ultimately you're still limited by finite resources.
2. Many things just can't be implemented in software. I would point to A. Housing and B. Food production as things that are pretty hard to optimise. That isn't to say that we can't optimise them at all. We can build smaller houses or taller buildings. And we transform energy from fossil fuels into fertiliser that increases yields. But growth in these areas is still very much constrained.
And these things are key human needs.