Thank you, Squeers, You put it so well, there's nothing I can add.

*Beyond that I've argued that our system is dependent on economic growth, which is dependant on consumption*

What you seem to forget Squeers is that alot of it is consumption
of services, as distinct from goods. I did read somewhere that
petroleum use per head in the US, is actually stable to decreasing.
Yanks tanks are becoming more efficient, smaller, etc.

Where we've seen the big growth is not in consumption of goods, but
in consumption of services. Nothing wrong with that.

Yabby,

Americans have downsized somewhat from the glory days of the decades following the war (in size, not in quantity), but part of the reason nowadays is because of the decimation of their manufacturing sector. They are so reliant these days on cheap Chinese imports which not only flood the market, but are also helping to keep the American economy from going completely under.
Service industries have increased in the West, not in small part because countries like Australia and America have been content to let manufacturing decline or seek cheaper venues overseas - and service industries are reliant on product consumption as well.

Our whole social paradigm revolves around conspicuous consumption - I'm not noticing any reduction in the goods available or a corresponding rise in their cost. On the contrary, China keeps pumping them out cheaply to an extremely receptive market in the West.

*I'm not noticing any reduction in the goods available or a corresponding rise in their cost*

Well I should hope not. There would be no good reason. But people
can only buy so much stuff. In Australia, housing blocks are getting
dramatically smaller, people don't have the space to put more stuff
anyhow. This is why Harvey Norman is complaining. Once people
have their flat screen tv, there is no real reason to buy another
one, so he's going backwards.

Fact is that people are going for smaller cars, solar hot water,
insulated homes etc. 30 years ago, nearly every car on our roads
was a Holden or Falcon 6 or 8 cylinder. They are down to 1000cc now.

China makes 2 million tonnes of steel a day, but only a small amount
goes into making trinkets. Mostly they use it for construction of
buildings, roads, railways, houses, as their peasants move to the
cities.

But the fact remains that most of our economic growth comes from
more services, not the consumption of more goods.

Where you globally have an issue now is that its no longer a few
hundred million leading the Western lifestyle, but another 4 billion
or so, trying to do the same. So if you look at the big picture,
your Balmain tractor simply ain't gonna matter and will be recycled
anyhow.

Feel guilt if you please, but even if we quit every single Balmain
tractor in Australia's cities, it would hardly matter, other then
make Squeers feel better. Divergence sees that big picture but
I get the feeling that you guys don't

Yabby,
I'm aware that services keep the money in circulation, but I'm sure you know as well as I do that there has to be growth, or money coming "into" the economy (growth elsewhere), to drive real prosperity, indeed to fund the service industry.
A better example of economic growth that "apparently" relies much less on material growth is what's been called the "spacial dialectical" phase of capitalism (silly jargon I know), or the communication age. A great deal of money is being derived from software, virtual entertainment, social media etc. and it would be an interesting study to see how much money is being made from thin air, i.e. without concomitant material growth and expanding markets. Not much I suspect if we take into account the detrimental health effects of sedentaryness alone, and of course the IT revolution still drives huge markets for innovative hardware, both with built-in obsolescence and a short shelf life driven by fashion--a massive and artificial driver of consumption and waste in wealthy countries. The internet's also becoming much more commercialised and drives growth in myriad other areas vicariously.
On the whole, consumerism has never been so rampant--you know that from your own life experience as well as I do Yabby; almost nothing is made to last, repaired or worn-out these days, and as Poirot says, this is largely driven by the developing, industrialising giants that both import our raw materials, on an incomprehensible scale, develop themselves exponentially, and requite the squandering of our resources on cheap, short-term consumables and baubles. The whole thing is a giant economic/ecologically-catastrophic bubble, waiting to burst, that couldn't be calculatedly made more precarious.
How anyone can deny that our system is patently devoted to massive short-term profit to a few, at the heedless expense of a viable future, is beyond me.
This is the essence of capitalism--intensive human farming--and dreams of reform are bovine.

*almost nothing is made to last*

Nonsense Squeers. That is purely a question of choice. You can
choose between cheap or even higher quality that does last.
I have a soft spot for products that are well designed and do
last, unlike the rubbish we used to be forced to buy, when it
was all Australian made, expensive and poorly designed.

I'll give you a couple of examples. I recently bought a set of
knives, made by Global in Japan. They sit on my kitchen bench
in a stand, as a well thought out set. I am just blown away by
those knives, every time I use them. They will be here long after
I am gone. I bought a Thermomix for the kitchen too. Amazing
quality, far too expensive, but designed to last for decades.

You seem to ignore the huge savings that the IT revolution is actually
creating. No need to get lost anymore, wasting huge amounts of fuel,
an electronic gizmo gets you to exactly where you want to go.
No need to buy albums and cds anymore, its all stored on 300g
of electronics. No need to go to meetings anymore, you can go
electonically. No need to chop down huge forests for all those books,
no need for bookshelves, no need for printing tonnes of newspapers
each day. You can store the frigging lot on 800g of resources.

I don't even need to go to Perth shopping anymore, I can do it
all electronically, saving 50 litres of diesel each time.

The list goes on and on