The economic paradigm of bigger, bigger, more, more has long been a worry for me. People cannot continue consumerism and credit forever. They are owned by the banks but to what end? It simply is not possible for this to continue without repercussions, it is not sustainable.
I am not an economist or a psychologist, just a person of average intelligence who can see there will be obvious repercussions in the long run if people think an infinite economy in an infinite world is possible. It is not an infinite world.
To the psychologists out there, don't bring this to a psychology debate, it is not, it's real, and most economists have no idea what to do.

The article is about economic growth, not population growth. As no-one actually believes ericc’s contention that “modern civilisation's primary goal [is] to cram as many people onto the planet as possible,” or Eclipse Now’s point about supporting “a trillion people” these are not very relevant to a realistic debate about growth possibilities.

Ericc’s point about “just close our eyes and think everything will be ok” probably is closest to the position that Romer contests. Just because we can’t imagine what the next breakthrough in energy or food technology will be, doesn’t mean someone else won’t think of it.

In 1899, Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, said that: "Everything that can be invented has been invented." About 1900 years earlier, Roman engineer Julius Sextus Frontinus made much the same point: "Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further developments." Both were victims of the same lack of imagination that Romer identifies as underpinning modern scepticism about the possibility of sustained and sustainable economic growth.

The central point here is that price changes provide the incentive both to innovate and to reduce usage of scarce resources. We do not know exactly how the economy will adapt, but we know that it will. And this process has gone on for hundreds of years, not just since WW2. The printing press, windmill and steam engine were all stages on the journey. We may not (yet) have cured all cancers, but a lot of cancers now are manageable and no longer kill as quickly as one they did. We can cure or control a vast range of other once-fatal diseases.

Romer’s article is short and easy to read and can be viewed here:
http://www.stanford.edu/~promer/EconomicGrowth.pdf

What we require is technological growth and economic sustainability and you can't have that with globalisation and economic growth. Unsustainable is not growth but regression, as any real economist will tell you, but refuse to accept for their own theories. Humanity has placed itself in a no win situation, we now have a society demanding everyone work for the economy or miss out completely, people have to work long hours just to survive.

Where's our government borrowing all this money from, all this borrowing means everyone's in debt to everyone else, now that's not logical or rational. Now education is aimed at establishing economic slaves and not people able to live their lives responsibly, as we see with the growing street violence around the country. Children are born then farmed out to programmers, who begin the process of indoctrination into the loneliness of economic enslavement. Now we live longer, they are demanding we work longer for less and less. We should work to live, not live to work, as elitist economist and ideologists demand.

We don't need growth to constantly improve living standards, what we need is control of how and when resources are used. Probably 80% of consumer goods are unnecessary, polluting, ecologically destructive and a useless waste of resources. The only way to change our direction is to remove the controlling ideologies and establish a different system allowing people to progress and also sustain our planet. With all the money spent on consumer junk and arms, we could establish a much better way of life.

The problem is people can refer to quotes by economists with theories and post other sources to read. I am sure we are all hearily sick of reading all the proposals from various sources.

When it really comes down to is reality - infinite growth in an infinite world is impossible. Reality is what you have when you are pontificating on what might or might not happen if the world continues consumerism and following some ideology that "we will be alright Jack if you just keep spending",and quoting capitalism is great. It won't be alright. It will certainly not be alright in 10 to 20 years. Or even next year.

Good article, and a great link to Bartlett's lecture; really good stuff.
What neither Tons or Bartlett even mentioned, is entropy.
Even if we achieve zero population growth in the near future (and I believe we could) we will still inevitably run out of resources. Once steel oxidises, you can't recycle it. You can't turn rust back into steel. Once the oil and diesel is burnt, it's gone forever. Water is the ashes of hydrogen that has already been 'burnt'. Laissez faire economics predicts these resources will just become more valuable as they become more scarce.
So what?
The gap between rich and poor continues to grow; war between the have's and the have not's becomes more and more likely.
There can be little doubt that future generations will curse our selfish profligacy.
We are currently demonstrating as much simple good sense and forward planning as the Easter Islanders.
Incidentally for all the oldies moaning about 'the good old days' here is a great vid.
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/642.html

Wing Ah ling,
there ARE central planning economic forces that are pro-growth, called Rudd and his so called "stimulus package", and his equivalents in most governments in most countries around the world. Or please show me the government that celebrates initiatives that will lower consumption and the general economy by 5% because the scientists demonstrated that the economy had “grown too high”?

Economics might be the science of the allocation of limited resources, but just restating this does not negate the central premise of this article: modern economic and political policy appears based on growth, growth, growth! To truly engage an argument you need to counter it with RELEVANT information, not just side-step with an irrelevant definition.

I suggest you take up watching Catalyst on Thursday nights or even just reading the newspaper! You appear terribly uninformed about the state of the world. We ARE approaching ALL SORTS of ecological and resource catastrophes despite Lomborg and his anti-science political propaganda. We are losing species, intact ecosystems, topsoil, forests, climate stability, oil, metals, gas, coal, fisheries, freshwater, river integrity and health, and beautiful countryside to the developer lobby and their political friends. Developers are paving over and ploughing up natural habitats.

Indonesia is loosing 300 football fields of forest per hour! You can quote Lomborg’s rubbish all you want but the science is against you. (And you’ve just lost any credibility you claimed to have). See:
http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/

The cave men might not have run out of caves, but the Irish Potato famine did kill 1.5 million Irishmen, Mao’s poor resource handling did cause “Mao’s Great Leap Forward” which killed 20 to 40 million peasants, and other resource mismanagement calamities abound throughout history! Read Jared Diamond’s “Collapse”.

Being rational beings I believe we need to become acquainted with the true challenges before us and adapt to them, and that means sensible population policy and stable state economics.