Divergence, for ANY view you will always find a number of economists disagreeing. But on closer inspection you'll find most of their arguments are complete rubbish based on false assumptions.

""If domestic per capita incomes have stagnated, and if the borrowing binge is exhausted, and if export markets are not accessible, there is only one variable left to play with, the number of 'capitas'."

No, there is a second variable left: the amount of government deficit spending. Governments like Australia's federal government are financially sovereign (they create their own money and let the market set its value) so have unlimited credit in their own currency. Therefore the government can always afford to spend more.

Aidan,

Of course governments can print as much money as they like - just like Germany after World War I (search "hyperinflation").

Note that the ultimate limit to growth is set by the laws of thermodynamics, even assuming that we have a perfectly clean, free, unlimited source of energy, because if our energy consumption keeps growing at current rates, the waste heat that we must unavoidably emit will end up cooking us in a matter of a few centuries.

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/

A lot of this growth in energy consumption is related to population growth, but even if that stops, our mining will require a lot more energy, essentially because the low-hanging fruit has already been picked.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFyTSiCXWEE

Ultimately, you are arguing with the laws of nature.

Divergence, I'm well aware of what hyperinflation is, but I'm not still so ignorant that I think printing money is sufficient to cause it. As for Germany after WW1, the problem was the lack of an effective tax system. As soon as they implemented one, the hyperinflation completely stopped.

I'm not advocating a rise in government spending to cause an inflation problem (let alone hyperinflation, though that would be almost impossible for Australia to reach anyway). I'm only saying the government can and should spend enough to overcome the stagnation.

"Note that the ultimate limit to growth is set by the laws of thermodynamics, even assuming that we have a perfectly clean, free, unlimited source of energy, because if our energy consumption keeps growing at current rates, the waste heat that we must unavoidably emit will end up cooking us in a matter of a few centuries."
Except that economic value is not proportional to energy use. Efficiency increases are just as valuable as production increases. The real game changer is going to come in a decade or two when molten oxide electrolysis revolutionises steelmaking.

Aidan wrote on Thursday, 4 December 2014 3:42:17 PM, "I don't regard posting links to show others are of the same opinion as very useful."

Links are only the on-line way to cite the sources which verify the claims being made.

In every serious debate in which I have participated, both on-line and off-line, those making controversial claims are expected to cite the evidence which support those claims.

Aidan wrote, "I seriously doubt we will ever either reach perfection or decide the status quo is good enough."

In fact, through most of human history there has been a stable "steady state" and the vast majority of humanity have been quite happy with that. This includes the periods of the non-hierarchical New Guinean, Melanesian and South Pacific civilisations which lasted for between 60,000 and 30,000 years until the Pacific was 'discovered' and settled by Western colonialists.

Whether or not the people of the Pacific considered their societies perfect, they sure considered them good enough.

Similar non-hierarchical societies existed all over the globe once, including in Britain. Except for a brief interlude when Britain was occupied by Romans, stable non-hierachical societies existed in Britain until the centuries following the Norman invasion of 1066. In the period following the Norman invasion, common land was privatised and landless peasants had no choice but to live in slums and to work in the hellish factories and live in slums.

Assuming humanity doesn't first destroy itself with overpopulation, overconsumption or war, there is every reason to hope that we will return to the sort of society that predated the industrial revolution and colonialism.

malthusista, links to facts are useful, but links to other opinions concurring with your own don't really prove anything.

Proving the absence of something is much harder than proving its presence. I could list claims to the contrary and tell you why they're wrong, but that would be very tedious and I doubt it would really advance the debate. So instead I've invited you, and anyone else of your opinion, to supply the claims, and I will identify the flaws that invalidate them.

I notice your claims of a steady state relate to times when information about them is scarce. If more information were available, I think you'd find they were much less steady than you assumed.

Aidan,

Whilst you might think it is acceptable for populations to be housed in high-rise like battery hens, I don't think so.

My reference for small stable populations as a norm in the past is "Demography, Territory, Law: The Rules of animal and human population", Countershock Press 2013 http://www.lulu.com/shop/sheila-newman/demography-territory-law-rules-of-animal-human-populations/paperback/product-21735874.html and "Demography, Territory, Law 2: Land-tenure and the origins of capitalism in Britain", Countershock Press 2014, http://www.lulu.com/shop/sm-newman/demography-territory-law-2-land-tenure-the-origins-of-capitalism-in-britain/paperback/product-21735834.html . The first and second books give references for steady state populations and evolutionary arguments. The first has a comprehensive literature review of population theories (far more than you would usually hear of) and then formulates its own. The second book examines history in the light of this theory, which has been scientifically peer reviewed in reviews you can read here: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/257536904_JosephSmith__Pirie%27s_reviews_of_Demography_Territory_Law_Vol1 The author has also recently written two short articles, which explore the fallacy of inevitable population growth in the light of Ethiopia http://candobetter.net/node/4147 and Congo http://candobetter.net/node/4216. As the author remarks in those articles, it should not hard to work out for yourself that there is something wrong with the assumption that Africa, India, China and overpopulated islands in the Pacific, were always have been like that. The usual ideology is that they always had high birth rates and high death rates which modern medicine improved, however it is unlikely that birth rates were really that high and I don't think you can point to good access to medicine in the classically overpopulated countries.

In the short term you might refer to the abovementioned article called, "Development caused overpopulation in Ethiopia", where the author posts footnotes instancing her arguments, including one that counters inclusive fitness theory's assumption of no natural barriers to a genetic drive to maximise numbers (apart from violence and disease) with cooperative breeding models and natural contraception in the environment and through genetically programmed incest avoidance that responds to environmental cues.