It seems to me that we are heading into an era in which the cost of resources dwarf the cost of labour. This was also the case before the industrial revolution. During the industrial revolution and the following century, the cost of resources became first comparable and then (in the industrialised world) negligible to the cost of labour, hence the 'don't mend' culture.
I expect that we will see a resurgence in recycling and repair as resources become scarce compared to labour.
- Jake Ceterum censeo Chicago esse delendam
When you improve a technology--really improve it: more results from less inputs, with a smaller resource footprint--you get a period of growth that is STRICTLY TEMPORARY. It is transient. It is simply the process of moving from a less abundant, steady state economy, to a more abundant one. Once you have done that, growth stops.
Let us hypothesize you live in a desert. It does not support much life, and life is hard. Imagine you find a new technology, one that allows you to catch and store water from a wadi and then irrigate the land--somehow without creating water-logging or salinity, perhaps due to a drip-irrigation method that sweeps the salinated water downward and then back into the wadi to be removed with the occasional rain.
You plant fruit trees. More and easier life becomes possible. The fruit trees themselves increase humidity, raising rainfall and increasing the available water. You build out with more fruit trees, and all the life that they support, and want themselves, in order to flourish.
Growth, right? But only for a short time. You are changing the local climate to one that is wetter and more favorable, and using the increased water to build a more abundant life, but when you reach the limits (which you will) the build-out stops. It must stop; worse, if you try to keep it going you will overbuild, redesertify, kill your existing fruit trees and return to the barren and meager scrub.
When we revisit the facts of North American ecology--a fair amount was recorded and written down--it becomes clear that the "primitive" people before the European invasion had precisely evolved a high technology of practical ecological management, that maintained high levels of plant and animal life with very little effort. This translated into abundant food and raw materials, which, however, were deliberately utilized sparingly. When the Europeans arrived they immediately began predating to destruction, with forests and game animals (and fish) showing the effects earliest. We are now half way through the process of turning the eastern half of North America back into desert--or more precisely, scrubland.
There is a hint here, and a warning: Life support on this scrub will be low. We will not return to a pre-invasion ecology, at least not for some millenia. First we will fall--far BELOW pre-invasion levels--because the resources have been destroyed and are no longer there.
