Technical improvements that do not increase resourse extraction are real improvements, but they are transitions, not growth. Once the transition is over, there is no further improvement for that technology. No return per year can be calculated, presumed, or utilized.
Can improvements feed on each other, and thus continue? Maybe, but it is doubtful. The only examples we know about--such as the West in the 19th century, were precisely cases of increasing resource use--and thus unsustainable. The Fates are kind.
The growth will not be predictable, which plays all kinds of havoc with planning (industrial or otherwise) that presumes predictable growth, but it is most assuredly still growth.
But we're going to have to give up worshipping growth for the sake of growth anyway. A number of renewable resources can be exploited beyond the point of sustainability for a moderately long time - and as long as we worship growth for the sake of growth, this will always be a temptation.
And when growth is considered "nice to have" rather than "need to have," the need for planning in a way that relies on it will greatly diminish.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
But technical improvements that decrease resource extraction can continue indefinitely at a constant rate.
However, maybe insisting on defining r measuring a rate for these things is nonsense. Once you convince yourself that, say, a constant rate of return on investment makes sense, then you start insisting on getting one. This way of having conceptual constructs influence the way business or speculative investment are carried out has a long, unillustrious history. En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
Provided that you can come up with them!
I have never found that the creative process can be rationalized or linearized in this way. Imitating and analogizing is almost that rational, but when you have finished with that, the transition started by the new technology is complete and stops.
Your second paragraph is much to the point. The Fates are kind.
Economic evolution proceeds through boom/bust cycles, that seems to be the case. En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
