Limits to growth

Abstract

Sustaining current economic growth rates over the next ten thousand years is physically impossible. Access to all matter within a million light-years would still not support a per capita standard of living many orders of magnitude higher than today’s. The concept of simulating infinitely great living standards via virtual reality is critiqued: it is argued that virtual experiences, while enjoyable, are unlikely to provide such extraordinarily high living standards that people would prefer them over improvements in real-world living standards with high probability. The paper concludes that within the next million years, economic growth rates inevitably must fall below feasible population growth rates. – AI-generated abstract.