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Comment by AstralStorm | Hacker News Reader

This is true only to some degree, there are always limits to growth. These limits are actually very far away, most of the trouble is caused by the funny rationing/commons depletion system we call capitalism.

The predicted 10-12 billion humans should have more than enough everything. We don't because capital and access are rationed.

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We’re at 8 billion people. Obtain 3% annual population growth and continue for 20 years you’re already at 14 billion. 30 years you get to 19 billion. If those numbers don’t seem like they’re within the limits to growth as you see them, keep adding decades and soon you’ll reach a number that probably is. The point here being that the limits may be far away numerically, but at modest growth rates we will hit any conceivable one. We are going to have to adapt to stable or declining population rates at some point, and this seems like a particularly good time to do it.

This is such a weird take because every other system except capitalism did not produce enough resources to let there be 8 bn people, and capitalism did produce them and also made the people vastly richer than the 1 bn there were before.

We're (as in humanity) still trying 'domesticated capitalism' for example in china. There are alternatives to laissez-faire, the current (bad) state of affairs is part of a trend for laissez-faire starting in the 70s.

We do need innovation in tech, and in supply chains, and in products, and for that capitalism is wonderful

We do not need innovation in how to ignore labour laws (uber) renters protections (airbnb). We do not need lower marginal top tax rates, and accumulation in the 1%.

We also need innovation in how to stop runaway capitalist cycles (and, again, I am hoping western democracies will learn from china how to do that before it is too late)

By my reckoning, when 90% of online comments mention "capitalism" they are describing the extractive process of taking worker surplus in the Marxian sense, which rent-seeking effectively is, not the freedom to allocate capital to accomplish value-additive projects, processes, and products.

The prior has a _lot_ of bad outcomes. Check out Nestle's impact to the world.

The latter has a _lot_ of good outcomes, but it easily opens up to the former.

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