….and that is why the free market is the best possible system there can be.
It has lifted millions of people out of poverty and created unimaginable wealth for everyone.
And in the future, we will all get to enjoy these new things, which for now only get enjoyed
by the rich because the market will grow ever further which will make everything cheaper!
Yes every now and then there is a crisis but that’s just a natural cleaning process.
The bad businesses get destroyed and the good ones continue.
No reason to panic!
Any questions?
Yea I have one; You stated that the market will have to keep growing in order to allow
everyone to enjoy the advances.
I was wondering what happens if the market stops growing, how do the common people enjoy
new technology then?
Thank you, The market does not stop growing.
Economic growth is an exponential function which means that it grows faster and faster
every year, there are many examples of this in nature, like bacteria, they grow exponentially.
The market is just natural, and because of that it follows the natural laws of expansion.
But Actually, bacteria don’t grow exponentially forever.
If they did that the whole universe would be covered in it already.
It actually follows logistic growth which means that at first it grows exponentially
but eventually it slows down as it reaches the carrying capacity.
That means at some point bacteria stop growing because they have infected the whole host
or filled the entire petri dish.
Exponential growth actually doesn’t exists in nature at all because all growth is limited
by something.
Well, of course, my example was just a slimily to make the growth more understandable.
The free market is not bound by the laws of nature because it is manmade.
There is no upper limit to the amount of money that can be produced which means that there
is no limit to the amount of growth that can happen.
But what about resources?
There is only a limited amount of let’s say, germanium.
It’s used to make transistors for electronics and it’s on the list of endangered elements
which means it could run out in the near future.
The same is true for lithium, there isn’t even enough of it around for everyone in the
world to get an electric car.
Don’t the limited resources of the planet mean that the market eventually has to stop
growing?
Ah yes it would seem this way, but the beauty of the free market is that it solves such
problems on its own.
If earth runs out of, let’s say lithium we can just mine asteroids for it.
There are single asteroids in the asteroid belt between mars and Jupiter that contain
more lithium than all of earth.
If we run out of resources here, we must simply expand beyond our planet.
But isn’t space travel the most expensive industry there is?
Doesn’t it cost like 7000 USD to put just one kilogram into space?
And that’s just low earth orbit, no talk about the asteroid belt.
How would you get whole mining operations up there without creating more cost than value?
Oh, actually the free market is solving this as we speak!
SpaceX is making it possible to launch probes at as little as 1.7 thousand USD per kilogram.
But that’s still way too high to be profitable considering that any spacecraft would have
to be 90% fuel to get to the asteroid belt AND be able to return to earth WITH the resources
it mined.
Yes, but spaceX is making it more and more affordable every year!
Soon we will be flying to space for less than we are flying to the Bahamas!
And that will make an interplanetary expansion of the free market possible and profitable!
But don’t these rockets all use methane engines?
Don’t they completely destroy the environment and use up fossil fuels?
Ignoring the environment, what happens if we run out of methane?
Won’t rocket launches become way more expensive again?
Yes, you would assume that but there are actually biofuels being developed which would make
the fuel cheaper than ever!
But doesn’t biofuel take way more labor and time to be able to be used?
Won’t it always be more expensive to grow plants and turn them into fuel than it is
to put up an oil well.
Isn’t it inevitable that the prices will raise to such a degree that continued growth
is no longer feasible?
And that’s on top of the moral predicament that is burning thousands of tons of bio fuel
while there are millions starving each year.
*slightly hesitant* I mean maybe, but only for a short time!
Automatization will drastically reduce the costs of production!
Biofuel will be so cheap everyone will be able to afford it much more easily than they
are affording fossil fuels right now!
But technology is nowhere near advanced enough to automatically take care of something as
complex as farming.
Machines can barely do assembly line work right now.
Oh, you must have forgotten about More’s law!
Every year processor speed get’s two times as fast or the processor price is reduced
by half!
Technology is actually growing at an exponential rate as well!
Just look around! 10 years ago none of this technology would have existed but nowadays
it does!
The future will hold great things for us in the same way!
I am afraid More’s law is not true.
Have a look at this.
According to more’s law within 10 years processor power should increase 100 fold.
The most powerful intel processor in 2010 was the i7-980X and the most powerful processor
today is the Intel i9-10900X.
But the i9 is not even 5 times as powerful as the i7, and they cost about the same at
release.
More’s law may have been accurate in the past, the 80s and 90s but just like the economy
the tech sector is not an exponential growth but a logistic one and we are approaching
the limit of what’s technologically possible.
Processors can only get so small and so cheap.
*hesitant* Well maybe that is so but quantum computers will solve this!
Quantum computers aren’t what they are hyped up to be.
They aren’t just more powerful computers.
They are specialized machines built for specialized purposes, and yes, in those cases they are
a lot better, but you can’t have a quantum processor in your phone because your phone
wouldn’t have a use for it.
*verunsichert* Well….
Technology will solve it!
The market will find a way to grow even if More’s law turns out to be false.
No, it won’t.
There is no way for any system to keep rowing forever.
It’s logically and logistically impossible there will be a cap at some point.
*frustrated* No there won’t be!
The market will grow forever!
No, it won’t!
At some point it will run out of resources to exploit.
Out of oil to drill, out of fish to catch, out of minerals to mine and out of labour
to exploit.
The resources are not infinite and that means the growth has to stop!
*in tears*No!
It has to keep growing!
It cannot stop!
What do you mean it can’t stop?
It has to stop according to every natural law.
NO!
IF THE MARKET STOPS GROWING THIS ENTIRE FUCKING SYSTEM WILL COLLAPSE!
What are you even talking about?
*sobbing* T…the banks.
What about the banks?
The banks make money by loaning money.
And the only reason their customers can pay them back more than they received is because
their businesses are growing.
And for everyone to be able to pay back their loans everyone’s business has to grow which
means the entire economy has to grow.
Go on.
And if the economy stops growing the banks can no longer make a profit so they will stop
loaning out money and without loans nobody could start a new business which means competition
and innovation would grind to a halt and all big corporations would swallow the small ones
and we’d end up in a new form of feudalism without class mobility!
IT JUST CAN’T STOP GROWING!
But it will stop eventually!
Nothing can grow forever!
NO!
YES!
No!
If it stops then the investors would no longer have a reason to invest and they’d take
all of their money out of the economy which would ruin countless businesses and create
millions of unemployed people.
Do you know what hungry angry people do to rich people?
Two words: French revolution.
*scared* I…If that’s true why do you stick with this system?
Why not come up with a better one?
It will stop growing eventually!
NO!
IT WILL NEVER STOP GROWING!
IT JUST CAN’T!
And if it does it will have grown long enough for me to have become rich enough to afford
a private security organization to protect me from the hungry people.
BUT THAT WON’T HAPPEN ANYWAY BECAUSE THE MARKET WILL GROW FOREVER!
WHY CAN’T YOU JUST ADMIT THAT IT CAN’T GROW FOREVER?
BECAUSE THAT WOULD SCARE THE INVESTORS!
IF we admitted that it will stop growing eventually they would no longer invest and that would
lead to an economic crisis followed by the realization that the banks cannot make a profit
anymore.
If we admit that it will collapse it will collapse earlier!
So, I am stuck here having to gas light myself and everyone around me and tell everyone that
this system will grow forever because if I don’t if could stop growing and collapse.
And I will do this until the very day I die and I will pray to all gods known to man to
make sure that the illusion of infinite growth does not die before me because I do not want
to live in a world without capitalism and I will cheat steal and lie all I need to make
sure that people believe that this system will help them eventually even if it’s utterly
impossible!
Yes, it will stop growing but we cannot admit that or else it will fall apart.
So I guess that’s why you guys pretend that it will never stop growing