Until we start setting up colonies and markets in the frontiers of space, the strategy of growing ourselves out of problems is only going to scale up to a point. Robots and AI may be part of our strategies for coping with stable populations that are aging, but we're going to have to start developing economic systems that work for a stable number of people, especially local economies that will be more resource constrained once we leave the abundance of Planet Earth.
I'd rather see if we can figure out how to have sustainable capitalism in the generally-forgiving environment of Earth so that we can export that to Mars, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and beyond, instead of running the risk of not figuring how to do that, and we sentence those that come after us to more authoritarian lives, where they look back on things like the free market the same way we look back at early barter and subsistence economies now. Who is going to step up to become the 23rd century's Adam Smith?
Until we start setting up colonies and markets in the frontiers of space, the strategy of growing ourselves out of problems is only going to scale up to a point. Robots and AI may be part of our strategies for coping with stable populations that are aging, but we're going to have to start developing economic systems that work for a stable number of people, especially local economies that will be more resource constrained once we leave the abundance of Planet Earth.
I'd rather see if we can figure out how to have sustainable capitalism in the generally-forgiving environment of Earth so that we can export that to Mars, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and beyond, instead of running the risk of not figuring how to do that, and we sentence those that come after us to more authoritarian lives, where they look back on things like the free market the same way we look back at early barter and subsistence economies now. Who is going to step up to become the 23rd century's Adam Smith?
Looks like Krugman may be vying for the honor:
https://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/interstellar.pdf
Wow, 1978. That should be interesting.
I do wonder where human population would stabilize if/when the third world countries get contraception and start using it.
This was a good read on the subject:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-05-11/can-americans-be-encouraged-to-have-more-babies?sref=XcONO5zf