A Quote by Kenneth E. Boulding
Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.
Related Quotes
Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth on a planet with finite resources is either a madman or an economist.
Anyone who believes in indefinite growth on a physically finite planet is either mad or an economist
Anyone who thinks consumption can expand forever on a finite planet is either insane or an economist.
Our principal constraints are cultural. During the last two centuries we have known nothing but exponential growth and in parallel we have evolved what amounts to an exponential-growth culture, a culture so heavily dependent upon the continuance of exponential growth for its stability that it is incapable of reckoning with problems of non-growth.
We used to live in a world where the price of resources came down steadily, and now the world has changed. You have a great mismatch between finite resources and exponential population growth.
What I've been thinking about recently is the idea of finite and fragility. Either we're acknowledging that our lives here are finite, this moment is finite, and that this whole world is fragile, or we're not, but it is really happening and that is really true.
A finite world can support only a finite population; therefore, population growth must eventually equal zero.
Growth has failed on its own terms. You can't have infinite growth in a world of finite resources.
Oh yes! The one man in the world who never believes he's mad is the madman.
If India has to achieve exponential growth, it would have to be on the back of strong growth in the manufacturing sector.
Economic growth is the aggregate effect of the quest to accumulate capital and extract profit. Capitalism collapses without growth, yet perpetual growth on a finite planet leads inexorably to environmental calamity.
If you end your story, it's a static work of art, a finite circle. But if you don't, it belongs to anyone's imagination. It stays alive forever.
If the population curve is on an exponential growth, and the resources are on an exponential decline, what happens first is you get increases in wealth discrepancy, which means that you get rich pockets of gated communities with security guards outside them, and you get more and more poverty outside that area.
Infinite growth of material consumption in a finite world is an impossibility.
That's the case with these exponential technologies; our brains, they struggle with it. We live in a world that is global and exponential, and our brains evolved in a world that was linear and local.
How do you measure whether or not a strategy of economic growth that is articulated by a very smart, capable economist actually yields growth? You can't. But you can influence.
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