Could you provide some evidence that this rate of growth is unusual in history? I mean it wouldn’t shock me if we looked back at the last 5000 years and saw that most societies real production grew at similar rates during times of peace/tranquility but that resulted in small absolute growth that was regularly wiped out by invasion, plague or other calamity. In which case the question becomes whether or not you believe that our technological accomplishments make us more resistant to such calamities (another discussion entirely).
Moreover, even if we didn’t see similar levels of growth in the past there are plenty of simple models which explain this apparent difference as the result of a single underlying phenomenon. For instance, consider the theory that real production over and above subsistence agricultural level grows at a constant rate per year. As this value was almost 0 for the past 5,000 years that growth wouldn’t be very noticeable until recently. And this isn’t just some arbitrary mathematical fit but has a good justification, e.g., productivity improvements require free time, invention etc.. etc.. so only happens in the percent of people’s time not devoted to avoiding starving.
Also, it’s kinda weird to describe the constant rate of growth assumption as business as usual but then pick a graph where we have an economic singularity (flat rate of growth gives a exponential curve which doesn’t escape to infinity at any finite time). Having said all that, sure it seems wrong to just assume things will continue this way forever but it seems equally unjustified to reach any other conclusion.
Could you provide some evidence that this rate of growth is unusual in history? I mean it wouldn’t shock me if we looked back at the last 5000 years and saw that most societies real production grew at similar rates during times of peace/tranquility but that resulted in small absolute growth that was regularly wiped out by invasion, plague or other calamity. In which case the question becomes whether or not you believe that our technological accomplishments make us more resistant to such calamities (another discussion entirely).
Moreover, even if we didn’t see similar levels of growth in the past there are plenty of simple models which explain this apparent difference as the result of a single underlying phenomenon. For instance, consider the theory that real production over and above subsistence agricultural level grows at a constant rate per year. As this value was almost 0 for the past 5,000 years that growth wouldn’t be very noticeable until recently. And this isn’t just some arbitrary mathematical fit but has a good justification, e.g., productivity improvements require free time, invention etc.. etc.. so only happens in the percent of people’s time not devoted to avoiding starving.
Also, it’s kinda weird to describe the constant rate of growth assumption as business as usual but then pick a graph where we have an economic singularity (flat rate of growth gives a exponential curve which doesn’t escape to infinity at any finite time). Having said all that, sure it seems wrong to just assume things will continue this way forever but it seems equally unjustified to reach any other conclusion.