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<blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 8633916" data-attributes="member: 59082">We shall see. I don't really buy the pragmatism of the idea of endless growth to begin with, and tend to see things move more in cycles - whether circular or spiral. So I can buy that we are &quot;spiraling upward,&quot; but there's an inevitable a down turn. But my point is that when things plateau out, that plateau--no matter how far the drop from whatever peak it reaches--will be much higher than its ever been.That said, the world of 2022 is quite different than it was even a decade ago. And in terms of the internet, I read that in 1995 there 16 million users worldwide, about 0.4% of the population, then 350 million five years later (6%) and over 5 billion today (about two-thirds of the world population). So this also has an impact, in terms of how many people have access to stuff like D&amp;D, not to mention global distribution and such.I was thinking about how I lived in the UK for a couple years in the late 80s, and completely fell out of touch with my beloved baseball. Back then, you really only had access to world events and news through TV, the radio, and print media, and the UK didn't really cover baseball back in 1986-87. This specific fact isn't relevant in and of itself, but I think the interconnectivity and access to information that the internet provides changes everything - and now, in 2022, two-thirds of the world population has internet access. I mean, how would someone in, say, Kinshasa in 1985 have any way to even know about the existence of D&amp;D? So it could be that perpetual growth is at least theoretically possible now in a way that it wasn't 30-40 years ago, even just 10-20 years ago, due to the ubiquity of the internet.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Mercurius, post: 8633916, member: 59082"] We shall see. I don't really buy the pragmatism of the idea of endless growth to begin with, and tend to see things move more in cycles - whether circular or spiral. So I can buy that we are "spiraling upward," but there's an inevitable a down turn. But my point is that when things plateau out, that plateau--no matter how far the drop from whatever peak it reaches--will be much higher than its ever been. That said, the world of 2022 is quite different than it was even a decade ago. And in terms of the internet, I read that in 1995 there 16 million users worldwide, about 0.4% of the population, then 350 million five years later (6%) and over 5 billion today (about two-thirds of the world population). So this also has an impact, in terms of how many people have access to stuff like D&D, not to mention global distribution and such. I was thinking about how I lived in the UK for a couple years in the late 80s, and completely fell out of touch with my beloved baseball. Back then, you really only had access to world events and news through TV, the radio, and print media, and the UK didn't really cover baseball back in 1986-87. This specific fact isn't relevant in and of itself, but I think the interconnectivity and access to information that the internet provides changes everything - and now, in 2022, two-thirds of the world population has internet access. I mean, how would someone in, say, Kinshasa in 1985 have any way to even know about the existence of D&D? So it could be that perpetual growth is at least theoretically possible now in a way that it wasn't 30-40 years ago, even just 10-20 years ago, due to the ubiquity of the internet. [/QUOTE]

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