A related point I've heard here is that we ultimately only get one shot at bootstrapping ourselves into a truly advanced civilization no longer entirely reliant on finite resources. If we screw up the transition and expend those finite resources, especially fossil fuels, before we move beyond them, we won't have enough foundation left to try again. Nuclear and renewables might replace fossil fuels, but if you run out of fossil fuels before nuclear and renewables can pick up the slack, you're doomed to regress to a pre-energy society and it will be impossible to get back to a point where nuclear power is achievable without cheap fossil fuel energy.

The key here for me is that treating economics like a zero sum game now makes it significantly more likely we end up at a place where it really is zero sum because zero sum thinking is nearly always short-sighted by definition, and getting to the next level requires more strategic thinking.

> no longer entirely reliant on finite resources

I've never quite wrapped my head around what that looks like. What resources could we possibly use that aren't finite?

Maybe we don't hit max utilization for a while, that happens after large innovation jumps, but there's always a cap in natural resources somewhere.

That's a valid point. On long enough timescales, even stars will burn out. But the cap I was thinking of was less in terms of capacity and more in terms of longevity. There's an upper limit to how much energy we can generate with solar panels on Earth for example, but we'd be able to sustain that capacity for a long, long period of time.

On that kind of timescale, it's far less likely we run out of energy before we can move to a new alternative (perhaps an alternative planet). You're right that no resource is infinite, so maybe the better way to phrase it is resources where we won't run out of them before we are unlikely to need them again.

That probably runs into Jevan's Paradox - we may get more efficient but we'll just increase our use to take advantage of the resources we already have.

In what you describe I can't help but see us stuck on a treadmill, endlessly chasing the next innovation to replace the current tech before we run out of resources. We won't be arguing about oil the next time around, bit maybe lithium?

I can't help but wonder what the point is. We could just use less and accept enough rather than constantly wanting the next big thing. I could have 10% of what I have today and still live a more comfortable life than almost all of human history.