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Your article has some good points, and I especially liked the part saying that people who use natural resources should have to pay the full price.
However, the article is wrong in its claim that in order to help poor countries, we need to have "redistribution" of wealth. Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan were all poor, third world countries several decades ago. But then they adopted market economies, the rule of law, protection of private property rights, and encorcement of contracts. Under this legal system, people were free to "create" wealth. So these countries became rich. They "created" wealth. This is the same legal system that exists in Canada, the United States, Australia, Western Europe, and Japan, which is how these countries also became rich.
The reason that poor countries remain poor is because they do not have this kind of legal system. People all over the world are pretty much the same. If they are free, and the proper kinds of incentives exist, then they will create wealth. The people in Ethiopia are no different than the people in Canada. The only reason why Ethiopia is so poor while Canada is so rich is because of differences in their legal systems.
Why is South Korea so much richer than North Korea? The only reason for the difference in wealth is the difference in their legal systems.
Economic growth can indeed go on forever. Ecomoic growth is defined by me as the process of turning things that have no value into things that have value, and the process of turning things that have less value into things that have more value, and of doing things more efficiently, and of doing more with less.
One example of economic growth is the switch from copper wires to fiber optic cables. Compared to the copper wire, the fiber optic cable carries more information, but it uses a smaller amount of natural resources.
Another example of economic growth is that we turn worthless sand into computer chips that are worth trillions of dollars.
We can desalinize as much water as we want, for less than a penny a gallon. And the cost of desalination keeps falling. This is another example of economic growth.
During the 17th century, some people worried about running out of candle wax, and they wondered how they would light their homes at night. They never realized that light bulbs and electricity would come along.
During most of human history, petroleum was a nuisance that got in the way of people who were digging water wells. It wasn't until the 19th century when a person with a brain figured out how to use the petroleum that it acquired any value.
Iron ore was just a worthless rock, until people figured out a way to put it to valuable use.
Based on these kinds of things, there is no limit to how much economic growth we can have.
Recently, there has been talk of using buckyballs and carbon nanotubes to build things that are stronger and lighter than current materials. These things are very expensive now, but past experience suggests that one day they will be very cheap.
The predicitons of the past from Paul Ehrlich, Lester Brown, the Club of Rome, Grenpeace, the Sierra Club, and other doomsayers were all based on the idea of "sustainable growth." They said that if the government didn't freeze GNP and economic growth, then before the year 2000, the world would run out of food, water, trees, petroleum, copper, aluminum, gold, and many other things. We ignored their advice. Since then, world GNP has more than doubled. And it's precisely because of economic growth that we avoided the disasters.
As long as economic growth is defined by the definition that I gave in this post, there is no limit to how much economic growth we can have.
And I am just dumbfounded and amazed and flabbergased that people stil give so much credibility, let alone any credibility at all, to Paul Ehrlich's philosphy.
In countries that have free economies and the rule of law and protections of private property rights and enforcement of contracts, things keep getting better and better and better.
Some U.S. cities have a "water shortage." What exactly is that? According to supporters of "sustainable growth," it means that there's not enough water. But the more accurate definition is that the demand for water exceeds the supply. This means that the price of water is too low. The solution is to raise the price. This will encourage people to voluntarily cut back on their use of water. And it will enable water suppliers to be able to afford to use desalination, which costs less than a penny a gallon.
Human beings are not helpless creatures who are doomed to suffer from shortages and poverty. There are solutions. There are things that we can do. As defined by my definition, economic growth can indeed go on forever.
The only way that any government could permanently stop long term economic growth would be to do things that are contrary to human nature. It is human nature to create and invent and discover. Only a repressive dictatorship could put a stop to those things.
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