Not all parts of the economy consume finite resources equally. In fact, only a minor portion of it is related to the manufacturing of goods in the industrialized countries. Most of the economy there is services by now and, even more related to your question, most of the growth is growth in servic...
Note that this works only locally. Manufacturing declines in rich countries because there are poorer countries they can pay to do the production instead of doing it themselves. It would be interesting to look at global trends.
I'm not sure why this answer is showing charts of $ amounts when the question is about finite resources. Concrete, the most widely used material in the world, has seen steadily increased production. Here's a US chart: i.imgur.com/HdBrbvy.png ( from wapo ) . Or consider global iron ore production: i.imgur.com/DN3kUwn.png . Discussing GDP doesn't answer the question.
Is being an influencer that ecologically friendly? There is quite a bit of infrastructure involved, it seems like it would take a lot of work to sort out how much of that infrastructure is used by influencers and their audiences when watching, and what the ecological effects of that are.
Your figures on manufacturing and mining represent their respective shares in GDP, not their actual extent. Thus, your claim that resource extraction is declining is not supported at all by your figure 1. The same goes for your figure on the UK, which show's the share of manufacturing and production in UK's GDP. (Moreover, that extraction as a share in GDP is declining in the richt nations says nothing about the global south). Extraction and other resource depletion, in absolute terms, are not decreasing.
@henning Thanks for the comments. I will edit the answer to incorporate a discussion of it later. Services will have to be the majority of the economy on a global level before resource usage levels out.
@Trilarion Not even then. The fact that the share of services in global GDP (i.e. the service/manufacturing ratio) increases over a given period, doesn't imply that total manufacturing won't increase. For example, ten years from now, service GDP may have quadrupled while manufacturing GDP has only doubled. I.e. the service/manufacturing ratio has increased, but absolute manufacturing has still doubled. That's not visible in your graphs. Moreover, manufacturing is a crude proxy for natural resource depletion. Services use a lot of energy, too -- think transport, server farms etc.
Yeah, this seems pretty bogus. The reason manufacturing and the like has decreased in the West is because it has all been "moved" to Asia and emerging markets. @vsz
"Manufacturing is on the decline while capitalism thrives." I find various flaws in this particular statement. On one hand, there are scarcely any countries at all that are purely Capitalist, or even nearly pure Capitalist. Pure Capitalism isn't thriving. Having said that, to the extent that we label some countries as "Capitalist" when they are really mixed economies or Welfare Capitalism, speaking from my knowledge of American economics, the economy here isn't thriving. 40 million people in poverty, wealth inequality diverging, national debt diverging, middle class keeps shrinking.
@vsz It wouldn't improve the argument. If I only consume soft drinks that contain half the amount of sugar compared to regular drinks, but I drink three bottles instead of one, I still consume more sugar than before. The same applies to resource-intense manufacturing vs (allegedly) resource-efficient services "contained" in overall GDP. The people who so highly upvoted this were blinded by statistics.
Being an Instagram influencer is a very eco-friendly job consuming comparably only few of the finite resources. [citation needed] you might have troubles finding sources though, because the opposite is true.
And all of the above is ignoring the fact that humans are a finite resource in itself. Sustaining economic growth in the face of declining population figures is actually a big, big challenge.
@henning "Not even then." You may be right and I guess one would need to quantify it, but I also find it somewhat pessimistic. I have changed the answer to include that resource usage still increases and to emphasize that there should be a global shift to jobs using little resources in general, which I think will be mostly services rather than anything else. If worst comes to worst and everything breaks down I guess I could still sell my own manual labor force. I hope it doesn't get that bad. If you have by chance a better answer, you can always post it. I would like to read it.
@EricDuminil "Being an Instagram influencer..." Sorry, I took that out of the answer and replaced it by another example. I thought about somebody working at home and only posting on social media, not about somebody traveling around the world just to post some selfies. It wasn't a good example.
@Cloud "I actually want to make a question about what happens if society gets 90% automated... what SE is best for this?" Depends on what you want to know more about? For the political implication, post here, for the philosophical implications, post on philosophy.stackexchange.com, for economic implications maybe at economics.stackexchange.com. If you think it could be on several of them, just choose any one you like.
@Trilarion Relevant to the chart which mentions cement consumption, it might also be instructive to include the fact that there is a global shortage of sand Is the world running out of sand? The truth behind stolen beaches and dredged islands"The insatiable demand of the global building boom has unleashed an illegal market in sand. Gangs are now stealing pristine beaches to order and paradise islands are being dredged and sold to the construction industry"
@Trilarion thank you, I think your answer is much better now. I don't know if I get around to write my own; perhaps during the weekend. However, I think there isn't much to add after your revision.
Discussion on answer by Trilarion: Wh…
Discussion on answer by Trilarion: Wh…