(As people use forests, others will notice and start making tree farms.)
Stories of countless species hunted to extinction show that this is not what happens.
Let's look at the physics(?) of the economy: where does wealth actually come from? It's either from transforming things into more useful things or increasing efficiency of processes. There are limits to both of those things.
We live on a planet that's in a rough equilibrium in terms of both matter and energy.
So we have a finite maximal amount of value that we can extract from a constant amount of matter - which means that overall wealth is limited - we're just moving it around and at a finite rate at that - somebody is getting a bigger slice of this pie than the others.
Is wealth truly proportional to matter? How many physical resources are used when making software, music, art, theater, writing? How much wealth did the internet create and how much matter did it use?
There may be a finite limit on potential wealth but it’s effectively limitless for human planning purposes.
(For the trees, we can certainly mismanage our resources; it doesn’t mean it’s a priori impossible to create a growing and sustainable form of wealth.)
How many physical resources are used when making software, music, art, theater, writing?
Actually a pretty decent amount over the life cycle of a person. After all those things require a functioning civilisation that educates properly to begin with.
The internet is mostly a means of making communication more efficient - that was one stupidly inefficient process ripe for an upgrade.
So yeah, no additional wealth really - just much less losses.
What "pretty decent" physical resources does making software consume? (Beyond energy, which is renewable.)
The internet and other tech doesn't create new wealth? Why has the size of the economy grown exponentially since the industrial revolution?
If wealth were fixed, as population in increased we'd be getting vastly poorer worldwide (1.6 billion in 1900 -> 7 billion people today). Have we gotten 5x poorer on average?
Stories of countless species hunted to extinction show that this is not what happens.
Let's look at the physics(?) of the economy: where does wealth actually come from? It's either from transforming things into more useful things or increasing efficiency of processes. There are limits to both of those things.
We live on a planet that's in a rough equilibrium in terms of both matter and energy.
So we have a finite maximal amount of value that we can extract from a constant amount of matter - which means that overall wealth is limited - we're just moving it around and at a finite rate at that - somebody is getting a bigger slice of this pie than the others.