What is growth?

In nature, not a single organism keeps growing indefinitely. And not a single individual significantly outgrows its peers. There is a logic behind this.

However, in our financial and socio-economic domains we see multiple examples of excessive growth, sometimes in the order of magnitudes, relative to their peers. This is by many considered unsustainable, and unfair.

Currently there is a lot of talk about GDP being non-inclusive and the need for other metrics (circular, regenerative, etc), and breaking up big tech/big banks etc. This is part of fixing the current crisis in fundamentals in the economic discipline.

But before we make any judgments on economic aspects, qualitative or even normative and moral, it is imperative that we understand why things grow and stop growing in nature, and if and how this differs from growth in some human/fin/soc/econ. domains. For us to make any real steps forwards in creating new economic paradigms, we need to take a step back first.

In advance to a technical publication on this, I made this infographic.

It includes a reparation of the misunderstanding of the ‘order vs disorder’ conception, which is explained in my previous article.

This infographic was previously published on my website https://entropometrics.com