There is nothing American about it. Global sum of all GDP's has grown for all recorded history. Even if inflation adjusted.
If you mean that GPD can't grow "infinitely" as infinitely high value, then I agree. If you claim it can't grow for infinitely long time, well at some point sun is going to swallow earth or heath death happens, I agree again. If you claim that GDP doesn't necessarily grow exponentially, I agree again. I'd say the last one is even likely.
But my point was that there is no known inherent phenomena, that would force economic growth to end in the timescale of human life. End of oil could be it, or it could be offset with different energy sources, different types of consumption and more energy efficiency.
I see your point and I think you and me may have different ideas of what growth means. To my credit, wrt "growth" I was referring to GP's comment "Endless growth is impossible" which doesn't mean GDP inherently, and the statement is true as far as "if a system is growing, it needs growing resources to support itself."
Sure, if we convert to solar and maintain our population, then we can sustain ourselves until the sun explodes, but that is not growth no matter what our GDP says.
My point is that if GDP, as a measure, somehow indicates that economic growth can be sustained indefinitely (barring acts of God of course) then it is flawed.
GDP is very much flawed in the sense of "how much humanity has achieved". You need some kind of moral framework for that. And I really don't think you can go with money = good. And you might also need some kind of better measure for achievement as separate from ethics.
But it's answering a completely different question. It's trying to answer the question "has the system we call economy optimized itself during the time span we are looking". The "optimized" here is referring to Pareto efficiency more than anything else. But GDP is not that good tool even for this. I chose it to have something definite to discuss.
Personally I see capitalism as quite shitty tool for distributing and managing resources. But in globalized and interconnected world we have to operate in low trust environment. With such mutual lack of trust, capitalism is suddenly the best possible system for doing stuff.
EDIT: Theoretically perceived value can be added to system with constant amount of resources. You would probably gladly pay 10$ for very fine stamped shovel that light weight. If there is 15$ crude, rusty, heavy welded shovel right next to it, it doesn't look all that appealing. You normally don't perceive situations like this because the system is working so well. Any product out there could be optimized for slightly less material usage while not making it worse in any way, that would directly increase the profit margin. That would show in GDP.
Currently we don't do that, because engineers are busy doing other stuff. But if there would be price increase in materials, the picture changes automatically.
If you mean that GPD can't grow "infinitely" as infinitely high value, then I agree. If you claim it can't grow for infinitely long time, well at some point sun is going to swallow earth or heath death happens, I agree again. If you claim that GDP doesn't necessarily grow exponentially, I agree again. I'd say the last one is even likely.
But my point was that there is no known inherent phenomena, that would force economic growth to end in the timescale of human life. End of oil could be it, or it could be offset with different energy sources, different types of consumption and more energy efficiency.