Is it not interesting that we are facing the limits to growth at precisely the time that artificial intelligence appears to threaten employment on a large scale? We are faced with a danger and an opportunity. Twenty years from now we could all be living like the pre-Clearance Scottish highlanders: An hour or two of work every few days and the rest for leisure. Or we could all be on the poverty line while a small class of parasites lives in unimaginable luxury. That's a choice.

Either way, commuting to work every day just to produce waste heat from CPUs or an endless stream of consumer goods seems increasingly unnecessary. Society does not need to choose the treadmill. Machines will be able to produce that which we actually need with little human input. We might all live quite comfortably with just shelter, heat and food supplied by robots into the far future. It would be paradise compared to most lives lived since the Axial Age.

Growth, seen this way, is a disease.