Reddit reviews The Economics of Growth (The MIT Press)

No, and you've spectacularly missed the point, as might be expected.

How technological progress happens, to a first approximation, doesn't matter.

How much technological progress can gain is the key question.

Technology has limits

What I claim, with a great deal of support in theory, data, belief, and existing doctrine, is that there are profound limits to what you can accomplish through technology.

E.g., Quoting from Aghion and Howitt:

> The reason why the probability of the innovation depends inversely on A is that as technology advances it becomes more complex and thus harder to improve upon.

p. 88.

Joseph Tainter in The Collapse of Complex Societies advances this further with several key observations which are generally the subject of chapter four of his book. The book as a whole, incidentally, addresses the entire problem of sustainability, energy, and complexity (technology) from both a historical/anthropological and theoretical basis, and I very strongly recommend it if you've got a good-faith interest in this subject.

1. Human societies are problem-solving organizations
   
2. Sociopolitical systems require energy for their maintenance
   
3. Increased complexity carries with it increased costs per capita
   
4. Investment in sociopolitical complexity as a problem-solving response often reaches a point of diminishing marginal returns
   
   For Tainter, "complexity" is largely coincident with "technology". Increasing technology means increasing complexity. And complexity is undertaken because it solves problems -- food, fuel, sanitation, commerce, etc.
   
   If you look at a history of invention over the course of, say, the Industrial Revolution, you find that there has been a general arc of innovation, peaking arguably in the late 19th / early 20th century in terms of its impacts on actual human capabilities, lifespans, and standards of living. Robert Ayres describes five technological transformations which I detail in earlier posts on Fire, Cooking, and Mental Development. More on Ayres and his works.
   
   And more on the limits of technology to provide unlimited growth.
   
   
   

   Human population and Creativity
   

   
   There is the fair question of "what level of human population is required to support or create a technological society". Why the Industrial Revolution happened when it did is itself a fascinating question. There are a number of prerequisites, not the least of which was throwing off the oppressive mantel of resistance to scientific and technical advance and inquiry imposed by the Church.
   
   Economic historian Gregory Clarke of the University of California, Davis, has studied the quesition of why the Industrial Revolution occurred when it did. His answer comprises the book A Farewell to Alms, of which The New York Times has a good review.
   
   Among other factors, population was, in fact, one. However that was the 800 million or so present at the time of the start of the Industrial Revolution. Even as innovation peaked in the early 20th century, the Earth's population was 2 billion, less than a third of what it is now. While more people, and greater wealth, might increase the rate of discovery, there are reasons to think it won't particularly:
   
   

• There are limits to how large innovative groups can be to work effectively. This is well-established in the software world, where key products are typically created by small groups, often a half-dozen to a dozen members. Increasing the size of the group reduces not only average productivity but total productivity -- this is expressed as Brooks Law from Fred Books' book The Mythical Man-Month: "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later." There are projects which avoid this, but largely by subdividing the work into individual modules each of which is maintained by a small group (particularly in the Free Software world).
  
• The untapped brainpower of the developing world is likely overestimated. Not because of a lack of intelligence, but because much of that which can find its way to more productive activity has. The term brain drain describes just this.
  
• Integrative coordination on complex projects becomes ever more complex. Including the overhead of shooting down stupid ideas which just won't work, such as those you're proposing.
  
  
  

  There is no "God"
  

  
  I deny the existence of a personal God, or of any reference to same to explain the world.