If the rich world aimed for minimal growth, would it be a disaster or a blessing?

“ANYONE who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist,” remarked (the economist) Kenneth Boulding. John Stuart Mill devoted an entire chapter of his “Principles of Political Economy” to the concept of the “stationary state”—a state that he believed would be “on the whole, a very considerable improvement on our present condition”.