With the appearance of new technologies and liberalization of foreign investment, productive activities can be segmented and spread around the world in different locations, and thus more countries have potential opportunities to participate in international production and trade. But these opportunities are not easily tapped by all countries. Countries with a broad range of technological capabilities are better positioned to host specialized activities in the various segments of goods and services production. Created technological assets, in conjunction with appropriate policy and regulatory environments, more than traditional factor endowments, determine comparative advantage in today's knowledge-based world economy.
The drivers of growth are many, but they include money created as interest bearing debt, planned obsolescence, consumer culture and status envy, population, and the indicators that used to manage our economic systems.
Although many people today still lack basic needs, many more people today have a material living standard higher than that of an average citizen at any previous time in history. Economic growth has delivered that standard of living for many people.
In order to keep growing, a system dependent on economic growth must continually convert nature into goods and relationships into services — things once provided to us as gifts become monetized transactions. The planet has finite resources. Human impact must fit within these limits, and leave some ‘breathing room’ not only for humanity, but for millions of other species. If the absolute amount of resource and energy use is still rising, economic growth will negate resource efficiency gains.