And they use the term "Asia" but talk about people from China.
What does "Asia" refer to here? As far as I can see your excerpts mention only one country in Asia, namely China. Do these findings about "Asia" apply only to China (and countries culturally related to China, such as Japan)? Or do some of them also apply to other countries in Asia such as India?
Similarly, does "the West" mean specifically "the United States of America", or were any other Western countries considered?
There are other agents in the population than humans.
(I apologize for the late reply. I didn't check my notifications.)
There is one aspect which you almost completely ignore in your post and which I believe is vital: WHY is stagnation bad? WHY is progress good? You make it sound as though you just want fancy gadgets for the sake of having fancy gadgets.
You have a "quantitative" section, but what exactly are you trying to quantify? Why is economic growth good?
You should spend more time pondering: What (quantifiable) factors are valuable in and of themselves? And have these factors improved or stagnated?
For example, I believe there is less famine and fewer people living in extreme poverty worldwide. Lifespans may have stagnated in the developed world, but how about in the developing world? If poor people are less poor and live longer, that is extremely important progress. They need the progress way more than we do.
Conversely, climate change and other looming environmental disasters may make poverty and suffering skyrocket again and make the world a much worse place, even if our gadgets grow ever fancier.
I see. Thanks!
I don't see why there would be more demand and less supply of labour after such a catastrophe. Why do you think that? (Or was it a joke? I cannot tell.)
I would rather say that the bright side is that a societal collapse brought on by a pandemic might at least delay the climate change collapse a bit.
The "utility monster" has ceased to be a utility monster because it no longer gets everything.
Can this be resolved by adding more monsters? I.e., instead of having just one utility monster on Earth, we could have a million or even 6 billion monsters (as many as there are humans). This would allow the monsters to fully benefit from consuming "everything" or at least close enough to "everything" to raise the dilemma.
I think this is wrong in an interesting way: it's an Industrial Age blind spot.
I think "most people in time and space" have lived in the industrial age. Am I wrong?
On the other hand, the woman who fought back against the alien might also be less submissive to the man that reclaims her. That may be a virtue or a flaw depending on what he values in women.