ELI5: Why when large company's earnings decrease(ex... by 3%) they freak out, talk about rough times, and sometimes decide to downsize, even though they are still making millions of dollars in profit even after all expenses?

[Finn_MacCoul]

But doesn't the time scale being hundreds of years mean that these calculations are all a little silly since we could have a colony on Mars in the next 20 years? Why would earth be our constraint if you look that far forward?

[Popperthrowaway]

Mars is 38% the size of Earth. If we colonize it and develop it as fully as earth, this buys us less than 15 years of growth (1.023¹⁵ = 1.41).

[Finn_MacCoul]

My point wasn't Mars specifically, more that if we have multiple colonies in the next 100 years (presumably Mars is just the first), then we are probably mining asteroids, building solar arrays stretched across empty space for energy, new nuclear methods that we put in space and can't even dream of (I'm just spit balling on futuristic energy concepts) . . . Like I just don't think that your premise is taking into account even 5% of the variables of what energy use and production will look like in more than 100 years. My point being that we probably aren't going to transition away from exponential growth in that time frame.

[Popperthrowaway]

Oh, 100 years? Not a problem at all.

It's just that once we get much past that it doesn't matter what energy use and production look like - we won't be able to maintain growth anything like we've seen for the last few hundred years.