"Erm, this is a well known general trade off. Driving 55mph vs 80mph on the highway - the former uses less fuel for the same distance, the latter gets you further in the same amount of time."
If you're using "production" as a synonym for "output", that's my misunderstanding of the words used. I get that it's a resource vs. output tradeoff. I had thought we were talking about productivity, i.e. lower rate of a unit of resource for the same output.
"If something is growing, eventually it becomes constrained by some sort of limit. If the expectation is that it is continually growing, hitting a limit means that it has "failed"."
Are limits fundamental and eternal? I mean, economic growth is basically the science of human achievement, the ability to accomplish more for fewer resources. And while certainly there are physical limits on Earth, which will temporarily halt growth at some point, is there a limit on innovation or on seeking out new resources? It's a big universe.
"Both of these general juxtapositions are quite common, so your picking apart of them seems quite defensive rather than understanding."
No, I genuinely find your point of view fascinatingly bizarre.
"Which is it - are you sure Keynesianism has nothing to do with them, or do you not know?"
I am quite sure about what Keynesianism thinks on this matter, and find your arguments confusing.
"In general, it seems that you're conflating production with the integral of production. This is a general theme of Keynesianism, given that it is explicitly about maximizing output by maximizing work. Given that the major economic phenomenon of our time is robots taking over historically human work, we should probably rethink this goal."
I'm not so convinced the current wave of robots taking over human work is all that different as the early industrial revolution in the late 18th century through Fordism and Taylorism in the late 19th/early 20th century.
However, I'll admit, if this time it truly is different, i.e. we're heading for an AI singularity or whatnot, we do need to rethink the goals of economic policy.
"My point regarding deflation is that what happens in the tech sector is just a more pronounced version of what should be happening everywhere. Prices may rise in the short term (eg a discontinuity from depleting a source of a natural resource), but in general market competition should cause all prices to be trending down in the long term."
I really can't agree with deflation as a desirable goal in our lifetimes, as it incentivizes doing nothing with capital.
Of course, as above, if diminishing returns to capital accumulation vanishes due to basically free automation, this may be worth considering. I think it's overly optimistic about technology to expect this, however.