Over a long enough time frame the stock market and even the whole economy behaves like a pyramid scheme as it is dependent on new generations to be more people than the previous one.
Many economies can still work well without population growth, other fail despite population growth. If that was the case that population dictates GDP, then investment choices would be very easy.
I'm not convinced this is some natural "tech" bubble. This feels like an M&A bubble to me.
Like others, up until a few years ago, I was a Keynesian. But then I realized that if you allow inflation you're not just "rewarding investment", but you're taking non-participation off the table -- and that's a big problem. Because then people participate in markets not based on value but because they have no choice. That means that you go from value investing to "growth investing" -- which is another name for pyramid scheme and people unironically saying that "the market always goes up."
When you have 401(k) plans which essentially say, "Put your money in the 'market' and it will go up to beat inflation," or you outright say (as many do) that "the market will always go up over time," that's growth investing, and it's straight up a Ponzi scheme. You don't care about the earnings, you just expect to sell for a higher amount than you bought.
I think VCs' expectations misalign with reality. They are the ones incentivising infinite growth.
But besides this, yes, slow growth back like for most of humanity is also an option and probably not a bad one in the longer term. It’s a very bad option until we are depending on fossil fuels, because we need the money for the transition.