I suppose I should clarify - you initially spoke of economic "success" but then the concept of economic "growth" crept in, as if it was interchangeable.  "Growth" is an artifact of the readily available supply of something that initially seems endless - in the past few centuries, this has included new lands (forget about the people already living there), oceans, and petroleum-based easy energy (which feeds easy cereal feeding of the world).  All of these things will quickly prove (I expect within my lifetime and that of my children) NOT to be endless. 

I understand your point about population, freedom and sustainability, but we can't really even have this conversation properly until we give up the delusion of growth, and start focussing on quality of life, quality of planet, and issues of that nature.

Human overpopulation is also an artifact of this recent (in planetary terms) of "growth" - especially as it has made possible the over-feeding with petroleum-pumped cereals - all animal populations increase their numbers in the face of surplus food.  Severe reductions in our population may lie ahead in any case, through war, starvation, illness, storm, drought, etc...  Planned reductions would be nicer and less violent, of course, but again, we have to give up the delusion of economic "growth"  to even have that conversation sensibly.  And one other thing we need to give up in order to have that conversation sensibly is the implication that "you're hurting me by having all those babies" to which the reply might (just as correctly) be "you're hurting me by stealing my food, water and self-sufficiency, to support your lifestyle and if I can rear two children to adulthood out of all the children I give birth to, I'll be lucky."  None of this recrimination helps the conversation at all.

What helps is paying attention to the detail of what's wrong, and doing what we can to help it go better.

Then there is the originally stated concept of economic "success."  On an individual basis, of course, this definition is very subjective. For example, actual money is a thing that rarely shows itself in my house, and when it does, we usually manage to send it on its way again fairly quickly.  Nevertheless, since we measure our life satisfaction in terms of good food, good company, creative opportunities for making or bartering for what we need, leisure time to sit and think, a few good books to read, a productive garden in the summer and fat pigs in the winter, coupled with very little "wanting" of things in shops, we are personally much more than "successful."

As to the economic success of a country, I measure economic success by the condition of the poorest.  If its economy cannot lift all boats to some degree, it is not a success.  The super-wealthy have always been with us (well, at least since
agriculture was invented).  Nothing new, innovative or successful about
that. The super-wealth of a few can happily co-exist with slavery or serfdom.  It is the democratisation of wealth, land-owning, production, etc,
that is new, and when allowed to develop properly, successful.  By this measure, the US was much more "successful" post-depression and up to the 70's or so, as FDR's measures kicked in and took hold.  This success began to erode once Reagan began overturning as many of these measures as he could - uncoupling the fortunes of the wealthy from those of the poorest, in the face of which no "common good" is possible.  And to a reversion to a type of debt-serfdom of the majority. In the present day, countries such as Sweden and Norway are among the most "successful" in my view. Their economy is run at the service of the citizens, not the citizens at the service of the economy.

Stanton, I don't know if this was intentional or not but your joke of inducing cancer to increase GDP growth from cancer treatment sounds quite Keynesian and a huge malinvestment of funds... they might as well pay people to break windows and pay others to build and fix them to boost the economy.

That got me thinking: if you don't know who Keynes is and what I mean by that, you should stop making economics-related blog posts until you transcend the dunning-kruger effect affecting most people's conventional views on economics.

I don't mean that as an insult or to show how smarter I am for knowing about some random dead guy; I really think you should read up on John Maynard Keynes, and so should anyone else reading this comment. I'm guessing you might know Keynes' general theories already but for those who don't, I suggest Hunter Lewis' book, Where Keynes Went Wrong: And Why World Governments Keep Creating Inflation, Bubbles, and Busts

Also watch this youtube video:

Funny video that highlights many of Keynes' bad ideas. If you understand most of what they're saying in it, you probably know more about economics than 99% of laymen and probably a decent chunk of "experts" too, especially those in governments - governments like to use Keynesian economics, for obvious reasons.

Note: politically, Keynes is a "liberal" economist. I'm not saying everyone who believes in Keynesian or liberal economics is suffering from the dunning-kruger effect, just anyone who doesn't know his principle theories and criticisms since outdated Keynesian theories are lurking everywhere. (I do however think anyone who knows Keynes' theories and counter-arguments but still believes in his more outdated theories is probably not a very good economist, but at least they're informed)

Keynes, in addition to inventing a made-up economic formula about spending and GDP growth, brought us stupid ideas like "consumers need to buy junk to boost our economy" "deficit spending on inefficient make-work programs and stimulus packages helps fight recessions" "Wars are good for the economy. WW2 got America out of the depression" (ha! Keynes got America into a protracted depression - ever heard of the ?)

so must be awkward with the american elections:
on the one hand most libertarians seem to vote republican, who get "6,000 year old earth" voters too.(along with stopping equal rights and a whole lot of other craziness, rape victims own bodies prevent pregnancy etc etc)

or the socialism side of liberals, who seem to mess up the economy by some peoples views.