Silke Helfrich writes a wonderful summary of the relationship between the commons and growth for an introduction to a discussion at the "Beyond Growth" conference in Berlin, May 20-22, 2011.
*Summary* - Commons reduce money-induced growth because they make us more independent of money. The more we produce commons, the less we or the state has to pay for goods. - Commons reduce population-induced growth because they are associated with a multiplicity of sufficiency strategies which create prosperity by sharing<http://www.google.de/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CDAQFjAC&url=http://www.boell.de/downloads/20101029_Commons_Prosperity_by_Sharing.pdf&rct=j&q=Commons%20prosperity%20by%20Sharing&ei=sZXkTeHjIY3Tsga176GIBg&usg=AFQjCNGKdtVqRC7XWwlPdt3Y-cEqUe3VzQ&cad=rja> . - Commons escape the growth compulsion, because all those things that are produced as commons, do not have to be made artificially scarce. And there is no incentive for artificial scarcity because commons are not produced as goods to be exchanged but they foster and maintain social relationships, satisfy needs and solve problems. Directly. Thus far the vision of the future – but we have not got there yet. In the here and now a lot more must be thought through, discussed and fought for. Therefore, in what follows I will briefly give my reasoning. "T*he truth is that there is as yet no credible, socially-just, ecologically sustainable scenario of continually growing incomes for a world of nine billion people.“* according to economist Tim Jackson (Jackson 2011: 98) who recently created stir with his book „Prosperity without Growth“. Jackson works through calculations which demonstrate why the idea that we can continue to grow as we have before is an impossibility. *What does the immediate problem consist of?* The capitalist market economy has achieved some things but failed in important respects. I just want to mention three of these 1. It cannot succeed in satisfying the basic material needs of many people, nor can it meet the immaterial needs of all people. 2. It is inefficient and ineffective in preserving natural resources. 3. It systematically destroys jobs. There is a connection between these problems. In general, paid employment is the single means people have to access money. Money is, in turn, to an increasing extent the only means to get what we need in order to acquire the basic provisions of life. Or, to put it more precisely, in the current economic system it is the only valued means. That’s the reason it is customary to regard ourselves as needing above all paid employment even though what we actually want is to be alive, active, creative. We want simply to satisfy our needs. Many describe what we seek for as contentedness. Others go at it more strongly and call it „happiness“. For decades political thinking of every kind has thus been fixated on job creation. This has narrowed viewpoints, blunted analysis and truncated the argument. In fact the job creation argument has pretty much destroyed meaningful thinking and practical, creative steps towards a “good life”. This does not lack a certain irony, but it lacks logic, because if the economy grows so too do real wages and salaries (at least they should), which in turn encourages companies to invest in technologies that make workers redundant. Work productivity therefore rises faster than resource use productivity. (1) In short, to remain competitive companies must save: jobs! Do you remember and we return to mentioning problem number 3? The capitalist market economy systematically destroys jobs. This way of running the economy can only fail to solve the above-mentioned long term and structural problems. However, in the short term it can grow, grow, grow. That short term ‘solution’ is welcome – at least as far as the state is concerned. For in the current economic architecture the amount of money that goes into the public budget, and therefore the quality of public services, depends upon economic growth. As a result the state is only in a position to balance out these failures – assuming that there is the political will to do so – if the economy is growing. The state is caught in the famous growth trap. So if the economy grows and the state actually steps in to address the so called “market externalities” (pollution, social exhaustion etc.), the problems can be patched up but they don’t change substantially in nature. They *cannot* change substantially. By stepping in the state ameliorates the symptoms — provisionally – as is usual the case when solutions are merely symptomatically focused. Still, our three problems remain. They now appear as follows *The Growing Economy* 1. The capitalist market economy is still not able to satisfy the material or immaterial needs of many people — or only through their access to money or public social services. 2. The absolute decoupling of the consumption of resources from production becomes the most ignored subsidiary issue in the world. 3. Jobs are still systematically destroyed – but are also built up again somewhere else. They call it “creative destruction”. It may well be creative, but it is still destructive in disturbing dimensions. And everything is pulled into a spiral around the drive to get money as the only way to satisfy needs. Everything must be turned into commodities – even things that are in plentiful supply. Even behavioral patterns and social relationships continued at http://commonsblog.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/commons-beyond-growth/ -- Sandwichman
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