The principles that most economists take as universal seem to me to be
based only on two centuries' evidence. Those two centuries are a long
time in human affairs, but they describe a situation which is
vanishing. Among the major differences, they describe a situation
where private goods like food an shelter are in short supply and where
public goods like air and water are essentially infinite, where labor
is scarce and manual effort is always useful, and where emerging
economies can be bootstrapped through resource extraction to provide
services to even less developed ones.
As a consequence of their ideas being carefully tuned to the vanishing
historical circumstances of the industrial revolution, many ideas that
economic thought takes for granted seem to be good approximations for
circumstances that no longer apply.
A very commonly held idea is that "growth" is a legitimate goal of
governance. Is this position justified?
I saw Bill Clinton on cable TV shortly before the recent US election,
giving a marvelous speech. On the whole, I am favorably disposed
toward Mr Clinton and I thought many of the points he made were
excellent ones, but he talked about economic "growth" within the US as
an unqualified positive. Much was made of his administrations
successes in promoting "growth" and the subsequent administrations
relative failure to do so.
It's unclear that anyone knows what this quantity that is supposed to
be "growing" means, or that its growth is necessarily an unqualified
benefit for in the context of a wealthy advanced society. I understand
that it is measured in money, which seems objective enough, but it
seems to me that the equation "money = wealth = well-being" is assumed
and is inappropriately unexamined in the commonly held growth-is-good
point of view.
Much of what passes for "growth" seems to me to be the equivalent of
promoting profligacy and waste, which is at best neutral in an open
frontier and is quite damaging to well-being on a finite planet. For
instance, huge vehicles cost more than small ones, which in turn cost
more than comfortable trains. Huge houses (500 square meters is not
uncommon for new housing in America at this point) cost more than
small ones, which cost more than apartments.
Even in the absence of policies that encourage conservation, the
effect may be perverse. It's my observation that people in huge houses
are not usually happier than people in tight-knit dense neighborhoods,
for instance. I would love to see a statistic correlating divorce
rates with house size.
I will acknowledge that in cultures and nations where poverty is
endemic, growth is good. In cultures where profligacy and waste is
endemic, though, is it possible that growth may actually be a bad
idea, a toxic goal?
I recently came across the following quotation (unattributed so far,
attribution welcome):
"Nous devons admettre qu'une fois les besoins de base satisfaits,
l'évolution de l'humanité n'est pas une question d'avoir plus, mais
plutôt d'être plus." (*)
I agree with this idea. Eventually we must reach a steady state. We
must make peace with the planet. Our impact must be stabilized. This
doesn't mean our well-being will stop growing, but it may well mean
that our cumulative wealth, measured in dollars or something like
that, must stabilize.
Based on this idea, in the longest run and on the grandest scale, it
emerges that change is bad, because change is destabilizing of the
only living planet that whatever providence there may be has somehow
managed to grant us.
We must ourselves change at this time, but I think it's inevitable
that to survive we must change to a sort of changelessness. We must
coexist with nature. Our resource demands must be limited and our
extraction loops closed. We can perhaps conquer other worlds some day
but the cost of that happy future is that we must make peace with our
own world first.
Michael Tobis
(*) My translation: "We must admit that once basic needs are met, the
evolution of mankind isn't a question of having more, but of being
more."
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