Well put. And I think your translation of that wonderful quote is
exactly right.
On Nov 12, 9:26 am, "Michael Tobis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 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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