In his book Deep Economy
author Bill
McKibben offers a well researched discussion on the meaning of
growth, and its implications for us all.
Deep Economy offers an analysis of growth since the industrial
revolution, shedding light on the underpinnings for the
technological age we live in today. Using insights into
globalization, inequality, consumption, and peak oil, McKibben
theorizes that growth as we know it may in fact be a one time binge
that is entirely unsustainable. He describes in intricate detail
the definition of growth most of the world has come to accept since
the launch of the steam engine, the technological innovation
regarded as the mother of the industrial age, and the correspondent
harnessing of fossil fuel.
McKibben shows a definition of growth as an ever pressing need
for “more” that is hiding some serious problems with our so called
“progress.” In order to survive as humans, according to the
author,we may need to redefine our meaning of growth, curtail
consumption, and question many aspects of globalisation in order to
produce sustainability and happiness. In other words we may need a
redirection in the way we live when our economic inputs become
scarce. According to the author our growth calculus has led to the
mathematics of inequality. He points to the fact that income
inequality has risen steadily since the 1960’s.
The following is an excerpt: “For one thing, under present
arrangements any faltering of growth leads quickly to misery: to
recession and all its hardships. For another, endless growth allows
us to avoid hard choices, to reconcile, in Collins’s words, the
American “love of liberty with its egalitarian pretensions.” The
administration of George W. Bush assures us that we can have tax
cuts and still protect Social Security because the tax cuts will
stimulate economic growth so much that we’ll have more than enough
cash on hand to take care of our old. No need to choose. Having
found what has been truly a magic wand, the strong temptation is to
keep waving it.
But, as readers of fairy tales know, magic can run out. Three
fundamental challenges to the fixation on growth have emerged. One
is political: growth, at least as we now create it, is producing
more inequality than prosperity, more insecurity than progress.
This is both the most common and least fundamental objection to our
present economy, and I will spend relatively little time on it. By
contrast, the second argument draws on physics and chemistry as
much as on economics; it is the basic objection that we do not have
the energy needed to keep the magic going, and can we deal with the
pollution it creates? The third argument is both less obvious and
even more basic: growth is no longer making us happy. These three
objections mesh with each other in important ways; taken together,
they suggest that we’ll no longer be able to act wisely, either in
our individual lives or in public life, simply by asking which
choice will produce More.” (Maybe this means we may need to shift
from a culture of consumption that absorbs and consumes physical
resources to one that values and consumes new virtual
commodities.)
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