Abandoning Economic Growth -- Part 1
If there's one thing that Democrats and Republicans can agree on, it's the virtue of economic growth. It is taken for granted that growth of some kind is the trigger for any kind of improvements we might want to make for our society. For example, here are a couple blurbs from the current Obama and McCain websites (www.barackobama.com and www.johnmccain.com): "Barack Obama believes that it is critically important for the United States to rebuild its national transportation infrastructure (its highways, bridges, roads, ports, air, and train systems) to strengthen user safety, bolster our long-term competitiveness and ensure our economy continues to grow." Or from McCain, "Growth is an imperative - historically the greatest success in reducing deficits (late 1980s; late 1990s) took place in the context of economic growth."
Growth is good. More money, more jobs, more innovation -- who doesn't want all that? If we're not growing, we're stagnating. The economy is like a shark, forever needing to move forward to avoid death. To be an enemy of economic growth is to virtually declare war on civilization itself. Now, as environmental deterioration becomes harder to deny, growth becomes linked up with some cozy modifiers, resulting in comfortable but ambiguous phrases like "sustainable growth" or "smart growth" or "green growth." But the core concept of growth as positive is not challenged. No one is out there saying, "you know, what we really need to do is shrink the economy." Well, that's exactly what needs to happen, and likely will happen anyway as we slide down the other side of Peak Oil. And far from being just an outlying fringe issue for economists, the concept of economic growth as a good thing must be absolutely and forcefully exploded.
What binds us so tightly to the concept of economic growth? Of the myriad natural and other metaphors, why is the organic concept of growth so entrenched? Why not economic symbiosis, or economic diversification, or economic adaptation? What makes growth the central idea? Well, psychologically, "growth" sounds attractive. If someone is growing, there is the sense that they are maturing, becoming more masterful in the sphere of life. That's obviously good. And from the business perspective, growth is unquestionably positive. What small business owner doesn't want to see their profits grow? At the corporate level, growth means more investment, higher stock prices, more dividends, more cash. Technologically, growth is the natural result of innovation and creativity. As we learn more about the world and ourselves through science, our suite of tools and institutions with which to confront the world grows apace. So at the root of the concept of growth is the general Enlightenment idea of progress, of society moving forward to higher and higher levels of achievement, knowledge, and existence.
This growth complex is an imposing structure to challenge. But it can be done. First, let's consider what an economy is. On the surface, "the economy" seems to be just the finance page stuff from the paper: stocks, jobs, profits, losses, consumer confidence, etc. But at the most fundamental level, an economy is a system through which people interact with each other and the environment. It is a moral system, demanding sound and humane judgment at every turn. It is not an accident that the first "economists" in England and Scotland were moral philosophers (i.e., Adam Smith). Money and trade were considered profoundly powerful tools, needing tight control to avoid abuse. This moral aspect of economics gets buried when we assume that growth is always desirable.
Recovering the moral aspect of the economy requires two general insights. One, our economic system exists within a finite natural world. Second, the economy should be a tool for a society to achieve other goals (justice, equality, freedom, beauty), not vice versa. It should be fairly clear now that infinite growth cannot occur in a finite ecosystem. We cannot continue to create more people, more carbon emissions, more industrial waste, and more superfluous products, simply to prop up an obsolete economic idea. In this ecological sense, our growth is killing us and the natural systems which sustain us. And on the social front, it has also become evident that economic growth does not accrue to the general welfare. As mentioned in an earlier post, we have had decades and decades of unbridled economic growth, and the end result is what? Gross inequality, mass global poverty, increased ethnic strife, and cultural collapse.
So if economic growth has been so bad for the planet and our societies, why do all mainstream politicians continue to champion it? First and most obviously is the capture of our national politics by corporations. Endless tomes have been written about this, so we don't need to dwell. Suffice it to say, campaigns and elections cost big money, and the moneyed interests that fuel the whole endeavor have the upper hand, to the extent that the government is itself made up of business people and corporate lawyers. But even more than this obvious problem, economic growth seems to be our only option because we have shoveled all of our society's resources into the marketplace. We have put all of eggs in one basket, commodifying and monetizing everything, from child care to entertainment to health care. Everything has become a tradable element, and has thus been captured and funneled upwards to a small controlling elite. We literally have no un-commodified space left from which to challenge the overall dysfunction of the economy. We're all in it up to our eyeballs, so the only way out seems to be unending growth. We're left in the strange position of seeing all economic activity as positive, even if it's more prison guards, more lawyer fees, more toxic waste cleanup costs, more missiles built, etc. When we believe the lie that free markets and economic growth automatically create the greatest social good, we're left with the immoral and amoral chaos that results.
Comments