The Ideology of Economic Growth

by zikipediq

Monday, April 05, 2010 at 06:49 AM EDT

The end of the continuous economic expansion

The never ending economic growth within a finite planet is basically impossible. A child can understand that. But the belief in economic growth bringing peace and prosperity to everyone is tough enough.

How is this mystification possible? How political and economic elites can maintain the deceit? What is the interest of everyone to consider or pretend to accept the assertion as true?

Economic growth involves extra consumption of energy, natural resources – water, oil, mineral substances … – constantly further waste, pollution, and aggravation of global warming, loss of biodiversity in sum, and poses ultimately the question of the mankind survival.

The persisting and tiring arguments put forward by the “green skeptics” to give support to economic growth, despite the obvious damage, is that of technical progress, the use of renewable energies or that we are entering a new economic era on information, digital and services supposed to have no impact on the biosphere.

Technological progress has improved (and will go on improving) the energy and resources outflow consumed to produce an object (former televisions and cars did consume more energy and resources than today’s). But this theoretical efficiency gain does not compensate for practical and concrete bulimia of consumer populations – and the most technologically advanced countries make ample evidence since their citizens exercise the biggest environmental pressure so far.

What’s more, renewable energy handled on the margin can not solve the problem of the finiteness of fossil resources and of ecological disaster under way.

Finally the different adjectives joined to the so-called new economy do not change the assumption of more and more physical resources: everyone wants a car, a television, a computer, a mobile phone … and to renew it all the as quickly and as often as possible! The new economy, whatever its name, has not diminish at all the environmental impact of industry, agriculture or chemical engineering. Quod erat demonstrandum.

Why are we growth addicted?

The ideology of growth points to the quasi biblical reign of plenty. Everyone expects to get more, and the widespread accumulation of material resources would supposedly stop the social violence. Traditional societies, however, had not lost sight that the accumulation is quite a factor of social tension and violence. Facts and reality clearly show it, but the belief in a society of growth bringing abundance and peace is constantly pushy.

Takis Fotopoulos explains well enough the dynamic of the growth economy:

“The growth economy can only survive through its continual reproduction and extension to new areas of economic activity.” And doing this, the growth economy opens to new action scopes introducing “new discoveries, improvements in efficiency, possibilities for substitution, and technological innovations” in the mature growth economies – or through a destructive approach of geographic expansion of most self-reliant economies in the world. (1)

Economic growth is measured by the number of dollars per head. Everyone runs under this benchmark, being understood that the logic that prevails is to climb the highest and fastest possible in the income pyramid,

International institutions, such as the World Bank, are concerned about the fate of that billion of human beings whose regular earning is less than $ 1 per day, thus representing the stage of absolute poverty. These billion human beings located primarily in rural areas therefore benefits from the attention and interest of institutions to help them out of their extreme conditions, and tools such as micro-credit are highlighted.

Armatya Sen, Nobel Laureate, demonstrated in the late 1990s that one could live in the heart of the richest state in the world, in New York, at Harlem, and have a life much more miserable that within the poorest state of the planet, in the state of Kerala in India – measured on criteria as simple as that compelling example of life expectancy.

The facts show abundantly that many peasants, who abandoned their land in return for income in the city, live in subhuman conditions. The difference between this real city misery and that of peasants living autonomous on their land is that the former are involved in the growth of the economic pyramid (including miserable income not allowing to live with dignity), unlike the latter who do not give further support to the consumer society.

Hence the interest of the institutions to worry for the rural population who do not receive income.

Economic growth requires the participation of all and the system does not leave aside several billion people representing potential consumers, and thus substantial growth.

The terrible conclusion is that economic growth creates more miserable individuals than people who could reach a decent revenue.

An regarding those luckier people whose revenue allow them to live in dignity, the mechanical construction of their earnings is disastrous both for the environment and social issues.

Economic growth does not lead us to abundance and peace, but to war and continuing shortage, i.e. insufficiency of absolute vital assets such as land or water.

Our blindness on this reality, our unwavering support to the tyranny of the growth economy, derives from our relative and provisional material well-being, and from our indiscriminate faith in the saving science.

As Marie-Dominique Perrot says:

“We confuse the quantity and quality and we consider the accumulation of anything as a synonym for progress”.

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(1) In Takis Fotopoulos, Development Or Democracy? SOCIETY & NATURE, Vol. 3, No. 1 (issue 7), 1995

(2) From the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva