economic growth mongering and its apologists
Posted by admin on 24 Aug 2008 at 08:46 am | Tagged as: Uncategorized
Written by Jan Lundberg, Culture Change Letter #194, August 22, 2008.
One might think that our malfunctioning world would start to look at the clear causes of critical problems. Instead, we are besieged and bamboozled by the usual business-press and governmental focus on economic growth. This form of denial is not limited to capitalists and their reporters and regulators.
The only visible opposition to business-as-usual is actually a Team-B group of cheerleaders for a different shade of growth mongering. In this camp are some politicians and organizations that many progressive people would prefer to love unconditionally. After all, fundamental change, however overdue, is nice to put off or to pretend that it might be smooth.
“With the US awash with unsold homes, builders began work on 965,000 properties last month — a 30% fall on July 2007.” That revealing statistic [seasonally adjusted] was highlighted by The Guardian UK newspaper in an Aug. 20, 2008 article titled, “Economic Slowdown: World Markets Fall Sharply Amid Fears that Credit Crunch Has Further to Run”
Work on properties would not be so bad in itself, but “everyone” is hoping for more home-construction and higher prices for homes. It’s insane that we depend on money-growth and infrastructure-growth when we should be concentrating, for example, on decent housing for those needing it. This may mean using existing dwellings and property more fairly, such as repairing buildings and making many smaller homes out of some of the larger, less efficient ones.
Civilisation’s obsession with money, profits and growth is insane. The whole economy is measured by GDP which doesnt differentiate between cancer patients and family holidays. Anything that increases GDP is seen as a positive, even if that ‘growth’ is in weapons, cancer treatments and other things we’d rather not have! Economists do indeed need to learn how to subtract…
The growth economy and the policies of government ignore the twin Achilles Heel issues of climate chaos and petrocollapse. Of the two, climate is starting to be understood, but we’re still in kindergarten regarding understanding fast-dwindling petroleum’s pervasive role in society and enabling economic growth. Even without the upending threats of climate chaos and petrocollapse, the only direction an overbuilt economy can go — debt-ridden, masses of people disenfranchised — is way down, fast. But instead of a correcting recession or depression, part of the normal “business cycle” of the modern capitalist economy, we see no end of stratagems to prop up never-ending growth. Cancer grows never-endingly, to a certain fatal point.
The house of cards will of course crash, but preparing for it openly at “high levels” would be an even more unpopular sin than admitting there’s an elephant in the room. Meanwhile, we will see the card-house fall much harder thanks to the props and overextension of spending, resource exploitation, “free trade” schemes and more, that we’ve seen since the early 1990s. Bill Clinton got his marching orders and passed them on to the Bushies. As long as the U.S. endures, before the time comes for bioregional communities with local sovereignty post-crash, the government will essentially not change; it cannot.
We are told repeatedly that ‘better days’ are just round the corner. But it is a con. Civilisation, and, in particular, capitalism, is a system designed to concentrate power and wealth in the hands of an increasingly small global elite. That is how our whole economic system works.
Environmentalists promoting a green technofix for the present consumer economy of this population size or greater are also apologists for growth. They may vociferously or privately deny it. But when we look closely at these promoters of “clean” cars and their sensible-sounding hope for replacing today’s electric power with renewables, these “activists” are basically business boosters making a living as de facto representatives for technology corporations. This is because they are not seriously advocating vast, immediate curtailment of both energy use and economic growth. Sharing cars? Hoo, what a grant-killer that position would be if it were a serious initiative for the whole nation. These activists/apologists sometimes include the idea of slashing greenhouse gas emissions immediately, but how can that happen if people are mainly urged to buy this and buy that for a greener planet, or to wait for leadership for these reforms? Such activists/apologists are unwittingly (at best) trying to prop up the system. In their own defense they say they can’t do anything else because people are not ready for deep changes in lifestyle.
Unfortunately, we have found that advocating serious reductions in carbon, and the lifestyle changes that are necessary for this, does lose you some friends! And, to tell people about peak oil often results in reactions as though it is you who are resposnible! But, we must continue trying to make people understand the mess humanity is in, not just what is happening with oil and climate, but the devastation and suffering that is caused by capitalism/globalisation/civilisation….
