Economic Growth Is Killing Us

[marmar]

Economic Growth Is Killing Us

Tuesday, 21 January 2014 10:08
By Vijay Kolinjivadi , Truthout | Op-Ed


We are illusionists. There is very little that is physical in the world we've created and made ourselves to believe. From Friday to November to religious dogma to the boundaries of Russia to fiat currency to political parties ... all are constructs - simplifications - to structure and order the world around us in our collective minds. We have the power to chart our future actions on this planet, and hence the flows of energy and matter that result from whatever rules guide our collective minds. If this is the case, then why do we fetishize a particular set of rules that understands human progress as continuous throughout (i.e. extraction, production, consumption and waste)? Why does the dominant human culture, which has extended to every corner of the globe, continually persist in advancing this goal, without comprehending the biophysical touchstone that allows such throughput to occur in the first place?

What we need now is nothing short of a revolution. One with a simple message that could kindle the hearts of billions of human beings on the planet: an economic and political governance structure that facilitates the distribution of wealth to ensure all human beings have access to basic necessities while simultaneously and immediately bringing down human pressure on the biosphere.

Why a Call for Mass Action Is Needed

Our economic system once was focused on what people did to natural resources and the labor necessary for transforming primary goods into products of value. Currency, as a simplifying means of ordering the process of exchange, was valued against a physical entity (be it cowrie shells or gold). The escalation of abstractions rapidly departing from biophysical reality started with the printing of money and proceeded towards the "bets" that the price of a good or service will rise or fall in the future. Indeed, whole fortunes and hence enormous consumptive pressure are built upon the invisible vagaries of speculation on price, rather than the physical quantity of the good itself. Somewhere along the line, the true value of natural resources fell completely by the wayside. The enormous imbalance between inflated economic demands on natural resources and the state of supportive ecosystems that are needed to feed material and energy flows into the real economy and serve as a waste repository has led to the environmental problems humanity faces. Biodiversity loss, deforestation, soil erosion, climate change, desertification, eutrophication, acidification, bioaccumulation of pesticides, overexploitation of fisheries and fossil fuel stocks, water pollution ... all are rooted in a premise that an economy can and must grow infinitely.

Whole generations across the world are incessantly exposed to an individualistic, growth-based cultural norm. Cognitive neuroscience tells us that value systems are not easy to change once they become embedded. Children, even newborn babies, are indoctrinated by existing artifacts of social and economic institutions that structure how people live and relate to others. Loyalty to corporate greed is essentially being hard-wired into us. Perhaps the most frightening aspect of all lies in the enormous defense spending to ensure none of this logic ever changes. Yet human behavior has been shown time and again to be much broader than the narrow model of homo economicus as self-interested and concerned only with short-term material gain even within highly market-integrated societies. ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/21231-economic-growth-is-killing-us

[marmar]

1. shameless self kick

[FarCenter]

2. A program mentioned the stagnant GDP and aging population of Japan

Turns out that the GDP / capita is rising faster in Japan than in the US!

The decrease in population is more than compensating for the roughly zero rate in overall GDP growth.

And old people cost a lot less than do young people. It is costly to bear, raise, and educate children. It is relatively cheap to support seniors in fairly healthy condition, as are Japanese seniors.

[marions ghost]

3. Well said.

We are coming to the tipping point. We must fight this destructive direction in every way we can.

[WillyT]

4. Off To The Greatest Page !!!