Cav's Place

When talking about the driving forces of economic growth, consumption obviously takes the top spot. More consumption also means more production, more activities for the intermediaries, more and possibly better paid jobs, more taxes being paid to the state, more money changing hands and generally more economists and analysts sighing happily while looking at the latest charts. But more production usually implies more natural resources being used, while more consumption usually implies more waste, since products are being replaced and discarded more frequently. And, unfortunately for economists, the planet’s size is quite fixed and its capacity of providing us with non-renewable resources and neutralizing our waste is diminishing the more we abuse it.
That said, it should come as no surprise when a report comes up, stating that economic growth is simply no longer possible under the current circumstances. It’s absolutely logical, despite the expected reactions presented at the end of that article, from people who obviously don’t understand how ecosystems work or that ecosystems are real and exist in any place that contains life but money are an unnecessary human invention that only has any value if we insist on assigning one to it, therefore making any economic system that relies on money equally irrelevant in fact.

What all these people who act so terrified of the necessary economic reductions fail or at least refuse to see is that the current type of overall economic growth is not a requirement of improving the individuals’ quality of life. If anything, halting and then reversing it is a requirement of maintaining, not to mention improving, the quality of life for any significant length of time. All it takes is changing what we understand by economics… Which may not sound easy, but is certainly far easier than changing how the ecosystem works. After all, we created economics and decided how they work, so we can also recreate these systems in a different manner.
An example would be Japan’s situation, even if that still relies on money. Economists are trying to turn that situation around so it will once again match the patterns they’re used to see as beneficial, but in fact the current situation is the desirable one. Why? Because deflation means that people who earn the same amount of money will afford more things if they wait, but also because the fact that they’re delaying new purchases means they make better use of what they already have and therefore reduce both waste and unnecessary consumption, which can only help the environment and therefore improve quality of life even further.

But my main point is that you don’t need overall growth if you want to be able to allocate more resources for each individual. The first thing you really need is less individuals, which means that one prerequisite is a reduction of the population, which is actually a prerequisite of solving pretty much any problem the world is currently facing. If the population drops faster than the economy, you will obviously be able to allocate more resources and products to each individual even if other things remain as they are. But other things shouldn’t remain as they are, because other necessary steps include switching to renewable resources, reducing waste and sharing the available resources more fairly among the people of the world, all of which would ensure that any development would be sustainable and that the people who currently live in the worst conditions would benefit the most from any improvements.
I have an entirely different economic system in mind and maybe someday I’ll even get around to writing about it, but the point I’m trying to make right now is that it’s illogical to assume that overall economic growth is absolutely necessary for the improvement of the individuals’ quality of life and that some significant improvement of the quality of life is possible without any overall growth even if we are to maintain something similar to the current economic system, albeit with certain changes. If anything, this drive for continued overall economic growth only serves to ensure that any additional wealth will continue to be distributed among those who need it least and only dooms us all to constantly declining environmental conditions in the future, meaning that even more production, consumption and expenses would be required just to preserve the current standard of living and making any further growth quite meaningless.

I really think we should look for new indicators and teach analysts to sigh happily when those, and not the ones they’re currently following so desperately, show improvements. They could be happy watching a significant improvement of indicators like the actual overall life satisfaction reported by individuals, especially by the poorest ones, the quality and purity of air and water and other environmental factors, the healthiness of the food eaten by the average person, the amount of living and leisure space available to each person, the amount of free time each person can enjoy, the percentage of recycled materials used in the production of mainstream consumer goods or the useful lifespan of said goods. On the other hand, while it may be hard, they should also be taught to be happy when certain indicators drop, such as the amount of waste generated, the amount of non-renewable resources used, the number and frequency of visits to clinics and hospitals, the number of cars on the roads, the average age of the people who purchase or otherwise end up owning their first homes and so on.
None of those things require overall economic growth, yet they are a few very real indicators that define the actual quality of life enjoyed by people, both directly and indirectly, through the quality and health of their surroundings. That makes them the truly meaningful indicators and therefore the ones that should be followed. Leave money and overall economic growth behind, because their only value is the one humanity decides to give them, usually even at its own expense…

So do tell me who’s the one who fails to understand how things work and what’s really meaningful?