Posted: Apr 06, 2013 10:41 am
Loren Michael wrote:That sounds a bit more reasonable, but I'd still dispute the terms. "Growth" is ultimately the desired thing, insofar as it enables most other desired things. It's wrong to focus on growth as a problem.
I would again emphasize the WHAT and HOW of growth. Not all growth is good. It's important to focus on whether the growth of something is creating net, sustainable value for the world. That's not something that can be said for a lot of current economic activity that's leading to economic growth. You talked about growth as a result of efficiency increases. Here is an example of such growth, from today's news:
http://blogs.hbr.org/hbr/mcafee/2013/04 ... -shri.html
So while 3000 people became unemployed, efficiency increased and greater shareholder value for created for UTC shareholders. And perhaps the newly created money trickled down to other providers of goods and services. But wait a minute, there are fewer and fewer people providing these goods and services, because economic activity in general requires fewer people than before. So income distribution becomes more and more skewed. What do these people no longer engaged in economic activity do to sustain themselves? Possibly new economic activity that "grows" the economy, while consuming even more of the earth's resources? Where does such growth end? What might it eventually lead to?