In virtually every economic philosophy, left or right, growth as good is taken for granted. Is it time to quesion that assumption and bring more qualitative considerations to the table? Also nature and our health incline toward steady state. When our health goes bad as in cancer it is often a sign that a part has begun to grow at the expense of the whole.

Below is a link and some excerpts.

Is GDP growth good?

The GDP as a Flawed Measure of the Economy--and of Progress

As a measure of economic health, the GDP is badly flawed. First by counting only monetary transactions as economic activity, the GDP omits much of what people value and activities that serve basic needs. For example, it doesn't count free services, such as community volunteer work or caring for children or elderly parents in the home--services that would show up in the GDP if they were paid for. It also ignores the value of leisure time spent in recreation, relaxation, or with family and friends. The GDP omits crucial contributions of the environment, such as pure air and water, moderate climate, and protection from the sun's harmful rays, even though these services, which the earth provides for free, become expensive if they need to be bought instead. It is appropriate that an economic indicator include such measures, because common sense and history tell us that the economy is a tool to address needs and enhance well-being, not an end in itself.

More significantly, the GDP fails to distinguish between monetary transactions that genuinely add to well-being and those that diminish it, try to maintain the status quo, or make up for degraded conditions. Much that contributes to economic growth is perceived by most people as losses rather than gains: fixing blunders from the past, borrowing from the future, and shifting activities from the unpaid household or community sector to the monetized economy. For example, the GDP treats crime, divorce, legal fees, and other signs of social breakdown as economic gains. Car wrecks, medical costs, locks and security systems, and insurance are also pluses to the GDP.

Further, the GDP ignores the environmental costs of economic activities. It takes no account of the depletion of natural resources used to produce goods and services: For example, the harvesting of ancient redwood trees adds the market value of the wood to the GDP. The GDP counts pollution as a double gain to the economy: The production of oil that creates pollution adds to the GDP; then the clean-up of toxic waste sites or the Exxon Valdez oil spill ups the GDP even more. In treating the depletion or degradation of our natural resources as income rather than depreciation of an asset, the GDP violates both basic accounting principles and common sense.

To the GDP, every transaction is positive as long as money changes hands. No wonder the GDP rises continuously, adding everything as a gain, making no distinction between costs and benefits, well-being or decline. And no wonder that, while media and politicians crow about economic growth, many Americans feel strangely ambivalent or left out.

I am seeing two different questions in your post.

1) Is economic growth good.
2) Is GNP the best way to accurately determine whether we are "better off".

A principle of economic theory is that transactions occur when each party perceives they will be "better off" after the transaction. This is true of a transaction whether there is an instrument of exchange (money) or not. As GNP only measures money exchanges, it will be an imprecise measure of "better off".

I know for me personally, the non-monetary factors of an exchange are important. I would not want to be drug dealer as I would not like the effects of my product and I would not like the stress and strains of the profession. The money might be good but there would not be any intrinsic satisfaction from the work so I do not do it. Another example would be the person who takes a job for 5 dollars an hour less as it would take additional commuting time to get to the better paying job. GNP does not attempt to measure intrinsic "better off".

At the macro level for the most part, I would think economic growth does indicate whether people are better off. At the micro level, it is important people do not get caught up in materialism to decide if they are better off. There is so much intrinsic value in our day to day lives you can not measure with a dollar.

GDP growth is good because it indicates what the doing economy is doing growth wise.

The stock market (DOW, Nasdaq, & S&P) don't indicate much to the economy. The growth depends on GDP, GNP, Unemployment, consumer spending, consumer prices & income, earnings in corporations and other indicators. Also, the deal with the Dollar in the currency exchange is a determination of economic factors.

And yes, economic growth is good

It may be desirable, but can it continue indefinitely?

There are still a lot of people in dire poverty in this world. Only a westerner, sitting in his air conditioned home snacking on a Ding-Dong, could ask if growth is good.

Growth is good, but exploitaton isn't growth.

Dingo didn't ask if "growth" is good. He's asking if the way we measure it is. What are your thoughts on that?

If a man decides that working in a sweatshop beats his previous means of making a living, he is not being exploited, he is making a voluntary choice to improve his condition. The fact he will not immediately be able to buy a box of Ding-Dongs and move into an air-conditioned home is moot. The third-world cannot become the western world overnight.

Without "exploitation" the incentive to move capital to the areas it is most needed disappears.In a increasingly smaller world the neighborhood effects of increased growth are dissipated worldwide. Much to the chagrin of protectionists.

Actually i saw two questions here. Any attempt to alter the GDP numbers by factoring crime, pollution, etc, would be highly subject to political machinations. We already have measurements for crime and pollution, let us keep this seperate from economic measures.

Jaime, I think a clarification on my question might be in order. I was trying very simply to challenge the emphasis on the quantitative(growth using impersonal economic criteria) and suggest that a shift to the qualitative(what enhances personal and community life for instance) might be in order. To assume the latter is necessarily a direct function of the former is at least worthy of a discussion. I can see so many areas where material escalation is deleterious to the good life. Maybe we need to scale back big corporations and shift to a more localized economics, for instance, with all the community richness that brings. Certainly cutting down on the use of fossil fuel and shifting to say solar would not only lower pollution but foster different kinds of relationships.

And yes Jaime I did ask quite specifically whether economic growth was good. That's why I made the counter point to the "steady state" alternative that generally prevails in nature. I think people's easy unexamined dismissal of this question reflects how deeply the prevailing economic bias has taken hold.

Hugo, a lot of these poor countries are enjoying plenty of growth: Growth in guns, disease, tribal warfare, refugees, much of this a result of the colonization and exploitation that fueled and fuels our modern form of growth economics that you so much admire. Whose to say they weren't better off from the stand point of happiness in their precolonial condition when they had real control over their own destiny and not a politics and material lifestyle that was imposed on them? I would, for instance, make a guess that a lot of Africa's economic problems goes back to the colonialists changing agriculture from self-sustaining multicrop farming to single crop plantation style farming for foreign cash. When the prices drop people starve. This is very much a qualitative matter.

Anyone wonder why I always ask people to make sure their debate questions are clear?

I would guess you are wrong. Specialization of labor increases efficiency. When advanced societies meet less advanced ones the end result is short-term pain and long term benefits for the less advanced ones. Most African nations were not ready for independence., tribal warfare and disease preceded colonialism. Your low growth plan leaves billions in poverty.

Now let me get back to my yam and rice field.

With increased efficiency comes increased risk and dependency. Since we're talking about farming, I should hardly need to remind you of the Irish potato famine, or the current banana situation. Another example, further afield, is the marked lack of progress by oil-rich nations into anything resembling a diverse and robust economy. Such specialization might possibly work if the developing nation were given some sort of insurance against that increased risk, but of course none of the laissez-fairies have the least interest in doing anything like that.



Short-term pain, certainly. As to long-term benefits, do we have to wait another century before that kicks in? Or two? How long should it take us to conclude that maybe "free market magic" - wealthy nations buying raw materials and labor from poor nations while controlling all the capital - is not yielding the promised result?

No evil corporation is forcing African farmers to grow a single crop. I guess us patronizing Americans need to tell Africans to diversify their crop. Maybe we should colonize them and end the stupid decisions Africans are making on their own.

Go to Mexico City or Manilla, take a deep breath. Go to Pittsburg, take a deep breath. Clean air is a luxury good, that is demanded only after society reaches a certain level of affluence. Now, decide if you personally would like to live at the average worldwide per capita income. If your answer is no, then more growth is required. If the answer is yes, then don't bitch that the minimum wage is too low.

Of course most of us understand that you cannot equate incomes worldwide without not only ending growth but causing a huge contraction. We all know what happened when Hoover added to the damage of a repressive tariff act by raising the highest tax rates from 25 to 64%. So ask yourself, "Would I mind living at one-half the average worldwide per capita income?" Ask yourself, "Would I want my children breathing Mexico City's air".

Does a country have to wait a century or two?, I don't think so. Let us look at India, under a Fabian socialist government real GDP per capita grew at a meagre 1.5% from 1950 to 1980, reforms in the 80's led to an increased growth to 3.9%, even greater measures toward capitalism and economic freedom in 1991 pushed this rate to 4.4% in the 90's. India now has the neccesary prerequisites to join the Western economies, capitalism and democracy. The results are highly positive.
Yep, let us stop growth. Screw those in the third world.

We were talking about single crop plantation cash farming as opposed to traditional multicrop small farmer subsistence farming. My point is even if the latter results in a lower GDP it may make for a happier and more stable and more fully employed society. Many societies did quite nicely without using cash so that by our understanding they had no GDP but they manage to sustain most of their members.



You seem awfully easy and breezy about throwing around terms like "advanced" and "less advanced." As any decent anthropologist will tell you these terms are culturally biased and have no relevance in objective cross cultural comparisons. Who was more "advanced," the Nazis or the Pygmies?



So you are saying colonialism was good because you have special knowledge that the African condition before colonialism was so chaotic and intolerable that we were doing them a favor by colonizing them?



Actually I'm more radical, I think perhaps we should have negative growth in many of the GDP categories and perhaps an increase in cooperative efficiency, and local control. I see no reason why voluntary lowering of the population shouldn't be considered as part of the package.

The "Economy" as measure by the GDP is a measurement of transactions between different people.

What you are advocating is not lower economic growth, but a return to rugged self-sufficiency : Building your own house, growing your own food, educating your own children.

What Hugo stated : is essentially correct. By only growing crops, or ONLY building houses, or ONLY educating children, you gain efficiency. That is how modern society functions, where each individual has specialized abilities and then uses the wages from those abilities to buy goods and services from others.

In your system, Dingo, there is no exploitation possible, since everyone needs to fend for themselves. However, that type of life is hard and full of labor. Growing crops is a full time job. Fixing your house (especially if you built it yourself) is time consuming. Educating your children takes alot of time.

In today's western society, we gain the benefit of specialization. The measure of the interactions between specialized interests is measured in the GDP. With this definition in mind, growth is always good.

Our own industrialization and subsequent growth relied on a lot of governmental interference - protectionist tariffs not leastly. Neoliberal globalisation does not allow for this in the third world - instead of the Western model, what's happening is massive capital flight, and countries competing against one another in a race for the bottom.

John Gray, one of the architects of Thatcher's neoliberalist policies, has concluded that those policies have had nothing but a deleterious effect on the third world. He has written an excellent book titled False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism which I highly recommend.

There are others, like former World Bank economist (and Nobel laureate) Joseph Stiglitz who have realized that the neoliberal approach is deeply flawed. As he writes in a paper presented at the seminar “New International Trends for Economic Development” Last fall,

Sadly, much of the third world is socialist and/or undemocratic. Growth will be slow. When democracy and capitalism are combined, as they were in former third world countries such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea, growth is inevitable and it is good.

I think the idea that specialization increases efficiency is a cultural TRUISM not a TRUTH. Likewise I think the idea that economic growth is good is simply another cultural bias and has little universal truth to bear it out.

Inefficiencies demonstrating the negativity of economic growth:

1. Commonly an American household will need 50 times as much resources as a 3rd world household to sustain a family. Suggesting that the 3rd world model itself after the first is a world killer ecologically. Rather the 1st world is going to have to start learning something about the "efficiencies" and low growth advantages of the 3rd. In the latter the legacy of political and economic corruption often left by the colonials is a lot of their problem and over population. The lack of economic growth per say is probably not their principal problem.

2. The temporary advantages of 1st world growth have been purchased at the expense of degrading and annihilating cultures, destroying biodiversity, destruction of the forests, polluting of the air and water, drying up our aguifers, loss of topsoil and escallation of WMDs and are unsustainable. These are a product of our insane economic growth and false efficiencies. We need more localized economies that are community based and therefore intimately accountable for their down stream affects. There would be less emphasis on overly sophisticated unwieldy technologies that adapt poorly and artificial community destroying GDP transactions from the outside. The Amish, who avoided the negative affects of our depression back in the 30s, have a good feeling for this perspective.

3. Escalation of GDP growth goes hand in hand with population escalation. It is time to set a target for a lower sustainable population with an economy that is community based and human and exhibits the same healthy steady state condition modeled by our greatest teacher - nature.

4. The model for civilization collapse has already happened. Back in the 8th century the Maya were the most sophisticated "modern" civilization in the Western hemisphere with cities and monuments all over central America. It was in that century due to a variety of reasons including war, over population, poor land practices and a change in the climate that they collapsed and the Mayans reverted back to a more traditional nature based tribal condition. They retained that condition for the next 700 years until the Spanish arrived and I suppose some still do. Modern civilizations are fragile things and stupid run away growth can force them into collapse.

The Soviet Union might be considered an example of a relatively modern society who made some unfortunate choices, many inspired by growth competition with the west, particularly the military and made-on-the-cheap nuclear power plants(Chernoble), that threw it badly out of balance and ultimately brought it to near collapse. Life expectancy has gone down and conditions there have become very desperate and primitive for many of its citizens I understand. Remember this was the same country that produced the first ICBM, the second hydrogen bomb and had a sophisticated war machine second only to the US.

Specialization increases efficiency, that is a truth. I am not going to give myself a root canal. Once people leave your idealistic hunter/gatherer society specialization of labor occurs naturally due to it's efficient nature.

As economic growth occurs two things happen, life expectancy increases and population growth decreases. It is the impoverished areas of the world that are experiencing population growth. The world population is expected to reach a peak of about 9-10 billion people and then actually decline somewhat. A world population that our earth, with the help of newer technologies that will be the result of economic growth, can easily handle.

Most of these resources you mention are completely renewable, or they have substitutes that are. The fact is human beings create technologies that increase efficiency of resources. I am sorry human beings are not going to voluntarily go back to third world conditions, nor stop having children. Your dream world requires tyrannical state controls. What we need is more economic growth, increased technologies, increased affluence throughout the world.

I must confess I sometimes miss the good ole days of picking berries and hunting mammoths.

The Soviet Union made some unfortunate choices allright. They chose a low-growth economic system.

I am beginning to get the impression that, in your question, you are referring to something a bit beyond economics. Perhaps you are offering a perspective that quality of life is not directly related to material wealth or increased economical growth? Certainly, we have an environment that promotes ease and waste relative to most of the rest of the world...But that question seems a bit more philosophical than quantifiable, although a formula is contained in your link.

I believe a compelling argument could be made either way. Was my father better off as a youngster to be given a block of wood and knife and told, "Whittle yourself a toy", as opposed to the overstimulated, chronically bored and plump children of modern society?
Parents 40 years ago didn't have fast food chains, disposable diapers, or Gymboree classes. They raised their children on healthy food, less wasteful baby products, and home sewn clothes. On the other hand, mothers are now better able to transport their children (instead of staying in the house every day for years), enjoy a bit more free time that doesn't have to be invested in darning socks, and don’t have as impending a concern that their children might die of rubella or tuberculosis.

Are we truly more ‘advanced’ because our leaders have the ability to send people into combat while they sit at a desk and might have never been willing to risk their own life for the same cause? Maybe, if it leads to a better military outcome. Does the eventuality of some sort of cosmic death ray offer an improvement over hand-to-hand combat? I suppose it depends which side you’re on.

Are we better off eating ham from a can with no concept of where it came from because we are so removed from the killing of the animal? All significant questions, but are they quantifiable? I don’t believe so.

I disagree with the Genuine progress indicator formula offered in your link. A serious equation to quantify “progress” would have to be a very comprehensive summary of all the benefits as well as the drawbacks, which I don’t see (I can’t even envision how that would be possible). Essentially I see a lot of negative figures without the corresponding gains. How could one quantify the cost of automobile accidents, for instance, without offering a figure which represents the advantage of automobile travel. Obviously, if the costs exceeded the benefit, most people would walk.

Although it adjusts for expenses that do not improve well-being, such as defensive expenditures, social costs, and depreciation of natural resources, it doesn’t offer a counter- equivalent adjustment for advancement. How much time is saved by the advent of the internet? Hours of exhaustive laborious research reduced to minutes by a google search. How much knowledge is accumulated at the touch of a button, which is relevant to everyday decisions for the individual?
How do you quantify medical improvement on the outcome of people’s lives? I would be a hunchback today if not for a medical procedure that extended my right leg an inch and a half when I was 18. Today I am not only not a cripple, but a long distance runner. That benefit is priceless to me. I’m sure there are others who have undergone reconstructive surgery or have artificial limbs that would also agree.

Environmental problems (in this country) are not what they once were. Wetland loss is 80 percent less than a decade ago. Drilling advances have made us able to tap 32,154 acres of underground oil on only 9 acres of land, whereas in 1970, 65 acres were needed to tap 7.5 percent of that number http://www.cascadepolicy.org/..%5Cpdf%5Cenv%5CANWR.htm

Progress had enabled us to enjoy advancement without as much impact to the environment, and the future (for THIS country) looks bright in this regard.
I am skeptical about the figures for ozone depletion in the GPI, when those effects are disputable by scientists. The GPI somehow arrives at a number, which is significantly greater than the cost it offered for dissolution of families, as though it were not only a foregone conclusion, but an exact and quantifiable one.

Overpopulation isn't a problem with our increased growth, either. The average family is getting smaller and women are having fewer children. Our population and Europe's are not escalating with increasing GDP growth, so the post birth control world cannot be equated to prior civilizations in that regard.

Essentially, I believe that progress, or ‘growth’, is good. I definitely enjoy a better quality of life than my parents did at my age. Others might disagree and every case would depend on the individual, but most of the aspects aside from the material are extremely subjective and hard to quantify.

The debate question is whether growth is good, and you're just assuming that it is instead of making a case that it is. Instead of just being sarcastic, perhaps you could try explaining why you believe that various problems associated with growth - e.g. pollution, resource depletion, various health problems, certain types of crime, social disconnection - are less important than the purely materialistic "we have more stuff" aspect.

Have you read the rest of my posts? Why don't you stop being an *** NOTICE: THIS WORD IS AGAINST THE RULES. FAILURE TO REMOVE IT WILL RESULT IN A STRIKE. *** and go back and read them? Where is the worst pollution, Houston or Manilla? Where is the worst pollution, New York City or Mexico City? Where are the forests being denuded South America or North America? Why did the prediction in Scientific American in 1875 that major American cities would be knee deep in horse manure not come true? Why does pretty much everyone in the developed world eat while much of the third world suffers from malnutrition? Stopping growth means killing millions of people. Growth and technology solves the problems it creates, we need more growth.

Platypus, Hugo, can you guys manage to debate with civility, please? It may indeed be possible to address the issues without resorting to name calling. Or, I could close the thread, smack your wrists, tell your mothers and send you to the corner for a time out. You decide.

Sorry, Quark. Compared to a century ago, most Westerners have found heaven on Earth. I think it would pure selfishness to stop growth and not allow the third worlders to partake in the goodlife. In fact it is pure selfishness to stop growth and not allow our children to have a better life than we do. Without going back to the pre-industrial age, slowing growth will not reduce pollution or reduce the demand on the Earth's resources.

Hugo, you may be right, but in over a decade of neoliberal economic policy in third world nations, we are not seeing positive results. We are seeing capital flight, destruction of local markets, and so on. Several former proponents of those same policies, as I listed previously, have realized this method is not working. The US achieved its phenominal growth by shutting out foreign markets, and by heavy government interference in the market. It is disingenious to turn around and apply growth formulas to the third world which in fact push the opposite of the method which was successful for us.

1. Protectionist tariffs and the military clout to back them up won us strong economic growth.

2. Our current method of globalisation forces nations to

A: privatize almost everything
B: allow foreign-owned businesses to control whole sectors of the local economy
C: cut social spending to pay down debt

This cookie-cutter approach is reaping failure across the South. Your persistence in "you're with my solution, or you're against progress" approach is over-simplistic, bombastic, and exactly the kind of myopia that is causing this global race to the bottom.

All parts of a society are interconnected. To look at simply one facet, you miss the whole picture. In a purely isolated sense, for example, one could say, "this Nike factory is providing people with jobs, who otherwise would have few to no choices, therefor, the factory is a good thing, even if Unions are squashed, pay is meager, and safety protocols are nil." This is true, but it fails the bigger picture. Why are people moving to the cities? What's happening to former subsistance farmers? What is happening to the agrarian economy in these countries? How are huge hydroelectric dams affecting the farmers? Where do these people go when their villages get flooded, or their previous means of irrigation are diverted? What happens when foreign businesses are given huge tracts by the government to apply agribusiness to export crops? What happens to the local market? Why are people flocking to the cities? These questions are as important as any others.

The third world will never achieve growth a la the power nations, unless they are allowed to follow the ame methods - but they aren't allowed to. The fiscal policies of the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank are keeping these nations in thumbscrews, and it's already starting to explode.

Please excuse my rant.

Yes. I particularly enjoyed the one where you described India's economic growth purely in dollar values, completely ignoring any effects other than material wealth.



Mexico City, of course. It's an example of growth managed badly, and strong evidence that growth is not always good - the debate question, remember?



Where are the consumers of those wood products, creating a well-nigh insatiable demand far in excess of renewability?



I'm a hundred times the technologist you'll ever be, and even I don't share your faith in magic. Technology solves problems, and technology creates problems. Even if the balance is good most of the time, it's not good all of the time or across the board - that pesky debate question again. As I pointed out before (and you ducked) specialization and technology can improve efficiency but they often tend to do so at the cost of increased vulnerability to changing conditions...and conditions always do change. I'ts like a 500HP motorcycle that goes really really fast, but don't even think about turning or you'll be smeared all over the pavement. Many developing countries only have the resources to become competitive in a few markets, and if demand in those markets dries up they're screwed. Trying to push that kind of specialization on an economy and society that's not ready for it is like building a house of cards. It's only a matter of time before it collapses, and while we look on and say "oh what a pity, they screwed up by choosing the wrong industry" millions of people see their dreams set back by a decade.



I don't think it's so much that they're not allowed to, as that the resource grab already happened. It's almost physically impossible for every nation to consume resources at the same rate that the US already does. Competing against American and European economies that are already mature and wealthy is a much tougher challenge than any the US economy had to face in the past century. Anyone who ever read a word of economic history knows that snowball effects are the rule rather than the exception; the winner in the first round has an advantage in the second, and any nation just now trying to make the shift from an agrarian to industrial (let alone post-industrial) economy is like a child competing with adults. Some people might say too bad, we got here first. While objectionable, such a stance is at least reasonably honest. Anyone who professes to care about what happens in the rest of the world, though, must account for what has already happened and the asymmetry that already exists before they can say that growth is either sustainable or good. Repeated statements of faith in the laissez-fairy belong in a religion thread, not an economic one.

Well once again you are batting .000. What liberals do not realize is that clean air is a luxury good. Poor societies India, the Phillipines, Mexico cannot afford clean air. There population desires other goods first. Goods like food, water, clothing and shelter. Most of these forests being denuded in South America are being burned and razed to be suitable for agriculture. The wood is going up in smoke, it is not Western nations causing this problem, it is dire poverty. It is countries, who like Mexico, the Phillipines and India cannot afford environmentalism.

I realize that computer guys believe technology is all about them and that others should not dare argue their points but let me do so anyhow. Yes computers and faxes have saved all kinds of time and have the potential, if they have not already, to reduce pollution by reducing travel. New developments in biotechnology makes it possible to grow more crops on less land. There are advances in lubricants that can reduce friction, thus saving energy, alternatives to oil that will someday replace it, substitute building products, such as hardiplank, for wood, recent innovations in recycling.

What Malthus missed, and what liberals today miss; is the power of the human mind. We need growth to free up more of them minds from the drudgery of ekeing out a living. We need growth to free more human minds to innovate and continue the cycle of growth. We've been doing pretty good the last 200 years, I expect the cycle to continue. The fact that Marx is dead should help speed up the progress.

Unqualified it is simply a meaningless statement. A narrow efficiency can be and often is purchased at the cost of a greater general inefficiency. Do you need some examples?


Once you stop employing straw men to misrepresent what I say then it will be easier to take you seriously. I personally respect hunter/gatherer/fishers having done some of that myself but I'm not looking to abandon our post neolithic accomplishments, just exercise them with some restraint and with a respect for community values.



I think you mean the number of children per family decreases among the wealthier in the modern era. Most population growth has in fact occurred along side the industrial revolution, the engine behind our economic growth. I also question the inherent tendency toward large families in nonrich societies. I suspect that a lot of that came out of colonial conditions and a consequent break down in cultural standards.



The United States is experiencing considerable population growth, a lot of that through emigration which wealthier societies seem to require to maintain their services. The poorer Russia on the other hand has seriously lost population. I don't think you can generalize your point.



I have no reason to except either of your above points as being anything other than faith statements



It is not clear to me that rain forests are renewable in a timely fashion, or depleted aguifers will quickly replenish or the oceans won't be so degraded at some point that eutraphication will set in to the point of killing off sea life and drastically lowering the amount of free oxygen to the suffication level. J. Cousteau certainly seemed to think the latter was a possibility. Perhaps global warming will reach a tipping point where we will roller coaster into a whole new downward cycle that we are unable to reverse. Do you see a lot of new technological efficiencies coming down the pipeline that are going to save us at the last moment? I'm very suspicious of this magic word "technology" that is supposed to be a panacea for all our problems.



I'm not talking about going back but moving forward in a positive way. In that process we can learn a lot about resource efficiencies from many 3rd world societies. Your "stop having children" comment is again a straw man. I was talking about reducing overall population. The idea that one family can do better than two families in eking out an existence from say 5 acres of land appears so obvious that I have to wonder why some people seem desperate to dismiss Malthus' thesis. Sure he was a political reactionary but that's irrelevant to his point about resource limits.



My community based societies using appropriate, not bludgeoning technologies implies the very opposite of totalitarian control. Your out-of-control gorging, growth obsessed world megaloposis virtually requires it.



So do I but we'll just have to do the best we can and maybe pick up a tip or two from their successes and mistakes. After all they did wipe out the mammoths which wasn't very bright.



Actually the Soviet Union was a fairly high growth economic system for a good portion of their history. It was the QUALITY of that growth that lead to their downfall I believe.

A little point about life expectancy. The life expectancy of a new born child is as long as when the next all out war starts. By the way what's the technological solution to war?

Could not economic growth be defined as the collective improvement of two parties via exchange? I cannot see anyone arguing this is a bad thing. This is the point I see Hugo championing.

Collective materialism which decreases the well being of others who do not have a role is these exchanges is the heart and sole of economic ecology. No one will argue two parties improving their lot at the expense of a third is a good thing. Dingo is championing this.

Both Hugo and Dingo are right, their points do not oppose each other nor are they mutually exclusive. That is the only place they seem to be wrong in their arguments, thinking they are at odds and using rationale from different theories to challenge each other. Figuring out how both these ideals can coexist, and they can, will be constructive.

And why is that poverty persisting, in this age of technology that could overcome it? Why are societies that have thrived for millennia struggling to feed their people now? Obviously technology and industrialization are not the solutions to that poverty. They might not be the cause either, but they're not the solution.



...and yet, all of us together cannot afford to keep ignoring environmental concerns. If the poorer countries cannot afford environmentalism, what are the wealthier countries doing to take up the slack? Are you driving less, hugo? Recycling? Eating less fish from depleted stocks? Reducing your water use? The poor nations can't afford environmentalism, and nobody can make the richest nation take it seriously either. The environment is the classic victim of failure to account for "hidden" costs, and it's beginning to catch up. When the trees and the water and the fish are all gone, it will be too late for the generations that used them up to be held accountable. What kind of "growth" is that?



Technology can result in improvements, I never said otherwise, but are those improvements coming as fast as the associated problems? If that were true we'd have no pollution and no ozone depletion and no resource depletion...but we do. Clearly, the problems are piling up faster than the solutions, and the reason is that producing a "hidden" problem associated with a product is more profitable than producing a solution for that problem.

Also, are the benefits of this technology going where they're needed? Technology tends to be expensive, and yet the countries that most need AIDS vaccines can least afford them. Biotech corn and rice is not being offered except at prices and with conditions (terminator genes) designed to benefit the big agribusiness cartels, not the starving people and not the environment. The nation that has the greatest access to all of that technology still has by far the greatest resource consumption, at rates that no sane or honest person could claim are sustainable. Even with all that technology we're making things worse, not better.



Be careful what you wish for, hugo. The US only maintains its standard of living through preeminence in certain industries and fields of endeavour. As some of those poorer nations lift themselves out of poverty - not by relying on the laissez-fairy but through the sort of coordinated effort you abhor - they start to compete with us on skills and quality while drastically undercutting us on labor costs even in our traditional economic strongholds. When India and China et al are as capable of that "innovation" you crow about as we are, when their own financial institutions are fully mature, when all of that market "leverage" (i.e. monopoly power) the US has exercised in certain areas goes away, we're going to be in a world of hurt. I know you appreciate appeals to selfishness above all other arguments, so try this: it's in our own best interest to participate in cooperative growth and form strong trading relationships with emerging economic powers, instead of treating them as resource pools to exploit or places into which we dump products or jobs that we no longer want. They'll remember all the times we tried to force "growth" on them that wasn't really growth, that benefited only a few and only temporarily before the house of cards collapsed and the locals were left with nothing (except a depleted environment and resource pool) while foreign "investors" mysteriously did seem richer than before.

Going back to the debate question you're so eager to avoid, not all growth is good. Most, perhaps, but not all and not for all. Cancer is a growth. Nazi Germany exhibited fantastic growth and efficiency by exactly the measures you favor. Unfortunately, the type of economic growth we currently encourage is just about the worst kind and it's not sustainable. If we truly want to reap the benefits of all that technology you idolize, or if we want our grandchildren to do so, we need to start growing in different ways.



I think people - notably hugo - are arguing exactly that, only the third party is separated from the first two by time rather than space. It's our own descendants who will suffer unless we start managing our growth more intelligently, but they don't have any money to spend right now so there's no room for their concerns in Randland.

I don't really care about what the utopians in Randland think. Growth will make our children's generation better than our own. Growing technology will find cleaner and more efficient sources of energy. Agricultural advances will continue to increase the efficiency of land use. When the third party costs become excessive to a society the voters will demand regulation and controls. What should not be demanded is regulating or controlling for phantom problems. What should also be realized is people are never going to willingly give up a lifestyle they have become accustomed to and that those in the third world will not be satisfied with anything less than what we have. Growth and technological progress come hand in hand. The solution to third party costs is more growth, not less. In many places in the US the water and air is cleaner than it was 50 years ago, can't say that for many places in the third world. Despite that those in the third world are still willing to suffer the luxury of clean air for the goods that come from productive activity. I realize in Naderland the sky is falling and extreme measures must be taken now.

Even if that's true (sources?) it would only be because it had been subject to massive pollution in the fifty years before that. Can you name a place where the water's cleaner than it was when the just-celebrated Declaration of Independence was written?

And what was the life expectancy in the colonies in 1776? The fact that there are costs to growth does not mean the costs exceed the benefits. I don't see you sending me a letter using a quill pen. But to answer your question; when was the last time you read about a cholera epidemic from drinking water in the US? Still happens in the third world and occurred frequently in 19th Century North America.

Here's a paper for you guys. It indicates that in many areas, conditions in the third world worsened between 1980 and 2000, the prime years of neoliberal globalization policy.

A quick summary of findings:

Very thoughtful, very succinct and very right.



I'm not sure what you've been smoking.

If Hugos ideas continue to prevail for much longer then the human race is history. Unchecked growth, technocult thinking, and first world arrogance definitely opposes what I am talking about.

To say improving one's economic status means you have to decrease another person's economic status is not true.

It is the same thinking that free market means there will be large businesses opperating on a basis of coercion.

Either can happen but do not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Correct the ills but do not trash the excellent systems for organizing societies and providing a basis for individual freedom while protecting the rights of others.

I still see two different thoughts being argued as mutually exclusive and they are missing each other because of it.

Some free markets will not police for monopolies or coercion.
Coercion means some people are not getting equal opportunity nor treatment.
To eliminate coercion means all free markets must go.

That above is poor logic.

similarly:

Some transactions can injury third parties.
Eliminating these injuries means eliminating all transactions.

Again, bad logic.

One idea being expressed is that free markets and transactions (economic growth) are good while the other idea being expressed is that coercion (pollution, armed attack, depletion of resources) is bad. They are not mutually exclusive.

I don't think anybody has said or assumed that; certainly I haven't. We all know economics is not zero-sum. What laissez-fairies often miss, though, is that it's not infinite-sum either. Wealth isn't created out of absolutely nothing; markets can only grow so fast. The result is a mix of zero-sum and non-zero-sum behaviors. In particular, when one increases productivity (perfect non-zero-sum behavior) the competition to determine who benefits from that increase has a distinctly zero-sum behavior. For me to benefit more from that increase, you must benefit less. If one party reaps most of the benefit from every increase in productivity, time after time after time, others - including those who generate the increases - can never catch up. I'll resist the temptation to use a slave metaphor, but it's like a CEO getting richer because a line worker works harder. Where's the incentive - supposedly a keystone of capitalism - for the line worker? Should they not get some share of the rewards? Should they not, some would say, get the greatest share, even if the CEO/investor should also get some reward for risking their capital? In the world of rich nations as employers and poor nations as employees, that's not happening.

On average labor does get a greater share of the rewards, than capital, in Western societies. Line workers have several incentives to work harder, the possibility of promotion, and greater rewards, is one of those. If workers never were rewarded for productivity then the Western world as we know it would not exist.

And I am not a big fan of Dingo's world, where disease is rampant and parents must bury their children.

Sources, please. Many CEOs make tens of millions in bonuses for overseeing tens of thousands of workers who get maybe a couple of hundred (on average) in bonuses. Simple math tells us that when it comes to distributing the rewards for increases in productivity the CEO is getting a disproportionate share.

Also, be sure to address whether the same is true for third-world nations where the wealthy from "Western" (i.e. white) societies invest. Otherwise, your entire post will be off-topic (again). Remember growth, is it good, all that? Is growth in someone's ability to put money in someone else's pocket good growth? This isn't just another generic "sing the praises of rat-eat-rat capitalism" thread, you know.



He is proposing no such world, and your response lies somewhere between a strawman and an appeal to emotion. Even you can be more constructive than that.

If a CEO increases the productivity of tens of thousands of workers he deserves the salary he makes. The laborer gets his share of productivity gains, otherwise their would be no western world. I stand by my statement no or low growth means children starve and their parents bury them.

The progress in capitalism is sometimes slow, particularly when undemocratic institutions exist. Attempts to overregulate, or distribute income more equally, slow this progress to a crawl. Does society need to regulate third party costs such as pollution, of course. Unfortunately, clean air and clean water are luxury goods to many people in the world; they would prefer to have food, clothing and shelter.

I live in one of the most polluted cities in the USA. Maybe it aggravates my allergies, maybe it increases insignificantly my chances of succumbing to cancer. I am willing to make that sacrifice so less parents in the third world will have to grieve over the lifeless body of their dear departed child. I am sorry if that is an appeal to emotion, but in my world children are precious.

Marx was right on one thing, most wealth is due to human labor. The resources of the human mind are unlimited. There are no resources that cannot be replaced or substituted for.

I agree with you there is a problem when this happens. It is an example of the market place not working very well. My opinion as to the causes include: lack of information on compensation for all people within a business and monopolistic practices between CEO and their boards. We need much better vigilance to monitor for monopolys and require compensation information for all positions within a business be available.

The problem is not economic growth but monitoring for factors which interfere with the free market process.

The forests of North America have expanded by 10 million acres between 1991 and 2001, according to the USFA. Have any third world countries accomplished anything similar? I doubt it. Economic growth is improving our environment and providing better lives.

That's a wonderful statement of faith, hugo, but not reflective of reality and not even responsive to the questions I posed. How often are 90% of productivity gains attributable to top-level executives' actions and not to the workers'? Practically never. How often do the top-level executives reap 90% of the dollar-value reward for productivity gains? Quite often. Yes, if the CEO increases, by his or her own actions, the productivity of tens of thousands of workers s/he would deserve such a reward...and if I hit the jackpot (quite a trick since I don't play) I could retire tomorrow, but neither observation is really very helpful when it's the common case that's under discussion.



Spare me. You've said before that you live there because it's where you can make the most money, so your appeal to emotion is not only facile but dishonest. Where is this child you're saving? Can you prove that your actions are helping and not hurting him? How would you living somewhere else help? You're just trying to enlist that child on your side even though there's no reasonable expectation that he would react to your philosophy - if he had the education to understand your statement of it - with anything but loathing. Try sticking to the facts, not self-serving imagery that proves nothing but how low you'll stoop to avoid a real debate.

Actually, in my experience, most productivity gains of significance are implemented by management. Be that new equipment, more efficient facility layout, or just better practices, it is the managers who usually come up with the cost-saving ideas. At the first company I worked for, the management actually offered fair-sized bonuses for regular joes who proposed productivity increases or safety increases. Managers, whose main job is to come up with such ideas, got no bonuses for coming up with them. It was part of their job description.

Therefore, the CEO, as the head manager, is responsible for most productivity gains. The workers implement the changes, don't get me wrong. But they don't all come in one day and start working 5% more efficiently. Those types of gains are systemic, rather than individual, accomplishments.

And Platypus, please refrain from personal attacks.

You are the one incapable of participating in a real debate. Yes, I also live where I can make the most money, where I can contribute most to growth. No contradiction there. The fact it's air is not the cleanest is a price I pay quite willingly. The fact is, as anyone without blinders on can see, that the third world needs growth. How have several countries (Hong Kong,Taiwan,etc) moved up from third world status when initially they had no demand for their products locally? Through exports, that is how. If the US stopped demanding, or reduced their demand for foreign products would it increase misery? You bet it would. If the US economy grows and increases purchases from the third world will it save lives? You bet it will.

You see any countries wishing not to trade with the US?

Everyone - drop the snide comments, debate this in a civil fashion or I close this thread. -Jaime

I thought we were talking about top-level executives, not mid- to low-level managers. Do you think a CEO of a large company is personally responsible for thousands of times more improvement in productivity than anyone else in the company, as often as they get paid that much more in bonuses? If so (or even if not) do you have any credible, statistical proof to back that up? For every anecdote you tell I could tell one of my own, but that gets us nowhere.

Going back to the topic (sigh) how about first-world employers vs. third-world employees? Do you think the people who work in some Nike sweatshop get any bonus at all, or a wage proportional to the value they provide (relative to the CEO)? Do you think they have a clear path of advancement, or is there a "straw ceiling" for them while the executive ranks get filled with generic MBA types who don't know anything about the nuts and bolts of the business? As I've asked before again and again, is that really good growth? Is it sustainable?

First the basic incentive is the ole "work or get fired" one. Having said that, employee turnover is a liability. The managers who get bonuses, or who just want to keep their jobs, have an incentive to provide good working conditions and wages that are high enough to retain quality employees. The wages and conditions neccesary to retain quality employees varies greatly from the first to third world. As the world gets smaller, as you have stated on another thread, those differences will shrink.

When I first took over an industrial, specialty and medical gas plant. I eliminated workers who were not profitable at any wage rate, and rewarded the other employees an average wage increase of about 10%. The results, better customer service, improvements in productivity and within a year the company was making a profit. Something they had not done in 5 years with 'cheap' labor.

That's nice, hugo, but are you going to answer my questions? Who got the bonuses? Is there a straw ceiling? Show us the proof, not unverifiable anecdotes. Where is that child you're saving? How would living somewhere else help him? What's your source for claiming that "labor does get a greater share of the rewards, than capital, in Western societies"? IS ALL GROWTH GOOD?

I certainly hope my asking you to stay on topic and prove your claims isn't dismissed as a personal attack this time. I made a note to myself that facile appeals to emotion are OK, but getting frustrated at their repetition in lieu of debate isn't. That might come in handy sometime, if I were the sort who'd rather engage in gamesmanship than constructive debate. Not that I'm claiming anyone here is like that, of course, or that the Powers That Be might fall for it. No, I'm just trying to get some answers that pertain to the original topic.