[Sosfbay-discuss] My last column... for a while... need a break.

[Fred Duperrault]

Thanks, Wes, for questioning "growth,"  the ambiguous theory of the 
capitalism system.  My perception is that one's economic growth beyond
a certain accumulation of capital is another's diminution, in a 
cannibalistic system.

Fred D.


http://www.morganhilltimes.com/opinion/257297-what-is-growth-good-for

What is 'growth' good for
7:17 PM
 By Wes Rolley <mailto:editor at morganhilltimes.com>

The word "growth" begins to take on its positive connotation from our 
very early days. My mother used to stand me against the closet door and 
measure my growth with a ruler and a pencil. As each new line moved ever 
upward, it was all goodness … as in "Oh my goodness, how you have grown."

Eventually, it became "What are you going to do with yourself when you 
grow up?" Still the implication was that eventually I would do something 
positive, would arrive at a time and place where it all fit and things 
were all right with the world.

Unfortunately I stopped growing before I could challenge our 6-foot, 
7-inch center on the Flagstaff High School basketball team. One career 
choice eliminated due to a lack of growth.

When I eventually got into the business world, it was still all about 
growth. How were we to grow the business? We measured our progress as 
growth in earnings per share, in the stock price and our own success in 
the growth of our bank accounts or its reflection in conspicuous 
consumption.

The idea that growth is good is even reinforced by our architecture that 
measures achievement in terms, not of usability or aesthetic appeal, but 
simply in of how many feet does it reach into the sky. So, skylines 
grow, ever larger but somehow less romantic unless you have been reading 
Ayn Rand.

Even our biggest crooks, like Bernie Madoff, create Ponzi schemes that 
seem to grow their investor's wealth while only enriching the schemer. 
It might be understandable if it had only been Madoff, but his is only 
one in a long string of acts of greed.

It is almost axiomatic that a politician must bow before the gods of 
growth. Republicans will tell you that we have to reduce taxes so the 
economy can grow. The Obama administration tells you that they will 
stimulate the economy so that the economy can grow.

According to Bloomberg News Service, Obama told them that "If we are 
growing at a robust rate, then we can pay for the government that we 
need without having to raise taxes."

This is exactly the situation that we have in California where both our 
state and local governments rely on the fees related to growth and the 
taxation that they will bring in the future to pay for the services that 
we currently demand of our government.

The writer Edward Abbey reminded us that "Growth for the sake of growth 
is the ideology of a cancer." Abbey was accused of being many things: a 
desert anarchist, an environmentalist, a gadfly, arrogant, 
self-centered, bigoted, a national treasure. What he did do was to 
chronicle the overwhelming urge we have to dominate the untamed American 
West and to use whatever is there to fuel our need to grow.

It should not be the automatic goal of our government to grow the 
economy nor should it be the goal of government to continue growing. 
Just as a cancer will eventually take all of our energy to sustain its 
insatiable expansion, so growing government will eventually take all of 
our monetary resources and growing the economy will eventually take all 
of our natural resources. The end result of all of this will be collapse 
and possibly the death of our civilization.

This continual chasing the chimera of growth is an economic Ponzi scheme 
and we are reaping the consequences. Coupled with a legislature that 
cannot compromise, the collapse was inevitable.

There are alternative visions of the future that need to be considered. 
They are based not on growth, but rather the idea of sustainability. We 
need to be planning not for today, or tomorrow, but to start asking the 
questions of what type of world we are going to leave for our grandchildren.

One part of that effort comes from the Center for a Sustainable Economy.

For example, they seek not to figure out how much money can be made by 
clear cutting our redwoods, but rather provides the framework for 
analyzing the net public benefit of forest restoration.

California's current Legislature is locked in battle between two 
un-bending political policies, Republicans who take vows to never, ever 
allow a new tax and Democrats who insist that they need to pay for 
providing a social safety net for the public. Both work for and rely on 
a continued pattern of growth as if that were progress.

It is time that we seek solutions elsewhere. For the economy, we need to 
make sustainability our goal, rather than growth. We need not to be 
doing more, but to focus our energies on doing better. For politics, 
only the Green Party makes sustainability a part of their platform. It 
is time to think of our future, one where, as Thomas Friedman wrote, 
"Green is the new Red, White and Blue."

-- 
"Anytime you have an opportunity to make things better and you don't, then you are wasting your time on this Earth" Roberto Clemente

Wes Rolley
17211 Quail Court, Morgan Hill, CA 95037
http://www.refpub.com/ -- Tel: 408.778.3024

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