"The root problem with our present economic model is pretty straightforward to
understand. As it stands, it maintains a country's economic stability by increasing the
production and consumption of goods and services. Economists call this 'consumption
growth' and only when it is rising do politicians and economists consider an economy to be
healthy. They worry when this growth starts to decline. When we have a recession, for
instance, their priority is to kick-start growth so that we see a return to spending in stores.
As I have already pointed out, this approach excludes the impact such an emphasis has on
natural resources and the increases in emissions that compound our present environmental
problems. If you take a look at what the fathers of this system had to say about continuous
growth you may be surprised. People like John Stuart Mill in the nineteenth century or John
Maynard Keynes in the twentieth both foresaw a time would come when endless growth
would no longer be either necessary or prudent. Mill talked of an economy eventually moving to a 'stationary state of capital and wealth' and Keynes likewise expected a moment to come when we could 'prefer to devote our further energies to non-economic purposes'. In both cases they acknowledged that this could only happen once a certain standard of universal health and welfare has been achieved. This could be said to have been achieved in parts of the Western world though not, as yet, elsewhere.
There is the danger, of course, that if you decide to try to achieve this state too quickly and move to an approach where endless growth is no longer the priority, all sorts of collapses and even disasters can occur. Businesses can go bust, unemployment rockets and people fall into the poverty trap. It may seem to those of a more radical disposition that we should just go all out to establish this new state of things, but that will only lead to the total meltdown of society. Clearly, guiding the engines that drive social and economic well-being has to be done very carefully, so perhaps the first stage might be to start thinking seriously about the sort of economic model we could possibly adopt that produces a sustainable system without all of the crippling fallout".
, Keynes, Charles liked Eugenics
