Lazy cut and past from Amazon review Social Limits to Growth sets forth a new view of the nature and the limitations of economic growth. The author's central argument is that there are indeed limits to growth currently exist and are essentially social rather than physical. As societies have become richer, an increasing proportion of the extra goods, services, and facilities sought by consumers cannot be acquired or used by all, without spoiling them for each other. So frustration is heightened by material affluence, which is why affluence does not make a satisfied society. This book offers important insight on apparently disconnected aspects of the current malaise...such as alienation at work, the rat-race element in education, deterioration in city living, consumerist relationships with neighbors, friends, and sex partners, as well as accelerating rates of inflation and unemployment.
Social Limits to Growth sets forth a new view of the nature and the limitations of economic growth. The author's central argument is that there are indeed limits to growth currently exist and are essentially social rather than physical. As societies have become richer, an increasing proportion of the extra goods, services, and facilities sought by consumers cannot be acquired or used by all, without spoiling them for each other. So frustration is heightened by material affluence, which is why affluence does not make a satisfied society.
This book offers important insight on apparently disconnected aspects of the current malaise...such as alienation at work, the rat-race element in education, deterioration in city living, consumerist relationships with neighbors, friends, and sex partners, as well as accelerating rates of inflation and unemployment.
Key Concept
Positional goods: the idea that once a society has escaped the state of scarcity where the provision of the absolute neccesities of human life (Food, shelter, clothing, etc) the further creation of wealth in a society serves primarily to create social distinction rather than provide for human existence. Thus, once a society escapes scarcity the social impact of further economic growth is essentially fixed and zero sum. I'm trying to figure a way to integrate this into measures for a research paper I'm working on about the relationship between economics and democracy.
I come from a red state, 'nuff said.
The Gift-Marcell Mauss
Linca led me to it. The assumption that market as defined by the exchange of goods and services primarily defined by subjective utility of the individual as the operative mechanism rather than an intersubjective social significance not reducible formal value has always existed is utterly inaccurate. Before greed was made good by the normative doctrine of economics, the primary purpose of wealth in a society was to convey social distinction. Redistribution and reciprocation rule. The wealthy have an obligation to care for the poor, and this in turn creates social obligation from the poor to those wealthy who provide for them. And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
The dominant paradigm in the social sciences is a death struggle between the biological micro structures (psychology) and the presumption of micro level rationality (economics). A role for society?
Largely ignored.
I've come to the conclusion that I might be a better fit in terms of a sociological orientation and an eye towards privileging theory as the substantive basis formal measures are based on, in Europe rather than America. But I know that doing my doctoral work in Europe would make it nearly impossible to come home. So that means emigration. And I'm not ready to do that.
So I fight my fights here. And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
Cultural and social construction of reality? Please, we're all rational actors here.
But social sciences ignoring anthropology, is a bit like chemists, biologists and engineers deciding collectively that physics ain't that important and one can theorise and experiment without it.
It seems in the US this wilful ignorance has reached sociology (It seems not to be the case yet in France).
Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
But I know that doing my doctoral work in Europe would make it nearly impossible to come home.
It seems to be the reverse in France : young researchers from France, studying in the US have a hard time coming back, whereas oodles of French doctors emigrate to the US. That's the situation I know of, in the hard sciences mostly ; It seems it is different in sociology ; because of too different schools of thoughts? Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
- Jake Ceterum censeo Chicago esse delendam
May provide some 'ammunition' for your thesis. A doo run-run-run, a doo run-run
once a society has escaped the state of scarcity where the provision of the absolute neccesities of human life (Food, shelter, clothing, etc) the further creation of wealth in a society serves primarily to create social distinction rather than provide for human existence
My impression is that social differentiation, or wealth and power gaps, are perhaps the only growing things that would be sustainable in the long run... if not for physical limits of resources. In particular, greed, as unimaginative but "optimal" survival strategy, was growing to great heights cyclically throughout the history, destroying the material base of itself each time. Say, with the emergence of agriculture, spurts of greed and social competition are inferred by Bender-Hayden's theory. (I'll try to write a diary on that soon.)
P.S. I'm reading now Gore Vidal's "Messiah".
What seems to have happened with humans is that the limit rose a bit higher than usual, probably through reproductive competition - but not high enough to be truly smart.
Darwinian solutions are always short-term and instinctive, and more effective in the short term - which is fine as far as it goes, but creates a reproductive cost for the more strategic kinds of intelligence which are capable of planning ahead.
Long term solutions are likely to frustrate any number of hard-wired tendencies, and that's not going to make them popular, or likely, with individuals who don't have the cognitive or empathic skills needed to understand why they're necessary.
And so - most species won't make it. You may get a sudden die-off, or you may get cycles. But breaking out of that pattern is going to take a lot of luck, and some stray well-intentioned randomness.
