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Well here's the sticking point isn't it. Will someone please tell me how to "increase economic growth" without further drawdown of limited resources...? I think an element of any New Left manifesto should be how to manage a sustainable steady-state economy, as opposed to buying into the Infinite Growth mythology.
The only way an economy can grow in a world of limited physical resources is to boom and then bust, to undergo a series of traumatic "game over, reset" moments when much is destroyed (value, physical property, life etc) in order to clear the ground for another growth phase. The real trick is how to model a human economy on a living ecosystem, so that it runs more or less in balance without either dwindling and dying out, or burgeoning excessively and exhausting its nutrients and waste sinks. The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
And...we have to figure out how to talk about this effectively, so people won't reject it out of hand as being anti-business or "kooky". That said, today, with peak oil (and many other problems) now being discussed, it makes complete sense to be talking about a sustainable economy. "Once in awhile we get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if we look at it right" - Hunter/Garcia
so people won't reject it out of hand as being anti-business or "kooky"
Right, and we might add "as being anti-jobs". The notion that if we don't have growth we don't have jobs, is now deeply ingrained into most people's minds. (Yes, the US is currently showing that you can have "growth" and not have jobs, but that's not the MSM's conventional wisdom).
We should fight hidden or implicit subsidies, and regulate eternalities.
REGULATION is what we nesd to work on. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
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