Wednesday, January 23, 2008

humanity's addiction- the growth paradigm

Excellent piece to ponder from Free Inquiry. It opens with an assault upon the apocalyptic absurdity of neoclassical economics and its failure to measure progress by any index relevant to the wellbeing of society before moving on to some neo-Malthusian consideration of overpopulation.

The whole sustainable economics thing is a subject I'm really keen to learn about. One of my current sources is Jonathan Porritt's awesome book, Capitalism As if the World Matters which I am currently reading. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Its a stunningly well written testament to the absurdity of assaulting the status quo from the outside. It provides beautiful arguments in its opening chapter as to why the only way to generate meaningful progress towards a sustainable and egalitarian economic system in this world is from the inside of the current, grossly distorted system. All those anarchists charging, screaming, into lines of riot police outside WTO meetings may be salving their own consciences by engaging in mindless activism but they're certainly not going to as much of a difference as they might if they got together to establish and fund a think tank to research and lobby for progressive, green policy. The current paradigm is so entrenched in society and civilisation that it is unassailable from without. Hence my determination to climb the ladder of power in order to add the heft of authority to the featherweight of my moral convictions.

As for overpopulation, its one of those things that everyone agrees with in principle but as soon as you start considering solutions you quickly realise that all the ones with the potential to make any sort of rapid difference entail genocide. Maybe that was what Blair and Bush secretly agreed upon in 2003 before invading Iraq . . . .

Anyway, I've ranted about the population thing before and I'm quite comfy in my "nothing to be done about it" chair for now.

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