We have enough stuff. It’s time to grow human well-being, not GDP.
The physical reality is pretty simple: you can’t grow forever in a closed system like the earth. Elon Musk understands this and he is trying to get us out of our closed system so we can expand into the universe. But so long as we are earth-bound, there are limits to growth. Most economists can’t seem to bring themselves to accept this self-evident fact, because their discipline is built around infinite growth. (Recent example: As evidence that there are no limits to growth, Paul Krugman discusses how slow steaming—ships moving more slowly—uses less energy than fast steaming. Um, sure. But then you need to build more ships to transport the same amount of stuff in the same amount of time, and building more ships requires more resources to build, so you are just trading oil for the metal, wood, and energy needed to build more ships. How does this prove that we can grow forever on our one planet?)
Instead, we need to take a step back and ask: Why do we need to grow forever? At what point do we have enough stuff? Have we reached (and passed) that point? Is it time to focus our efforts not on blindly producing more goods, but on maximizing human well-being? Krugman does suggest that economic growth does not have to mean growth of stuff. But instead of digging in, he goes off on the tangent of slow-steaming. I’d like to see Krugman dive into the real issue: how can we measure and encourage progress that improves the human lot, rather than accelerating production? We measure economic growth through GDP, which measures production of stuff, and therefor physical growth. But this is a deeply flawed measurement. More stuff doesn’t lead to more human well-being. More than forty years ago, Robert Kennedy said:
“(GDP) counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”
Nobel-Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has analyzed GDP’s flaws in detail and recommended fixes. The states of Maryland, Oregon, and Vermont are using the Genuine Progress Indicator. The country of Bhutan has been measuring Gross National Happiness for many years. The Happy Planet Index is another ready measure. If we can shift towards measuring and growing human well-being without growing physical stuff, then that, not slow steaming, might prove Krugman’s point.
Originally published at betterquest.org on October 18, 2014.
