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The Forum > Article Comments > Economic growth: is it worth having? > Comments

Economic growth: is it worth having? : Comments

By Don Aitkin, published 22/11/2012

Despite the Club of Rome we've never been better-off and better-fed than we are now.

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Poirot, I'm all for moderation and I despise corporate behaviour on most accounts; in fact I spent most of my life suing the mongrels; but I also grew up on a farm and have spent some time in 3rd world countries, so I know how rotten 'natural lifestyles' really are when you don't have the resources of a modern society to run to when your little experiment with nature goes wrong.

I think it is a monstrous hypocrisy for 1st world sensibility such as in AGW to prevent the SOL enjoyed in the 1st world to the 3rd world.

As for population growth the best social contraceptive is prosperity; the only condition to that is religion which is the cause of far more wealth inequality than corporatism; which is why I am bemused by anyone who defends islam.
Posted by cohenite, Thursday, 22 November 2012 11:46:28 AM
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Perhaps the author should read the CSIRO paper from 2008-09 which revisited the seminal 1973 Club of Rome report.

The CSIRO found that nearly all of the indicators, assumptions and outcomes from the original have come to pass, the green revolution and technology did have some impact and this is why it has just taken a little longer for things to come to fruition as originally estimated.

If economic growth is so great and the US is supposed to be the greatest economy on earth, why do they have 50 million people (approximately 16%) of their population living in poverty, something seems to be awfully wrong if you ask me.

I would also proffer the advice that the author should read a recent book by Richard Heinberg, 'The End of Growth' available here: http://richardheinberg.com/bookshelf/the-end-of-growth-book

I guess if you are part of the 1% or even top 10% things probably do look just dandy, pity about the other 90 odd percent!
Posted by Geoff of Perth, Thursday, 22 November 2012 12:02:49 PM
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What economic growth can buy is choice, and choice is power. Thanks to industrial and technological development. for instance, I can work from home. I don't have to drive a ten-tonne London bus through heavy traffic like my father, or carry a bag of carpenters' tools from one building site to another, like my grandfather. Is there anyone on this forum, I wonder, who seriously thinks they have to work harder -- PHYSICALLY harder -- to make a living than their parents or grandparents did? And is there anyone who honestly believes it would be a good thing if they did?
Posted by Jon J, Thursday, 22 November 2012 1:54:54 PM
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From Wikipedia re Club of Rome:
"In 1993, the Club published The First Global Revolution.[5] According to this book, divided nations require common enemies to unite them, "either a real one or else one invented for the purpose."[6] Because of the sudden absence of traditional enemies, "new enemies must be identified."[6] "In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill....All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself."

And, in 2009: “Limits to Growth” are even more severe and urgent today." The project has five issue areas: Environment and Resources, Globalization, International Development, Social Transformation, and Peace and Security."

Don Aitkin asserts that growth is good, and 'we' have never been better off, but his 'we' surely does not include all of humanity - those pushed off their land, their native forests and water resources destroyed, their cultures trashed; or the 'slave' labourers, refugees, dispossessed and conflict-stricken.

Humanity requires a paradigm shift in aspiration, in resource exploitation and distribution, in 'inclusiveness'; for greed is NOT good, and power at any price IS the root of all evil.

WE ALL would do well to heed The Club, and aspire to universal peace, harmony and equity - the Turning Point. Look around: sex slaves, pedophilia, child-soldiers, rubbish-dump squatters, homelessness, drug abuse, domestic violence, ratbag-ery. Civilisation?
Posted by Saltpetre, Thursday, 22 November 2012 2:05:55 PM
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I love the weirdos on this site; Saltpetre leads the charge today with his panegyric about that vehicle of utopian totalitarinism, the Club of Rome.

All utopias are tyrannies because the only way the 'problems' of humanity can be solved is to deny and oppress the very qualities of being human.

In any society there will be screw-ups, failures and complete and utter implacable losers. What the club of Rome, and all ideologies which seek to perfect humanity, does is use those inevitable losers as excuses for control.

Control is the deus ex machina and only purpose of such organisations as the Club of Rome; all the predictions and concerns are just window dressing to suck in hand wringing dopes like Saltpetre with his aspirations to "universal peace, harmony and equity"; what Saltpetre is describing is heaven, or a perverted and non-existent vision of communism or some such totalitarian state.

The best example of how phony the Club of Rome is illustrated by Erhlich with his continual failures in predicting future gloom. AGW is just the latest and most pernicious of a long line of end of the world scenarios which can only be solved by ceding power to a bunch of usually rich, academic creeps who couldn't scratch themselves [with the exception of Bill Gates who is doing good work with malaria control].

The best way of dealing with the ills and inequities is an individual rights based democratic, capaitalistic society.

All the other 'methods' have been tried with calamitous results.
Posted by cohenite, Thursday, 22 November 2012 3:44:32 PM
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Saltpetre
Slave laborers? Wrong century and please don't quote anti-Nike propaganda which you imagine refutes that point. What you want to do is look at just how economic progress has transformed the prospects of places like South Korea, India, Vietnam and China. Sure one result has been to increase inequalities, but there are still many millions of dirt poor who are less poor because their government's embraced growth.

They are still poorer than the west you say? Quite right, so lets encourage economic growth in those areas and they will catch up, and the resulting increase in trade means that everyone will be richer. How does that sound?
Posted by Curmudgeon, Thursday, 22 November 2012 4:20:47 PM
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