Eclipse
“modern economic and political policy appears based on growth, growth, growth!”

Yes it is and I agree with you that it should not be. I think government should neither deliberately favour economic growth for its own sake, nor deliberately be against it - for the same reason. Why should those who are against it, be forced to sponsor power arrangements that are for it; or vice versa? It’s like forcing people to be in a particular church, and pay tithes, for values they don’t believe in.

Obviously the reason the politicians are doing it is because they think they’ll get votes from it. This is not an argument in favour of pro-growth policies, in my opinion; it is an argument against policies either for or against growth. But minority opinion against such policies is even less of an argument.

In other words, it is not and should not be a political issue. But if you think that it is, then ‘those who live by the sword, perish by the sword’. Having chosen the option of using force, you should not cry foul when others use force against you. When you talk of ‘sensible population policy’ you are choosing force, because policy means ‘police-y’. It means using force – the law.

You talk of ‘stable state economics’ as if that expression has a known, sensible or practical meaning.

However if the original problem is that people, left to themselves, will continue to live and reproduce, and if the only solution is to use policy to stop them doing so, the problem becomes *how* otherwise to produce the goods and services to keep people alive (assuming they are not all to starve); to what standard; which are justified; how to judge which are not, who is to decide, how, and so on. In the absence of government intervention, it will be decided by the people themselves, each planning for his own values, including values as to ethics, the environment etc.

But in the absence of that option, it could only ever be decided by total government control over the means of production. This is not an option in practice. To understand why not, you need to understand the argument about economic calculation.: http://mises.org/econcalc.asp

I repeat, the choice is not between capitalism and a better centrally-planned sustainable stasis. It is between freedom, and total economic and environmental destruction.

Environmentalists are people-pushers. “A people-pusher is an person with a leash in search of a dog.” http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer191.html

And we have laws for the common good, so now we are back to a boring American philosophical debate between the perceived "public good" V "individual freedom" which seems vastly different to the European take on these things.

EG: Economies and governments interact. Governments might favour the car and motorways, as is the case in the USA, which affects the whole community! They are FORCED to own a car in many cases by necessity. The government zoning laws encourage car use, public tax money is spent on vast road infrastructures and the resulting mess is totally oil dependent and unsustainable. However, in Europe due to their unique history and having traditional city cores, they still have a ‘sense of place’ in the heart of their cities. They have a sense of the “public good” and how town planning can help all achieve such socially important things as a sense of local loyalty and identity, which are hard to measure economically but have enormous value for us as a species. They design cities around public transport more than the “individualistic American” model which emphasises trucking over trains. As a result, the average European uses half the oil of the average American, and will be that better placed to survive peak oil than America.

And this is just town planning! But I could easily perceive you or someone of your ilk arguing “But town planning is FORCE by LAW!” Well, yeah, why else do we have governments? It’s about the individual prospering because he / she lives in a prosperous society. The public good is my good.

As the world changes and society is forced to adapt, SOMEONE has to say “this much and no more” in certain areas of life, whether toxins, management of resources, etc.

Extreme example: I’d rather know that my use of timber was “managed” somehow (by policy, economic incentives and taxes, conservation laws, whatever) than that the last tree might get cut down in some planetary “Easter Island event”.

Lastly, SPA’s population policy was not a “one child” policy: it’s far more subtle than that.

Part 1
I guess the responses highlight the danger of compressing a 10,000 word piece into just 1,000 words. So in response to some of the posts these comments may help:
Ludwig's comments about good growth vesrus bad growth is well made; I had hoped that Bartlett's lecture covered that. Increasingly scientists are looking at economics and its claim to be scientific and making the point that the sort of "science' that (some) economists rely upon is a charicature of the scientific method (eg see Davies, G. (2004). Economia. Sydney, Australian Broadcasting Commission.) The point regarding entropy is also picked up by scientists writing on economics.
Curmudgeon questioned my sources - fair point. With respect to the comparison between Wallmart and GM wages see Lardner, J. and D. S. eds (2005). Inequality Matters. New York, New Press. They also make the point that Wallmart employees are also subsidised by the state; their wages are so low that most are eligible for food vouchers and the like. The comparison between real wages and profitability comes from Capitalism hits the fan : Richard Wolff on the economic meltdown. 2009 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7382297202053077236

Rechts is right (appropriate given the handle) By no means all economists are out of touch: Sen Sen, A. (1999). Development as Freedom. New York, Random House. is good on good growth versus bad growth, likewise Stiglitz (just about anything he has written) and Krugman are three nobel prize economists who tend to pour buckets of cold water on the growth paradigm.

Part 2
Cheryl far from being about helplessness it is about the reality that we can take action but you would need to follow up the last link.
I had hoped that people would have picked up the significance of the Friedman reference - we have an enviable lifestyle thanks to the very technology that is about to derail our ecosystem. If we could go back in time would we tell people not to build their coal fired energy systems? Somehow I doubt it for it would mean foregoing a lot of benefits so what are the decisions that we can make now that will enhance the future? I personally believe that we can make the switch to a zerocarbon economy, that we can create a form of capitalism that is sustainable but it does demand that we are prepared to be creative in our thinking. ( see Porritt, J. (2006). Capitalism as if the World Matters. London, Earthscan, and Foster, J. (2008). The Sustainablity Mirage. London, Earthscan
Rhian’s references are valuable; there has also been much written about the notion that the way out of the recession is green economics. It is the one element that gives me some cause for cautious optimism.
Wing Ah Ling should perhaps read Stretton’s Introduction to Economics especially chapter 2.
No doubt there are others who can refer to yet more texts, more peer reviewed material that supports or contradicts my assertions.
But does all that really matter? Why not do what you can do in your own backyard and create a local resilient community that is self sufficient and sustainable. If you want to know how simply google Transition Towns or Mondragon. (The latter has been around since 1948)

Wing Ah Ling, in all aspects of life you require rules, even if you spend your entire life by yourself, you develop rules which give relevance to life, otherwise you're insane. When you have more than one person you need rules to establish personal boundaries, directions and approaches, otherwise you have anarchistic attrition. The problem is ideologists tore up the planets natural rules and imposed their ideological ones, as we all know, ideological aims always fail to materialise in the way predicted and in the long run, have the opposite outcome.

Growing consumerism and consumption is illogical, all it does is pollute and destroy the only current place in the universe we can live. We have no way of getting of the earth, so for humanity to survive into the foreseeable future comfortably, we need to change our approach. The current ruling ideology, economic growth at any cost, is failing in anyone's terms, except the slaves of the belief.

“Sensible population policy”, is when you provide for the populations sustainability, currently there's no country that can do that, without causing major environmental, social and economic problems. The current approach is extremely illogical, unsustainable and fatal for life, unless you only think of today and yourself, or belief in the tooth fairy coming to save you.