Ran across an interesting article commenting on the capitalist imperitive of endless growth. Here are a few excerpts.
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In a world controlled by mega-corporations - whose amoral and self-interested philosophy is Growth Uber Alles - we are bombarded daily with propaganda about the blessings of growth, even as we experience its opposite. Unless we, the people, regain control of our corporate oligarchy and re-define economics to generate balance, the world will continue to degenerate under a self-defeating, for-profit, ethic of growth-to-ruin.
Despite increases in sales and profits in recent decades have we have seen nearly unrelieved declines in real wages, political power, and per-capita estates of wage-laboring majorities. For these reasons it is the task of capital’s economists to translate real decline, and "trickle-up" transfers of wealth from the many to the few, into "growth" and "universal gain." The trick here is to mask decline, hide concentrations of wealth and power, and protect capital’s factor hegemony from which the greater profit and power is mined.
As a process without limits, Growthism has no relationship to the most important qualities in our lives, much less social equity, democracy, human rights, factor balance, or environmental sustainability. As a goal and good measured only by increases in widgets and beings, a short-term, quality-less, profit and per-capita ruin becomes an end unto itself. Corrupt values and dismal measures drive a corporate need divorced from effective freedom, democracy, and eco-sustainability... and continually crush the better estate.
The very language of Growthism also reveals a male-defined drive for dominance - wherein we speak of "expanding" and "penetrating" markets and "dominating" the resources of other nations and people. Growthists speak of forcing open markets with the same cunning, and sense of divine right, as those who once spread the legs of virgins to make bloody sacrifices to male gods upon a cold stone slab.
With balance and balancing values missing from our core societal ethics, and within a finite space on earth, the prevailing ethic of "grow or die" becomes one of grow and die. Nevertheless, the high priests of Growthism see any interference with ever-increasing population as threatening to their profits and power.
In view of history, we might conclude Growthism is a manifestation of youthful, impetuous, nation-states bent on cultural and trade conquest. With the wisdom and restraint of maturity missing in youth, “young” and immature societies are characterized by imperial, religio-economic, ventures and ideologies. They are prone to proselytizing and geared to chewing up old societies and new frontiers. Without restraint all historic Edens and new frontiers soon disappear and we come to a very crowded end.
It is apparent that despite the opposition of the great majority, our ruling elites and corporate oligarchs force upon us a predatory immigration policy - i.e., the idea is to continually lower wages, terrorize existing labor forces with a continual supply of new entrants willing to work for less, and prevent unions, etc.
"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."
S