The real truth of infinite growth

Extinguish everyone that is not us, everything that is not human, let every organism go extinct, with the exception of us, homo sapiens, let the mammals die, the reptiles, the bees, the plankton - never mind our primitive ancestors once were dependent on them for their survival. We won't be. We will have machines to manufacture or print all the molecules we need for our sustenance, and we will optimize the process so we will live on light and silicon. The bottom line is that everything that is not us, and cannot become us, should be destroyed. Some old fashioned critics say that this idea is the result of some deep trauma, somehow the result of nature. As if we were depending on something abstract like nature!

Don't believe their propaganda! You know better. We need infinite growth. All the numbers say that, all the economists say that. So we need to destroy and replace everything that is not us with machines and then with better machines. That is the only way we can go on forever. Don't you see it? Don't you see how it is our moral obligation to destroy everything that is not us? What kind of world would that be, where we would allow something other than us to subsist. Could you even imagine that? Something other than us? That would be so profoundly wrong.

No. We can't let that happen. But we are doing fine. We are getting rid of 200 species that are not us everyday, and that number is rising. We are also doing good when it comes to diminishing forests and rivers.We are doing what we can to destroy dirty tribal cultures that are not us, and that, too, is rather successful. Furthermore, the oceans will be void of life before we are halfway this century. Once we have gotten rid of biological matter and other unhygienic stuff that is not us, we will devise a plan to get rid of other things.

Some critics say we can never reach the goal of being completely independent of matter. But that is precisely the point! That is what allows us to sustain infinite growth on a finite rock. We are not matter, that is what matters. Once we have materialized ourselves in silicon we will be advanced enough to realize that we are not silicon, which gives us the moral obligation to destroy all silicon. And we will replace it with another element. And then another one. Since that is the ultimate goal of humanity, and the very source of our dignity: infinitely destroying everything that is not us.

Review of 23 Things they don't tell you

Last year, the Korean star economist and acclaimed "intellectual voice of the antiglobalisation movement" Chang Ha-Joon followed up on his best selling "Bad Samaritans" and "Kicking away the Ladder" with a smartly constructed volume named "23 Things they don't tell you about Capitalism". Meanwhile, a German translation has been published with the word "Lies" in the title, and all newspapers that do economy have published a short review many months ago. So why another article now?

Because the book is the cleanest account of a self-aware infinite growth economy. Its pages breath remarkable clarity and precise examples to dismantle all of the twenty-three Things Chang takes on. It is a very good read if you are still not convinced that the system of "free market capitalism" is founded on myths, non-free markets, political influence and powerful cynicism, and is of course not free at all.

Among the Things are the insanely high managerial pays that are, contrary to mainstream thought, not only not justified but even counter-productive. There is the non-sustainability of an 800% financial sector (the Iceland bubble), the fact that protecting "infant industries" is what made rich countries wealthy, the fact that state intervention ("picking the winners") can be successful as in the case of POSCO steal and other major Korean companies. There is the fact that countries with more social security (Scandinavia) also have a higher per capita GDP and living standard than the US. There is the Thing that the so-called service economy is always supported by a strong material foundation. Or the fact that shareholder value maximization of big firms is NOT always the best thing that can happen to a country. Or that our post-communist economies are still planned. Or equality of opportunity is not always fair. These and all the other Things make reading this book a cathartic experience, if you will.

One thing...

Chang's book is also a very good read if you are questioning the infinite growth paradigm. Throughout the book I kept wondering when Chang would finally address this issue. Although he points out the discrepancies related to the insane growth rate of the financial sector, with its packaging and other nifty abstractions - the fundamental fallacy of infinite growth on a finite planet is structurally ignored in this book.

Instead, Chang reminds us of the importance of material production (and hence consumerism), calling the "post-material" economy a myth and pointing out that presumably post-industrial countries like Singapore and Switzerland both have a GDP-share of industrial production among the highest in the world.

The growth must go on, and in order to make the international game fairer we have to re-invent the rules so that they are consistent with economic history and human wellbeing. That seems to be the message of this book. For the least, we need to add the planetary restrictions (See Tim Jackson's best selling "Prosperity without Growth").

But precisely because he sees so sharply that material production growth would be essential for economies like Ghana to mimic to some extend the Asian Tiger's success story and increase global fairness, Chang finds himself confronted with a new conumdrum: The impossibility of infinite production (or productivity) growth. Let's hope he will use his brilliant analytic mind to address this problem head-on in his next book. I suggest that he calls it "23 theoretical Ladders we have to kick away if we want to Survive as a Species".

P.S. If you want me to write a review about "Prosperity without Growth" for you, please mention it in your comment. I have read it and can give you a condensed to-the-point summary.

P.P.S. If you want to read "23 Things" I'd gladly share my copy with you.