Niko Paech has created a stir in Germany, judging by the many youtube videos of his lectures at various Universities in Germany and Austria. His latest book has been translated into English. Here is the Introduction of this book.
Liberation from Excess: THE ROAD TO A POST-GROWTH ECONOMY NIKO PAECH http://www.libreka.de/9783865813244 Introduction The twilight of affluence -- A chance for greater happiness? This book has a modest aim. It is intended to ease the departure from an affluence model that has become irretrievably weakened due to its chronic dependence on growth. This is indicated by a number of developments that have long been suppressed. Current debt and finance crises, for which there seems to be no solution, pose the question: How much of our wealth could ever have been created if modern states had not permanently gone into debt at an increasing rate? Ever scarcer resources, which economic growth has consumed in its relentless exploitation, namely fossil raw materials, rare earths, metals and surfaces, are even starker constraints. The immense level of consumption and mobility in the wake of globalisation has come hand in hand with rising dependence on global supply chains and market dynamics. Without their complex, de facto uncontrollable interdependence, the expansion of such affluence would never have been possible, because it is the only way to exploit the potential of the industrial division of labour. On the other hand, it is also the source of many weaknesses. The dizzying heights of towering affluence are like a house of cards with a fatal incompatibility: an increasing drop height combined with increasing instability. The higher the level, the further the fall if everything collapses. And the foundations are already crumbling. But is that actually bad news? After all, the ravaged ecosphere is already in urgent need of relief, which will not happen while the economy continues to grow. If one attempts to repair specific ecological damage within a growing economic system, new problems arise elsewhere. The glorious failure of efforts to date to solve ecological problems by means of technical innovation, rather than by dismantling the ruinous industrial model, is like a Hydra that grows two new heads for each one that is lopped off. For if measures to repair the damage are not permitted to endanger growth, they can only be added measures or objects capable of sufficiently increasing added value in monetary terms, the so-called gross domestic product (GDP). The acknowledgment following decades of wearying debate that GDP is an unsuitable gauge for the welfare of modern societies, actually plays down the problem. In fact, GDP should instead be regarded as a measure of ecological destruction. It includes all performance achieved as a result of the money-based division of labour. This basically consists of things that are produced to be passed on to someone else as cash-equivalent services. Precisely that transfer of productivity cannot be ecologically neutral. A CO2-neutral Euro, Dollar or Yen is impossible simply because they embody the demand for material values. From what can increased benefit and satisfaction ultimately be derived that is both resource and energy neutral, yet must still be produced, transported and acquired -- indeed to an ever-increasing degree, since otherwise growth in gross domestic product would disappear? How can the origin of something that is perceived by an individual as an added value on the one hand be situated outside of itself, but on the other hand be disassociated from all material and energy flows? If an increased sense of well-being were truly qualitative, its source could only lie in the subject itself. It would originate not from production based on the division of labour and the related need to overcome spatial distance, but from one's own performance and imagination, with which to independently derive additional satisfaction or to breathe new significance into what is materially existent. This process can neither be expressed as a monetary added value, nor is it compatible with what we understand by the term economy. Above all, its results can barely grow beyond a certain quantity. In economic terms, something can only grow by the addition of money and energy from external sources and such growth can therefore never be achieved without destruction. Instead of examining the relationship between growth and sustainability in its entirety, this book focuses on three main theses: Firstly: Our affluence, which cannot be stabilized without growth, is the result of wholesale ecological plundering. Attempts to attribute the many material achievements to a series of advances in efficiency or other forms of human creativity are based on self-delusion. This will be represented using the example of three barrier-breaking processes that are hallmarks of modern society. These illustrate how people in modern consumer societies live beyond their means in three respects: They appropriate things that bear no relation to their own productive capabilities. Their demand breaks barriers firstly in terms of current possibilities, secondly regarding their own physical capabilities and thirdly related to locally or regionally available resources (Chapters I-III). Secondly: All efforts to decouple economic growth from ecological damage by means of technical innovation are at best doomed to failure. In all other cases so-called improvement measures lead to a worsening of the environmental situation (Chapter IV). Thirdly: Although the alternative programme of a postgrowth economy would lead to a drastic reduction in industrial production, it would strengthen economic supply stability (resilience) and, rather than representing a form of abstinence, could even offer the prospect of greater wellbeing (Chapter VI). As things are, we are dissipating our energies in a world of consumer overload that is squandering our rarest resource, namely time. Jettisoning the ballast of affluence would give us the chance to focus on essentials, instead of routinely making ourselves dizzy on the treadmill of shopping for self-fulfilment. Using fewer things more intensively and to this end remaining unswayed by other options means less stress and therefore greater well-being. In general, the only remaining responsible principle for structuring societies and lifestyles in the 21st century is reduction-- in the sense of liberating ourselves from an excess that not only clutters up our lives, but also makes our existence so vulnerable. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
