Hans,
Can you give us a short description of Paech's "ROAD TO A POST GROWTH
ECONOMY"
There have been many who have asserted that we should (or must) get to a post
growth economy. A long list of people have
written that idea.
Mostly they either don't say how, say how in a detailed description of an
economy with a new monetary system, money out of
politics, etc., or ask people to take voluntary pay cuts to live happily ever
after.
So what is Paech's road?
I ask this while agreeing with him that ending growth is both a necessary and
desirable objective.
Gene
On Feb 28, 2014, at 9:46 PM, <[email protected]>
<[email protected]> wrote:
>
> 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.
>
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