london 7.15am 11.8C, sunny friday 2015
saw this blog article asking growth for the sake of what? and lamenting our throwaway culture where there is planned obsolescence. either through shoddy goods built to break down after a certain period, necessitating its replacement, or via fashion, or style where a new model is so desireable that the old is discarded. or even something new is more efficient and better than the old one.
i think growth is just a measure of how much we spend money and so circulate the money. that is the underlying great reason. whatever is needed to move money around.
in the past, people use wars, as in the roman empire building, or religion, to move money around. then we discovered capitalism. trading had been well known for ages, but it has been a limited scale, trading only in essential goods. capitalism made trading in non essentials a big thing. and not only in goods, but also in services. that brought in a game changer. leisure and luxury goods and services became big items in the trade.
so that brings us to today, where money is circulated in many ways. why, you may ask, is circulating money so important? it creates jobs, and allow many people to make money. i know it is a circular arguement, haha. money needs to be circulated because it allows more people to earn more money and that allows it to be circulated… and so on ad nauseuam. hehe. and why should money be circulated? it is because it creates new jobs. get this, the added factor in these modern times is the increasing population of people coming into work . all those young people need jobs.
unless u can discover a way of getting rid of people when they reach a certain age… in the past, wars and disease do that.
infant mortality, and wars too , got rid of the young in the olden days; not anymore. or at least not to a big enough extant to make a difference.
slavery used to be a way of marshalling all these extra people coming in. but it is now not possible to use that to control the manpower problem. we have now the influx of refugees coming in from all those countries in conflict. the underlying reason why they leave is because there is no growth in those countries and so no jobs and no means of making money. if u ever were to ask what is so important about growth, u can just look at those countries and see why. huge amounts of people having nothing and no future because the economy is stagnant and there is no means of making money. too busy just finding things to eat never mind making money. and keeping out of the way of those fighting each other. so they leave.
say what u like about capitalism, but it is the only way now to make money circulate and expand… to create jobs for the increasing numbers being born and adding to the workforce.
the downside is the increasing use of the world’s resources. so far the world is coping well, in that oil which all doom sayers say is going to run out, with shale oil we seem to have a lot of it now and no danger of it running out.
pollution is the biggest downside. littering of plastic bags in the oceans, littering in general, dirtying the air , etc. seems that is the price we pay for having so many people living on the earth, and finding jobs for them.
what is the solution? bring back mass birth control by sterilisation? or mass euthanasia? the trees will be saved, but at what cost? all of mankind will be reduced to just existing, no fun in that at all.
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Tags: economy, growth, life, money, population
alifesgayventure 
Thanks for the reblog.
The question is would put to you is this: is the only kind of capitalism the unfettered kind? Is getting people to buy products designed to end up in a landfill the only way to circulate money in a society?
Growth is fine, so long as the result is something of use. If the consumption of resources leads to an increased quality of life, then that’s arguably a wise use of resources. If it does not, then has something not been wasted for nothing?