Clinging Desperately to a Metaphor (2011)

https://www.ursulakleguin.com/blog/33-clinging-desperately-to-a-metaphor

by lcam84 • 5 years ago

158 108 5 years ago

Reminds me a little of Goldsmith’s “what is the purpose of an economy?”. First few minutes set out the argument. https://youtu.be/RowLyW5X52A

sgt101• 5 years ago

The big concern that I have for an economy without growth is that it becomes a zero sum game. Collaboration is a strong method of keeping the peace, without growth there seems a reduced incentive for collaboration.

k__• 5 years ago

Like the quote in the beginning says, growth is good, but only when it improves the life of the people.

andi9992• 5 years ago

And didn't get the life of the people improved? Maybe the US is an exception but on a global scale globalization lifted a lot of people out of poverty. (need to look at data for the US though, but still if you compare life of a worker at Steinbecks 'grapes of wrath' time to today's workers, today is still better, isn't it)

I found: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N If anybody has better data (and I care about normal people and poor, and do not worry that the rich get richer)

lcam8412• 5 years ago

Sadly I think that the battle for resources will be more detrimental to peace than the reduction of collaboration. Collaboration will be more localized, but I hope our ability to communicate globally will maintain peace. Yet I may be too optimistic here.

marcinzm2• 5 years ago

It also doesn't imho make for a more equal society. The worse an economy is the more the rich seem to profit from it compared to the rest of society. Zero sum games I feel favor those with established power bases much more so than those without them.

r-bryan• 5 years ago

I don't see why zero-growth has to be zero-sum.

If not all the "labor" inputs are eaten up by society-wide subsistence, some value will continue to accumulate, somewhere. To the degree that owners allow the workers to retain any of their "surplus value of labor," everybody's lot will continually improve.

smitty1e• 5 years ago

As a result of uncontrolled economic (and population) growth, our ecology is sick, and getting sicker every day.

I can get halfway to agreement here, but UKL's assertion invites the question of who is in control?

More pointedly, how do we agree upon the operating point and stabilization mechanisms?

THAT is the sticky wicket.

inglor_cz2• 5 years ago

Yes, I suspect that if we let the power-hungry types control the world even more than today, we may get an even worse dystopia.

"You, you and you do not get permit for procreation. You, you and you are not allowed to leave your village ever."

At the very worst, we may get Khmer Rouge-like program of violent degrowth and return to agricultural roots.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge

nickthemagicman2• 5 years ago

I think one difference between liberal minded and conservative-minded people is their version of the future.

Liberals idealistically look to the future and say what if!

Whereas, conservatives pessimistically look to the future and say what if!

Human nature seems to corrupt any system that exists so I don't know if a system exists that can both accommodate human nature and also spread equality better than capitalism.

I think the key may be to control it somehow.

mnsc• 5 years ago

I think the key may be to control it somehow.

How do you control something that per it's own definition works better the less controlled it is? Hence Le Guin suggesting that the inherent limitless uncontrolled growth goal in capitalism is akin to cancer. Because no cell is better at spreading than a cancer cell and when the body is consumed by cancer, some sort of equality is reached, that being every non cancer cell is equally influenced/wiped out by the cancer spread.

Synaesthesia4• 5 years ago

Capitalism can be controlled. Eg in China they permit capitalistic enterprises if it is deemed to "benefit the state or people". They also don't permit private enterprise to run the banking system.

nickthemagicman2• 5 years ago

Theres short-term growth and long-term growth.

I think by good regulation you can get better long-term growth.

But that's just speculation. I don't know what the solution is.

Human nature corrupts every system, even systems that start out great.

So what you need ultimately is a system which can easily be shrugged off when it becomes corrupt.

With votes or dollars instead of bullets and blood.

Education maybe? It takes educated/ aware people to overcome tribalism and see that bettering societiy as a whole also betters them.

mark_l_watson3• 5 years ago

I am more or less with her on this, and not just because I like her writing (and her audio book narration of her treatment of “Lao-Tzu: Tao Te Ching” is beyond wonderful).

Where I differ a bit is that zero growth is not the solution, but rather slow and sustainable growth. What we have now is awful. In the US, you have close to zero percent loans from the Fed to outfits like Blackwater who can buy residential property and rent it for a few percent pure profit. Young people I know who want to buy a home don’t get close to zero percent loans from the Fed.

With both political parties fully supporting the elites it seems like all is lost, but I don’t think this is so: massive peaceful demonstrations are the only way to make progress. When peaceful Occupie Wall Street protestors were brutalized at scale, I think the whole world noticed, and this kind of peaceful mass protest is probably what the world elites fear the most.

EDIT: I just noticed that she was not calling for zero growth, rather for equitable sharing.

MikeTaylor• 5 years ago

When peaceful Occupie Wall Street protestors were brutalized at scale, I think the whole world noticed, and this kind of peaceful mass protest is probably what the world elites fear the most.

Yes, it was great how that incident ushered in a new age of shared economic prosperity and political rationality.

mark_l_watson3• 5 years ago

Mike, sarcasm aside, I really think that it helped. Have we seen as progress as we want? Of course not, but that doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t try. Agree?

jsty• 5 years ago

outfits like Blackwater

Unless the mercenaries are back and diversifying into real estate, I think you might mean Blackstone?

mark_l_watson3• 5 years ago

Thank you! That is what I meant.

lcam8412• 5 years ago

She may be calling for zero growth or even degrowth. In her first blog post, where she fill a questionnaire [1]

"Question 13: “What will improve the quality of life for the future generations of your family?”—with boxes to rank importance from 1 to 10. The first choice is “Improved educational opportunities”—fair enough, Harvard being in the education business. I gave it a 10. The second is “Economic stability and growth for the U.S.” That stymied me totally. What a marvelous example of capitalist thinking, or nonthinking: to consider growth and stability as the same thing! I finally wrote in the margin, “You can’t have both,” and didn’t check a box."

[1] https://www.ursulakleguin.com/blog/in-your-spare-time

dzdt• 5 years ago

In the long run zero growth is the only possible asymptotic besides decline. Our world is finite; we are close to or over ecological limits already. Economic growth by improved efficiency or technological advancement is still possible, but there are fundamental limits there as well.

So whether or not one calls for zero growth, we should plan for an eventual situation of zero growth and structure our society so this is a good outcome.

marcus_holmes• 5 years ago

Not all increases in economic growth are at consequence of ecological exploitation. Some economic growth happens while also reducing ecological impact. These two things are not that tightly bound, especially in developed knowledge-based economies.

The problem with zero growth is that we would also need to have zero population growth. There are two ways of achieving this: the nice one, where we get everyone out of poverty and people naturally stop having so many kids because they're not poor any more, or the nasty one where we impose limits on how many kids people can have. The nice solution would definitely require lots of economic growth to lift all of us out of poverty (without reducing the living standards of the people currently having no kids to the point that they start having kids again). The nasty solution has only been tried by China so far, wasn't that successful, and has lead to all sorts of demographic problems for them.

We do have a problem with income inequality which should be a lot easier to fix than stopping growth.

goatlover2• 5 years ago

So whether or not one calls for zero growth, we should plan for an eventual situation of zero growth and structure our society so this is a good outcome.

But how far in the future is this? Our light cone is finite, but it has a vast amount of energy and matter. Maybe we don't get much father than the solar system, but that's still a lot more resources than the Earth. Just the sun itself is an enormous ball of energy we're barely making use of. Sure, a Type 3 civilization might find it difficult to grow much beyond it's galaxy, but it would take a while to get to that level. We don't really know where civilization might end up in the long term.

banannaise2• 5 years ago

When peaceful Occupie Wall Street protestors were brutalized at scale, I think the whole world noticed

And within a short time, everything was back to business as usual. Then in 2020, Black Lives Matter protestors were brutalized at scale. The whole world took notice, the police kept beating the shit out of people, a lot of lip service was paid, and nothing changed.

I'm not advocating for a violent revolution here, but what about meekly letting the state beat the shit out of you seems to be working?

MarcPereira• 5 years ago

May the solution be to live like the people on Anarris, then.

mmustapic• 5 years ago

Anarres. And their way of life was not a choice, but their only possibility to survive.

marcinzm2• 5 years ago

US economic growth is much much lower than it was 50 or 70 years ago. Population growth is also lower. If we're pointing out modern issues like the rich getting richer then I feel the correlation is with LOWER economic growth causing it rather than HIGHER economic growth. Once it becomes closer to a zero-sum game the rich have an advantage. Ecological damage goes the other way since it's harder to grow quickly with environmental restrictions.

rezendi• 5 years ago

This really depends on how you look at it. On an absolute inflation-adjusted dollars-per-person-per-year basis, rather than a relative / percentage basis, GDP growth over the last decade has been substantially higher than that of the 1950s. Even 2% of $55,000 is still greater than 7% of $15,000... https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYGDPPCAPKDUSA

FeepingCreature8• 5 years ago

As far as I'm concerned, the optimal size of the economy is when everyone can have everything they want.

Until then, there's work to do.

ekelsen3• 5 years ago

No matter how big the economy gets not everyone can have the best real estate. There will be always be locations that are preferable to others and no amount of growth will change this.

FeepingCreature8• 5 years ago

I suspect this will be fulfilled by improved transportation.

danparsonson4• 5 years ago

But the point is that increasing it does not improve life for everyone, only those at the top. The idea of "trickle down" economics is a (frankly laughable) fallacy.

FeepingCreature8• 5 years ago

Right, but isn't that the problem then, not "growth" per se? If fulfilling the interests of the rich needs growth, surely fulfilling the interests of everyone will need even more growth.

zelos• 5 years ago

Isn't it a truism in economics that needs are finite, wants infinite?

FeepingCreature8• 5 years ago

I'm not convinced it's actually true.

Synaesthesia4• 5 years ago

For some reason people want more wealth than anyone could possinly hope to enjoy or need. Talking about multi billionaires.

apersonprobably• 5 years ago

Isn't this just hedonism?

FeepingCreature8• 5 years ago

Well, it's preference utilitarianism.

kennethh• 5 years ago

People always want more. They want a nice car than their neighbours, nicer phone, better clothes. We are way beyond what you need to survive, everything else is about comfort, security and status. And why is these things so important? Mate selection is based on status (among other things).

It is also typical of a famous writer and a very high status person not to see that others would want/have to compete for status in other areas. Not that she is wrong, but the world is a complex place than one can imagine.

lcam8412• 5 years ago

There is a difference between wants and needs.

You have a giant industry trying to change your wants, making sure you are not satisfied with what you have.

isoprophlex• 5 years ago

In medicine, you'd call unbounded growth a tumor. I'd say our desire for ever growing economies acts as a tumors towards the environment...

projectileboy• 5 years ago

Growth can manifest itself as a rising standard of living for everyone (albeit unequal). I’m pro-growth, but I do agree with the notion that if we want humans to survive for multiple millennia, we need to foster a much more holistic idea of growth (which includes waste, resource consumption, environmental damage, human well-being, etc).

kweinber• 5 years ago

I’m not a proponent for endless growth, but the metaphor is fraught. An economy is not a single animal, it is a collective…. And collectives/herds/packs in nature grow to the limits of their resources (or create more collectives), just like human economies do. Often to the point of resource exhaustion and colony collapse.

I hope there is a better way to maintain an economy, but nature isn’t a great inspiration.

nickelpro• 5 years ago

We already have enough poems, more poems than any person can read in a single lifetime. And they already cover every possible subject, life, death, love, war, poverty, whatever subject you prefer.

When will the poets stop ceaselessly creating new works? We've reached and surpassed the optimal size for the body of poetry.

What a nonsense argument.

Synaesthesia4• 5 years ago

Economic growth can be equitably distributed, as it was in the western world up.to the 70's, and has been in China. Of course GDP says nothing about the way wealth is distributed that's why you have to look at where the growth goes.

There's no iron law which says that growth 'has' to go to the top 10%

streamofdigits4• 5 years ago

Its hard to imagine a calm, reasonable, informed person with any degree of empathy reading this depressingly eloquent piece and not agreeing, at least with its broad outlines.

Yet we are ten years later and the interim period didn't just see no alternative metaphor make any inroads, its been regressive in very visible terms. At some point there is a need to understand what is going on? There are several possible scenarios:

* psychopaths really do rule the roost. a tiny minority of well placed individuals hinder any chance of systemic change, essentially sacrificing the majority (and future generations) so that they maintain their current status quo for a few more decades

* there is positive change but its imperceptibly slow, dominated by "noisy" short term regression. the timescale of change is simply too slow to satisfy the impatient activist. the tumor is ultimately under control, too bad for the current generations, just keep persisting

* there is no change, because there can be no (controllable) change. the system is trapped in its own logic and sources of legitimization. Like a Jenga game we are at the point where removing any piece will bring down the whole. Like a runaway tumor, the faulty DNA will keep expanding until the organism is dead.

Maybe there are other narratives that better explain the situation or maybe its a combination of things. But we need to start understanding what is really our true condition.

lcam8412• 5 years ago

And yet there was a systemic change last year. The system objective changed from brainless growth to saving human lives, and the Jenga game holded. I don't want to romanticize the pandemic but it disproved the TINA hipotesis (there is no alternative) As Donella Meadows pointed out [1], the most powerful leverage point is to change the objective of the system. We can make it if we start to be citizens and be involved politically. Let’s be involved in movements like extinction rebellion and Fridays for the future. And most of all let's question growth and employment as the goal of society.

[1] http://www.donellameadows.org/wp-content/userfiles/Leverage_...

streamofdigits4• 5 years ago

yes, love this point. the pandemic revealed so many things, mostly damning. but it was also a loud assertion of the primacy of life, an instinctive collective behavior that was so profound and universal it went almost unnoticed. maybe we are ashamed of admitting it as it invalidates all those other behaviors.

but somehow this event has not yet worked its way through into the system. the collective assumed all liabilities, the usual suspects benefited handsomely and position again to resume the feast. back to bean counting and "calculated risks" so as not to hinder the "recovery" etc.

ecshafer• 5 years ago

What systemic change happened? The Pandemic further increased the disparity between the rich and the poor. The massive stock market and housing price increases caused by the government and loan programs purely benefited the few.

banannaise2• 5 years ago

The system objective changed from brainless growth to saving human lives

Haltingly, ineffectively, and temporarily. 4-7 million people and counting have died from a disease that most experts still agree could have been stopped if we were willing to actually move away from a growth goal.

But, I think your conclusion is right. The people have the power to change our goals, even if those in power refuse.

caconym_• 5 years ago

Money and power inevitably corrupt the systems we build for guiding collective socioeconomic development. Even in Le Guin's anarchist "utopia" on fictional Anarres, it happens: people with a tendency toward consolidating power do so, creating ad hoc structures that actively erode the society's expression of its founding principles in favor of a mindless, jealous, cynical politics.

Whether it's right to classify these people as "sociopaths" is up for debate, but their role is pretty clear. In particular, the career politicians and others existing at the interface between capital and government are looking out for themselves and their careers first, and the mid- to long-term health of the economy last. I do think it's illuminating to practice some empathy for these people, given that most humans are selfish to some degree (and for very good reason), but I strongly believe that they are the problem in a very real sense. We need a system that bends their ambition to the benefit of the people, but it's not clear what such a system would look like or if it could exist at all.

On a somewhat related tangent, I think commenters here are misunderstanding the linked UKL piece. My interpretation is that it's not calling all expressions of economic growth bad, but rather suggesting that growth (in so many words) as a guiding metaphor is incomplete, deceptive, and ultimately harmful.

streamofdigits4• 5 years ago

power seeking behavior is certainly a homo sapiens invariant. feeding this beast while containing it is still the stuff of utopias. one would speculate that actually its an instinct that could be satiated in less damaging ways.

but money (or that other favorite punching bag, corporate structures) are really straw men. they are just recent, transient and evolving constructs. it is conceivable that we could do better with improved versions, or even additional such tools that we haven't yet imagined.

there is, in this respect an interesting data point. this other "pandemic" (cryptomania). this too is mostly depressing in the amount of financial / economic ignorance it reveals - but it offers a silver lining in showing how indeed "made-up" the money system actually is, and thus its in-principle malleability

seph-reed• 5 years ago

I strongly believe that it is possible.

Basically, there's an arms race between any democratic system and the people who live within it. We haven't updated ours in ages, and it shows.

I'd like to see more people talking about "liquid democracy." It too would be just another tit-for-tat in the arms race of corruption, but so it goes.

The beast we're trying to cage is us, every bit as clever. So we must be every bit as clever in how it is caged.

amadeuspagel• 5 years ago

Its hard to imagine a calm, reasonable, informed person with any degree of empathy reading this depressingly eloquent piece and not agreeing, at least with its broad outlines.

It's hard to imagine a calm, reasonable, informed person with any degree of empathy making this kind of judgement about any significant piece of writing. What does being calm and reasonable mean if you rush to this kind of judgement? What does being informed mean if you don't know any other perspectives on a topic? What does empathy mean if you can't imagine people not agreeing with you?

jodrellblank• 5 years ago

This might be a fine rebuttal, if this wasn't a decade old article about a decades old problem that everyone has been living through. Ursula K. LeGuin (author of this article) wrote The Lathe of Heaven in 1971 which featured Malthusian-style overpopulation problems and the societal problems that go with it. With that context, your comment is like "another History Channel show about the Nazis, excellent, mustn't rush to judge them".

It took humans ~15 years between discovery of CFCs destroying the ozone layer, and 197 countries signing up to a worldwide ban on CFC manufacturing and use. Depending what it is you're objecting to, we've seen people raising issues of CO2 and climate change almost since oil was discovered, 100+ years ago, and decades of stagnant wages, increasing value capture by the economic elites, destruction of coral reefs, increasing wild fires, floods, storms, melting of polar ice and glaciers, increasingly hot summers.

What is it you aren't hurrying to judge, and how long more are you planning to wait? Have you honestly not heard any other perspectives on any topics of population, energy use, environmental problems, social organisational problems, economic problems, growing imbalance between rich and poor, etc?

mellavora• 5 years ago

at the moment, strong arguments can be made that what have seen for the last 20 years is a combo of "psychopaths ruling the roost" and "the system is trapped in its logic".

sara chayes has some observations on this:

How competently have our own leaders been governing for the past twenty years? Meanwhile, how successful have they been at achieving that other objective: adding zeroes to their bank accounts? Which of those was in fact their primary objective? https://www.sarahchayes.org/post/failing-states

janto5• 5 years ago

I think even the broad outline of the article is flawed.

The vast majority of life at all scales persist through primarily maximizing "growth" (replication), implying that the associated risks (cancer, resource exhaustion) have been acceptable and are sufficiently mitigated through various mechanisms.

It would be hard to find a superior strategy (or metaphor) that won't be catastrophic once your ecosystem shifts.

pksebben• 5 years ago

the vast majority of organisms are not as unary as human society has become. we are so tightly coupled, so well connected to each other, that a cancer in one place threatens the whole. Cancer is fine for an individual from the perspective of a large collection, but a cancer in an individual when one individual is all there is would be catastrophic. the analogy we continue to use for growth in "the economy" abstracts out this fact.

posterboy4• 5 years ago

The vast, vast majority of life today has gone extinct. I don't know how to quantify that, and it's possibly a close call for Homo viewed in isolation.

Obviously, the growth of Homo required other taxa to be consumed, since man don't feed on inorganic material. The principle of entropy guaranties that this equation holds even if inorganic input and outout into an arbitrarily defined system of organisms is considered.

It simply doesn't make sense to view living beings as either open systems without a clear boundary (and I don't mean cell walls), or as closed systems to the extent of inclusing ev-ery-thing.At best you have defined living being as open system that is "growing", but then you have excluded cancer already, as though any system were only open if in principle fungible for man.

You have completely missed that growth ad infinitum is problem, not re-growth.

mcguire3• 5 years ago

It is easy to say, very eloquently, "There is a problem." In fact, mostly, everyone agrees there is a problem.

It is rather more difficult to say, "Here is a solution that will suck less."

In fact, it is hard to say, "Here is what a solution would look like." Government planning? (In the most generous terms; "government" is the mechanism that large groups of people use to make large decisions. I find myself somewhat dubious, particularly if your take is, "psychopaths really do rule the roost.") Eliminate economic growth, somehow? (But people want cures for Alzheimer's and cancer, and all those people currently living in huts and squalor may not want to continue doing that forever.)

(Given the history of such things, I'm personally beginning to suspect that saying, "there is a problem," without also saying, "and here's what I want to do about it," is akin to yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater.)

lcam8412• 5 years ago

I don't think everyone agrees that growth is a problem. Is the way our societies are organized and it is very difficult to reason against it.

Another aspect that western societies have difficulty to reason about is to think in negative terms. Nassim Taleb calls this “Via Negativa”. We normally think about solving problems by doing things (adding), but we can also solve the same problems by avoiding doing harm (subtracting). But avoiding doing harm normally doesn't make a profit, it doesn't contribute to growth.

Health is a perfect example of this, most of the modern diseases could be preventable by eating less, sleeping more, and having a less stressful life.

unneededlogic• 5 years ago

I think her answer might have been to consider an alternative structure for society, such as the system used on Anarres in her novel "The Dispossessed".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dispossessed#Anarchism_and...

yobbo• 5 years ago

Look for professor Steve Keen in various media. He has explanations for these phenomena, and some potential solutions.

In the linked article, the term "economic growth" is used without definition. One of the main causes of inequality is credit growth - not growth in economic output, which wouldn't be problematic but there is almost no such growth in the west.

Keen sees a potential solution in what he calls a modern debt jubilee.

I also recommend catching Lacy Hunt when possible. These two economists have different perspectives, but both have fresh perspectives.

davidivadavid• 5 years ago

Not that there's no valid discussion to have about growth as an objective per se, but this is a particularly weak rebuttal that hinges on a narrow definition of (material) growth. Economic growth is first and foremost about the value of economic exchanges. Not about the amount of stuff we make.

lcam8412• 5 years ago

Gross Domestic Product, is a very gross way to measure progress as the name implies.

Robert Kennedy said in respect of GDP “It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life really worth living.” [1]

You have alternatives like the genuine progress indicator (GPI) that includes aspects such as pollution, criminality and health to the GDP. Most of all we can have many measures, we should not reduce progress to only a number.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FAmr1la6w0

posterboy4• 5 years ago

that's not what the name implies. Gross simply means large or super, as in Super-Market or in Bulk-Sale. Originally it has also meant rough. In English it still does, but formerly in a sense of coarse, and I guess in this case especially rigid.

... Its meaning forked in English. Via the notion of "coarse in texture or quality" came the senses "not sensitive, dull stupid" (1520s), "vulgar, coarse in a moral sense" (1530s). Via notion of "general, not in detail" came the sense "entire, total, whole, without deductions" (early 15c.), as in gross national product (1947)

https://www.etymonline.com/word/gross

Okay, not quite rigid, but not either dull, stupid. It's actually difficult to believe the outline, while the beginning is uncertain.

A gross may also have meant a dozen, and Groszen was a coin, maybe a dime a dozen. So, what are these twelve products that estimated national domestic production there and then, metal, salt, textiles, big macs?

bsedlm• 5 years ago

I consider it another mistake to expect any alternatives to be fully formed (or well described) and complete in any sense.

The current capitalist-market does some things pretty well, but it was not ever described as a system until after it was already working in practice.

(I'd go as far as saying that there's no great accepted explanation of what it does well and how it does it so well).

mmarq2• 5 years ago

Yet again another person with no background in economics that argues against growth.

Deploying the latest build to prod in 5 minutes, while I write a comment here, instead of spending 8 hours typing commands and hoping the DB doesn’t explode, is economic growth. Sending a text to my mother for free, instead of spending a trillion for an intercontinental phone call is growth.

As per the “system” or “capitalism”, I am not sure I understand what it is supposed to be. If I really had to give a definition, I’d say capitalism is the result of some Italians inventing the anonymous/limited company and double entry bookkeeping between year 1000 and 1500. I don’t understand what we are supposed to do about that, and this opinion piece doesn’t really add anything to the conversation. There’s a discussion to be had on income and wealth inequality, but a discussion is not noise, such as this piece.

As per “socialism”, it brought chaos, death and destruction wherever people tried to implement it. Unless we call “socialism” what’s going on in continental Europe, which is workers rights, unemployment benefits and personal hygiene. And that we call capitalism.

mandmandam• 5 years ago

Had you read even the first few lines, you'd see she anticipated and addressed your points.

Failing to acknowledge this points to a reading comprehension deficiency.

mmarq2• 5 years ago

The first few lines:

It’s as silly for me to write about economics as it would be for most economists to write about the use of enjambment in iambic pentameter. But they don’t live in a library, and I do live in an economy. Their life can be perfectly poetry-free if they like, but my life is controlled by their stuff whether I like it or not. So: I want to ask how economists can continue to speak of growth as a positive economic goal.

do not address any of my points. It sounds like “It’s as silly for me to write about urology […], I know nothing about urology […] urologists don’t write software […] I urinate everyday so I’m going to say something about urology […] blablabla”

xyzelement2• 5 years ago

The question I ask when I hear "we shouldn't grow past where we are now" is - would this person make this claim just as well 20 years ago? 100? 1000?

What if we decided "we have grown too much" right before the invention of the internet? What if we did it right before the invention of household appliances that liberated women throughout the world to do something else with their time? What if we did it before urbanization? Before agriculture?

If we're honest, we look back on all the progress that happened before us, with gratitude. Whether we acknowledge it or not, the fact that we have a warm place to sleep, reliable food sources, ability to connect with loved ones no matter where we are - these aren't things we wish never existed (yes, I realize not everyone has these things but more people have them than ever before.)

So I look at it like that, and then I ask - if we keep growing, challenging ourselves, experimenting, etc - will the people living in 100 and 1000 years thank us for it? The pessimists say "no", but history seems to show that "yes" - the trajectory of the world has been in the right direction for human safety, comfort and happiness.

By any measure - infant mortality, safety from war, education, access to culture, etc - we're the luckiest generation yet and there's no reason to stop working to give our children more of the same.

Of course we need to be smart about how we do it - look for sustainable and clever ways to grow that benefit more people - no question there. But to STOP growth is to betray our future.

lcam8412• 5 years ago

Yes, by any measure - infant mortality, safety from war, education, access to culture, etc - we have never been better but all evidence suggests that our lifestyles are not sustainable. IPCC says that there will be an environmental collapse in the next years if we do not change and green Growth is not enough [1]. It’s like if we are in a modern, comfortable and fast car. We can argue that we have never been better but it’s not the case if there is no road ahead of us. https://mk0eeborgicuypctuf7e.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/upload...

xyzelement2• 5 years ago

Yeah I hear you - but my question is, could someone make the same argument at any previous times? In the past there was ozone layer problems, peak oil worries, global cooling, etc. I think you could always have said "no it's gonna get really bad now" if you ignore human history of evolving its way past problems that loom at it.

In my experience, our growth has motivated a lot of these things.

goatlover2• 5 years ago

Reminds me of Family Guy's Amish prayer where the period between 1815 and 1835 was just the right amount of technology for God's approval. Not too little, not too much.

Where does society draw the line? It was okay to grow to this point (or 20 years ago or whenever the arbitrary dividing line was), but now we need to stop? Why not 100 years from now or 500? Maybe if we stop now we won't get to a post scarcity world where aging has been cured. Maybe we won't terraform Mars. Who knows what might be possible.

Or more simply, do we stop growing and make life harder on the developing world? Or is it okay for them to grow to this arbitrary point and then stop with us? What if the solution to climate change comes about from technological progress due to economic growth over the next 30-50 years?

caethan• 5 years ago

The Amish do not simply reject all technology past a particular date. Instead, they collectively decide on whether their community will use any particular new technology, based on whether they believe it will best serve the needs of the community.

https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2013/09/02/21...

Woberto• 5 years ago

I think this is conflating growth with technological advancement. One can grow without technical advance (e.g. farming on more land produces more, feeds more, uses more, etc) or advance technically without growth (using your examples, we can reduce infant mortality and have the same amount of children, defend ourselves better, etc without needing to necessarily use more, generate more stuff)

seiferteric• 5 years ago

To the extreme, I sometimes wonder what would happen if we invent replicators. It would obviously be great for the average person, but it would undoubtedly wreck the economy :)

mr_overalls• 5 years ago

I don't see where LeGuin's argument is anything like "we shouldn't grow past where we are now".

She's arguing (rather imprecisely, since she's not an economist) against a narrow version of uncontrolled economic growth that maximizes shareholder value and raw economic output.

And the objections she voices - growing inequality, environmental externalities, etc - are well-discussed within the field of economics itself.

And while humans _are_ generally more well-fed, sheltered, educated, etc. right now than during past times, there are very serious problems on the horizon, due to increasing population, climate change due to burning hydrocarbons, and other factors deeply entangled with human economic activity.

mcguire3• 5 years ago

In reply, one question: "Is your population growing?"

If your population is growing and your economy isn't, somebody is having problems.

lcam8412• 5 years ago

This would be true if we didn't account for the extreme inequality of the system.

For instance the richest 1 percent more than double the emissions of the poorest half of humanity [1].

We can have prosperity without growth, and we cannot have infinite growth in a finite planet.

[1] https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/carbon-emissions-ric...

mcguire3• 5 years ago

That's actually a separate problem. Or rather, two separate problems: Inequality of growth, and externalized costs of growth.

ryandrake• 5 years ago

From 2000 to 2007 (the last period of economic growth before the current recession) the richest 10% of Americans received 100% (one hundred percent—all) the average growth of income. The other 90% received none.

The economy has turned into this "heads I win, tails you lose" tool for the rich. 1. When The Economy™ is going up, already rich people (read, people with significant investments) get richer, but the average person doesn't really benefit, and the bottom ~50% get no benefit at all[1]. It's like reading that company-wide email celebrating your boss's boss's boss's promotion. Congratulations, but who cares? 2. When The Economy™ is going down, already rich people aren't really affected that much (maybe their vast portfolios go down some double-digit percentage, Boo-hoo), but the average person and the bottom 50% lose their jobs and experience misery. It's a gigantic casino, where jackpots only go to a few already at the top, and all the costs and losses are borne by the rest of the public.

1: Almost half of all Americans do not own any stock at all, including in mutual fund or retirement savings accounts. https://news.gallup.com/poll/266807/percentage-americans-own...

Barrin92• 5 years ago

"It’s as silly for me to write about economics as it would be for most economists to write about the use of enjambment in iambic pentameter. But they don’t live in a library, and I do live in an economy."

Also reminded me of Einstein in his essay 'Why Socialism?'[1]

"Science, however, cannot create ends and, even less, instill them in human beings; science, at most, can supply the means by which to attain certain ends. But the ends themselves are conceived by personalities with lofty ethical ideals and—if these ends are not stillborn, but vital and vigorous—are adopted and carried forward by those many human beings who, half unconsciously, determine the slow evolution of society.

For these reasons, we should be on our guard not to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a question of human problems; and we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organization of society."

Unlike a lot of technologists or experts today Einstein was very aware of the difference between what is and what ought to be and the limits of trying to manage human affairs with expertise, which shows a remarkable level of humility given his achievements in science. The narrative of never-ending growth, or inevitable 'technological progress' or expert management all strengthen the same premise, that people cannot take control of their own environment or aim to develop economic or technological domains towards social and ethical ends.

[1]https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/

inglor_cz2• 5 years ago

I love UKL's prose, but her clinging to a metaphor between biological and economic growth seems to me too desperate. Those two things aren't the same, even if they accidentally use the same word. (And I think that is the root of the inaccuracy: writers love words and are enthralled to them.)

Biological growth is always physical. Economic is not, there is a large virtual component (maybe too large!). It is possible to generate a lot more economic growth through clever ideas such as invention of e-mail than through deforesting the entire Amazon. A lot of inventions that generate economic growth actually save the environment. For example, modern production of electricity is probably less destructive than the traditional logging of forests for wood to burn, which was the preferred way from minus infinity to 1800.

Clinging Desperately to a Metaphor (2011)

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