Fairytales of Eternal Economic Growth

[stylofone]

This article is from the journal Nature, a distinguished journal according to the post on Mastodon which alerted me to it. My reaction is ranty and TL;DR, so I moved it after the article....

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-04029-8

I noted the support of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen for the idea of sustainable well-being replacing GDP. To me there is a major contradiction there, because the EU is built on the idea of free trade and capitalism, that free markets will lead to free societies. It's easy to say you support a social well-being index over GDP, but it's not just about changing the label. After the second world war there were these big conferences and world-building agreements, like Yalta and Potsdam and Breton Woods and the UN San Francisco Conference and the Marshall Plan. That's the sort of scale that is required now too. We need to dump the COP and have a global conference that really changes things.

At the bottom end there are hundreds of millions of people who just love the idea of getting more money to spend to provide the daily dopamine hit of consumerism. Poor nations aspire to it. Rich and poor still equate the GDP drivers with a version of well-being, the non-sustainable kind that is propped up by consumption. "I MUST be doing well because I have a Land Cruiser AND and an Audi in the garage!"

[pipbarber]

Of course i agree but nothing can change. The wealthy have too much influence and the oppressed non-wealthy masses are busy trying to survive, or get rich, or blame immigrants or lgbtq plus people or satan or the illuminati or whatever. There can be no collective action on the scale needed, it's impossible.

We're on an unstoppable slide into oblivion.

Anyway, happy xmas!