Heroes Not Zombies

I am not an economist but probably like you I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about how we need to “grow the economy”. In fact, that seems to be the new PM in the U.K.’s main idea for dealing with the cost of living crisis.

So I got wondering “how do you grow an economy!”, and “how do you even measure the size of an economy?”

Well, guess what? There are no clear answers and lots of disagreement amongst both politicians and economists. However it seems that the concept of the size of the economy is about “activity” and/or “production”….the more goods produced, the more services rendered, the greater the size of the economy.

That’s a kinda bizarre concept isn’t it? Recently in the U.K. the economy grew because more people were getting GP appointments. Really? The economy grew because more sick people were turning up asking for, and receiving, help from their GP?

The size of the economy doesn’t take any account of what is actually being produced or provider. It might be more opiates. It might be more weapons to fight wars with. It’s a pretty blunt, value-less concept. The commonest figure used in economy measurement is GDP (Gross Domestic Product) but most economists, it seems, don’t find GDP is useful so are trying a variety of other measures.

I read the Club of Rome’s “Limits to Growth” when it was published in the early 70s and it’s basic thesis still applies….in a finite world you can’t keep consuming limited resources. Stuff will run out.

Is it not kinda mad to promote ever increasing consumption and to never bother about increasing pollution and destruction of habitats?

We seem trapped in a crazy system which needs more and more consumption to be considered healthy. I mean, look around, does the planet seem healthy to you?

Consumption, profit…more, more, more.

But if we cut back, don’t we all end up with less of everything? Do we want to make everyone less well off?

We need to change the system.

What if we based our societies on nurture instead of consumption? We don’t have to make consumption our god. We could value nurture, care, and so on instead, couldn’t we?

Think of how we nurture babies. For the first couple of decades they grow physically. They get bigger. (Although parents would rarely claim to be consciously trying to grow a bigger child!) But then we stop growing taller and we grow mentality, emotionally and spiritually instead. In other words we keep growing but in the sense of realising our potentials, not in consuming more and getting bigger (well if we keep getting fatter, we don’t keep getting healthier!)

So what if what we tried to grow was the realisation of potential, of what the French call “épanouissement” (flourishing, blossoming) instead of consumption?

There is plenty to be done, plenty of potential economic activity after all, if we want to nurture both our populations and our planet.

So what do you think? Could we shift the balance away from consumption to nurture?