In 1972, a group of MIT scientists produced a report called Limits to Growth, which they submitted to the Club of Rome. This report used a computer model called World3, analysing data (ecological, social, economic) from 1900 to 1970, and predicted what would happen in 12 different scenarios by the end of the 21st-century. The report showed that the business-as-usual path would lead to a crisis between 2030 and 2040, when non-renewable resources would run out. Limits to Growth went on to sell 30 million copies in more than 30 languages, becoming the best-selling environmental book in history. Critics attacked Limits to Growth for its simplistic model, saying it did not account for the limitless innovation of which capitalism was capable. New technologies would enable us to find new resources or substitute materials. On the other hand, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen's bioeconomic theory could not be so easily dismissed, so the establishment simply ignored it, and it disappeared into obscurity. But it is now coming back. --- The enclosure movement started the process of artificial scarcity which led to the logic of growth. So one solution is to reverse enclosure and bring back the commons. Perhaps one possible idea to come together around is the idea of the urban commons, and using digital tools to connect pockets of urban commons. We should promote experiments in shared ownership and governance: [[Commoning has gone through four historical stages]] --- Do we need to shift from a society based on "desert" to a society based on "needs?" Desert doesn't really place a cap on rewards. It allows people to argue that the top athletes "deserve" to be paid multiple times more than the 2nd best athlete, or that the CEO of McDonald's "deserves" to be paid more than 2500 times that of the median McDonald's worker. Needs are finite. Once someone's needs are met, any surplus should go towards meeting other people's unmet needs. This suggests a move away from the market economy towards a gift economy. Miki Kashtan has the idea of forming bio-regions which take care of their own needs, and give out of surplus to neighbouring bio-regions. Nature gives many examples of these co-operative networks, most notably the mycelial network that connects the roots of different plant species, allowing them to exchange nutrients. This [[Maternal Gift Economy Movement Salon 27]] talk is a good discussion on "desert vs needs". Also, see [[Sigmund Freud's nephew created the advertising industry]] for some historical background. --- David Fleming has some useful concepts when thinking about growth. Intentional waste is the deliberate destruction of goods. He observes that nature follows a principle of intentional waste. > Fertile ecologies have one big problem in common: they are too productive for their own good. Surplus is produced that— unless checked, managed, destroyed or removed—will eventually destroy the system. Lakes can become so rich with life that they die; many forests rely on periodic fire to clear out their choking abundance; the spruce fir forests of North America, left undisturbed for long enough, become so richly and closely entwined that the birds can’t get to the spruce budworm which, left to breed in peace, will in due course destroy the forest. When it comes to human societies, he talks about 2 types of capital: Foundation capital and Growth capital. > Foundation capital is the ecological context on which the community depends: chiefly soil, water and climate, and the information contained in various forms—tradition, identity and (literally) DNA. If that information is not conserved, the consequences will ripple out in the form of the permanent loss of species, cultures and ecosystems. This is capital that needs to be protected at all costs. > > Growth capital, on the other hand, needs to be limited, for its growth—rising numbers of people, cattle, technology, machines—produces more growth. This is the intensification of the intermediate economy, and unless its growth is constrained, it will become ever more expensive to maintain, while its swelling numbers and the demands it makes on the ecology will in due course erode and ultimately destroy the foundation capital. Do we have a mechanism by which Growth capital is routinely destroyed or removed? In the Middle Ages, there were frequent carnivals and rituals that involved destroying Growth capital. Since the advent of the Puritan work ethic, where leisure was denigrated and work glamorised, we have lost this mechanism for removing Growth capital. Resilient societies ought to limit Growth capital in order to preserve Foundation capital in 3 ways: - By preventing its growth. - By destroying it, or discarding it, following growth. - By ensuring that—whatever it produces—its output does not take the form of further growth capital. Let it produce only useless ornaments, or extravagant, labour-intensive carnivals—let it be wasted. For then its impact on foundation capital is zero or minimal, in comparison to its impact if it did something useful, such as building machine tools or motor-ways, training construction engineers, or making productive investments that produced more growth. --- Alf Hornborg believes we need to do away with general-purpose money, because our money system allows us, for example, to trade away forests for Coca Cola. Our money system is like magic, and it mystifies what would otherwise be obvious as an unequal exchange. The magic of exchange rates allows the Global North to acquire land and labour in the Global South in order to accumulate technology and wealth. It allows the Global North to export their thermodynamic waste energy to the Global South. If we had a form of money that could only be spent locally, then this would help to interrupt this unequal exchange. It would facilitate a rebalancing of the thermodynamic flow, and allow order to build up in local regions. This money could be issued as a form of Universal Basic Income to every person in a region, and delivered digitally to a card that they have. This money would be tax free, thus incentivizing everyone to use it. It could be stored digitally on cards that they could use at their local shops and services. --- ## Links [[Explosion in materials use]] [[The OECD enshrined GDP growth at its founding]] [[Tom Murphy's energy calculations]] [[Degrowth economics]]