Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

Post-growth

Post-growth is an umbrella term that refers to a broad family of economic, ecological, and political perspectives responding to the limits-to-growth dilemma —the recognition that infinite economic growth is biophysically unsustainable on a finite planet. Central to post-growth thinking is the shift of the focus out of GDP growth as the main goal of the economy. Instead, well-being becomes the main objective. Post-growth puts emphasis on decoupling societal well-being from economic growth, advocating for the possibility of prosperity beyond growth.

Post-growth: the science of wellbeing within planetary boundaries

There are increasing concerns that continued economic growth in high-income countries might not be environmentally sustainable, socially beneficial, or economically achievable. In this Review, we explore the rapidly advancing field of post-growth research, which has evolved in response to these concerns. The central idea of post-growth is to replace the goal of increasing GDP with the goal of improving human wellbeing within planetary boundaries. Key advances discussed in this Review include: the development of ecological macroeconomic models that test policies for managing without growth; understanding and reducing the growth dependencies that tie social welfare to increasing GDP in the current economy; and characterising the policies and provisioning systems that would allow resource use to be reduced while improving human wellbeing.

Brett Scott (@brettscott)

A lot of economists want to claim that economic growth is, at some deep level, driven by human greed. In this worldview, we always desire more and more, and so collectively seek to endlessly boost production I don’t buy this worldview at all I think economic growth is driven - at a deep level - by fear. It stems from the extreme insecurity of life in a capitalist market system, where you’re always on the verge of being cut out of society, and so need to over-secure your position through any means possible One of the most compelling pieces of evidence for this is the history of colonial beliefs around laziness. In many colonial regions, colonizers would complain about tribal people being lazy - in other words, not seeking to increase production when they could. The reason for this, however, was that such people had access to subsistence farming and secure social structures that did not require endless competition. Secure people are, by definition, ‘lazier’, in the sense that they do not perceive a visceral need to fight for survival The colonial mission then, was the cut them off from older means of survival, make them dependent on insecure market structures, and thereby boost production as they all turn up at the mines to elbow each other out of the way as they compete for jobs. Security, in other words, is the enemy of economic growth

Capitalism in Crisis Amid Slow Growth and Growing Inequality

Six years after the Lehman disaster, the industrialized world is suffering from Japan Syndrome. Growth is minimal, another crash may be brewing and the gulf between rich and poor continues to widen. Can the global economy reinvent itself?

Uneconomic growth

Uneconomic growth is economic growth that reflects or creates a decline in the quality of life. The concept is used in human development theory, welfare theory, and ecological economics. It is usually attributed to ecological economist Herman Daly, though other theorists may also be credited for the incipient idea, According to Daly, "uneconomic growth occurs when increases in production come at an expense in resources and well-being that is worth more than the items made." The cost, or decline in well-being, associated with extended economic growth is argued to arise as a result of "the social and environmental sacrifices made necessary by that growing encroachment on the eco-system."

The Fallacy of Endless Economic Growth

What economists around the world get wrong about the future.

Post-Growth - P2P Foundation

"The term postgrowth defines a range of approaches to socioecological challenges. They address these challenges in ways that are diametrically opposed to green-growth, which expresses the belief that society can simultaneously expand economic activity and reduce emissions and the demand for materials. Postgrowth approaches, by contrast, argue that the unlimited expansion of production and consumption is impossible and undesirable on a finite planet.

Exocapitalism: economies with absolutely no limits

There is a touch of destiny with this one. We have real…

Addressing climate change and protecting our environment – Victorian Socialists

The climate crisis is driven by the profit motive. We need a shift to 100 percent publicly owned renewable energy and an end to old-growth logging.

What Humanity Needs To Flourish In The Next Decade

We are headed toward a world of productivity without prosperity, execution without verification and capacity without constraint. But this outcome is not inevitable.

What Humanity Needs To Flourish In The Next Decade

We are headed toward a world of productivity without prosperity, execution without verification and capacity without constraint. But this outcome is not inevitable.

The ‘wicked trinity’ of late capitalism: Governing in an era of stagnation, surplus humanity, and environmental breakdown

Scholars within the fields of political ecology, environmental political theory, and international political economy tend to evaluate the prospects of state-led environmental transitions in general terms – enquiring as to the capitalist state’s inherent properties and their environmental implications. Less attention has been paid to how the state’s green capacities are conditioned by contemporary evolutions in the form and pace of capital accumulation. Capitalism’s directional pattern of historical development poses unique challenges for green state projects. Its drive to raise labour productivity metabolises nature on a growing scale, while generating conditions of overproduction and rendering a progressively larger portion of the population superfluous to the production process.Thus, the question is not simply whether the state can rise to the challenge of climate change, but rather how states are scrambling to govern the intersecting crises of climate catastrophe, economic stagnation, and surplus humanity. This ‘wicked trinity’ compounds the tensions at the heart of the capitalist state, resulting in an increasing inability to perform its role while sustaining its liberal form. This governance trilemma is illustrated by the case of the solar photovoltaic boom, where the spectacular increase in the productivity and scale of solar panel manufacturing have generated oversupply and falling profitability. States have reacted by indefinitely providing subsidies, financing automation technologies thatexacerbate labour superfluity, and relocating solar panel manufacturing to places with authoritarian labour regimes. The case of photovoltaics is a microcosm of the general predicament faced by states as they struggle to govern capitalism’s secular developmental tendencies.

Entrepreneuring for a Post-Growth Economy: From Sustainable to Post-Growth Entrepreneurship

Earth's critical planetary boundaries are being exceeded and current economic development models are failing to provide adequate societal benefits. Urgent

The myth of catch-up development: trends in core–periphery inequality from 1960 to 2023

The conventional narrative in international development holds that poorer countries are “catching up” with richer countries through the process of capitalist growth. This paper assesses this claim ...

Is Inequality Inevitable?

Wealth naturally trickles up in free-market economies, model suggests

Roadmap - New Economies for Eradicating Poverty

Rights-based, post-growth policies that make poverty eradication a deliberate outcome of restructured economies — not a trickle-down side effect of destructive growth.