Even if growth were bad or neutral, there would have to be specific activities that were bad, and other activities that remained good. So how does this differ from just telling folks to look for ways that their society might hurt itself, or ways that they might be contributing to this antisocial behavior? There is a lot of disagreement about which behaviors, exactly, are antisocial.
I do worry that given enough time, industrialized countries will, um, self-destruct by using nuclear weapons. But in that case the remedy would probably not be giving up industrialization. That seems like too high a cost.
It’s also possible that growth may not be that important because growth is becoming much harder or impossible. But is it?
One point you make is that during the last 200 years growth has helped. Without strong evidence against it, it seems hard to make any assumption but that trends continue. So I think growth is good; growing societies will either be looked to and emulated by other groups that want the same rewards, or else powerful growing societies will just conquer other weaker ones. Either way, growth seems like the winning strategy.
Even if growth were bad or neutral, there would have to be specific activities that were bad, and other activities that remained good. So how does this differ from just telling folks to look for ways that their society might hurt itself, or ways that they might be contributing to this antisocial behavior? There is a lot of disagreement about which behaviors, exactly, are antisocial.
I do worry that given enough time, industrialized countries will, um, self-destruct by using nuclear weapons. But in that case the remedy would probably not be giving up industrialization. That seems like too high a cost.
It’s also possible that growth may not be that important because growth is becoming much harder or impossible. But is it?
One point you make is that during the last 200 years growth has helped. Without strong evidence against it, it seems hard to make any assumption but that trends continue. So I think growth is good; growing societies will either be looked to and emulated by other groups that want the same rewards, or else powerful growing societies will just conquer other weaker ones. Either way, growth seems like the winning strategy.