Growth+Development+Industrialization=Prosperity?

The idea of unchecked growth or the ability to obtain resources for uncontrolled growth come out of the idea that A.) there exists an unlimited resource base and B.) that those resources easily obtained can support unlimited wants for an infinite amount of time. The reality is the that world growth much like domestic US growth over nearly the last decade was fueled by exports and free trade from which only large transnational corporations i.e. agribusiness, petroleum and automotive companies profited. (*US growth was largely fueled by credit and the ease of which one could obtain a loan, but also upon the huge amount of untaxed imports made possible a la NAFTA*)

It is culturally engrained in most Americans who were born after the 1960's to believe that growth means accumulating more goodies, more money (not wealth, just paper currency) and more industry. Without industry there is a lack of curreny, hence global trading and exchange, especially seen in the economic downturn the world is now experiencing. What really happened is that fewer exports are coming and going due to lack of consumer spending, hence wants, without the availabity of easily obtained debt based money (loans). So everyone thinks the economy is tanking, unemployment is going to top 10% by this fall and the apocalypse is surely not far off either. Neither of those are the true reality of the circumstances the world now faces.

Everyone must start looking towards natural capital as a means of economic autonomy. Most suburban dwellers have small lawns that are resources hogs; grass to fertilize and mow, both using petroleum inputs, in the conventional gas mower/chemically derived ammonia nitrate fertilizer. However those lawns can easily be made into resource producing areas of food production through gardening, myco-cultivation or pasturing chickens and goats.

We are realizing our carrying capacity and the implications of unchecked world growth. The implications are tragic. The realization is that a debt based economy will fail to function within a true free market system without regualtion. What happens when China is ready to uncouple from buying Us junk bonds and debt? Who keeps the economy afloat then. How are the corporate bottomless pits running the global economy going to be fed without transnational markets and trading?



Herman Daly, in my opinion, one of the wisest men to live in this century has been telling the World Bank (where he was Senior Economist in the Enviornmental Department) for decades that economic growth is a mal-policy. Economic growth can only exist in an environment of unexhaustable resources and even then the carrying capacity and equilibrium will be off base in regards to how many humans can be supported in one place. With that in mind and the general knowledge that the Northern hemisphere extracts vast amounts of wealth and natural capital from the Southern hemipshere; how and why are industrialized nations still following the pattern of disproportinal growth? Such a policy of free trade has surely damaged our national economy while opening up avenues of uncontrolled migration as free trade policies enacted in the 1990's shut the doors for small producers in many Latin American countries in essence giving subsidies to domestic agribusiness interestsfor over producing grains, hoarding them and then flooding the market of Latin American countries with cheap food while deconstructing the agrarian livelihood of many rural campesinos.

The North versus South paradigm equates to the industrialized North hoarding, stealing and occupying; any means nessecary really) the global South's resources in order to expand economic growth exponentially. This growth does not eqaute to national economic expansion as some would like to believe. The growth is seen for the large corporations who coupled with governments enact legislation and policies that support corporate interests. When the US should really be spending money at home, securing food production domestically through subsidizing small diverse farms they instead are unable to untangle from corporate interests focused on exanding large monocultures into poor countries; instilling along the way the notion of similar development for the global South that resource extraction and environmental degradation is the way to become a developed nation; environment and societies be damned, so long as the economic ends are met quickly and efficiently. One may ask, " What are the benefits of free trade for large corporations." On the surface it looks rosy; non-taxed trade (this is detrimental to our domestic economy, corporations ought to be taxed on trade to pay unemployed domestic workers ousted by cheaper labor made possible through free trade agreements.) Local economies in free trade areas ahve suffered as well. 5 o'clock news says how porous the borders are, but the truth is most of the those folks come here as a means of survival in the wake of NAFTA ruining the agricultural markets of Mexico with cheap, US grown and subsidized grain.

"To globalize the economy by erasure of national economic boundaries through free trade, free capital mobility, and free, or at least uncontrolled migration, is to wound fatally the major unit of community capable of carrying out any policies for the common good." --Herman Daly's Farewell Speech to The World Bank

"Cosmopolitan globalism weakens national boundaries and the power of national and subnational communities, while strengthening the relative power of transnational corporations. Since there is no world government capable of regulating global capital in the global interest, and since the desirability and possibility of a world government are both highly doubtful, it will be necessary to make capital less global and more national." --Herman Daly