Do we have to grow and die?

“Either we grow or we die” screamed the headline on Globe and Mail’s Report on Business section on September 11. The irony of the date notwithstanding, companies die even when they are growing. It happens for many reasons, most frequent being the debt they take on in the process of growth, sometimes they are growing in an industry which is becoming outdated as they all do sooner or later. Looking at it another way, uninterrupted growth for ever is not consistent with limited resources of the planet. At some point something has to give and if the current economic doctrines have their way it will be the life systems on the planet. We will all stop growing and therefore die.

It has been clear to many thinkers, even before the meltdown of 2008, that the economic model is faulty. One important fault is that the system requires vast majority of workers to do repetitive mind numbing work. The human race needs to cope with the stress they are under without going mad and without daily dose of drugs. It is only possible if they derive satisfaction from what they do in the process of making a living. In a system where most workers obtain satisfaction, emphasis would not be on more and more growth for more and more profit but on more and more enjoyment by more and more workers.

The industry needs capital to establish plants where widgets can be manufactured in large quantities. Capital justifiably demands its share of income from the production. An entrepreneur is needed to build the plant and he needs to make a profit from the production. If he needs to coax employees to do routine work in a joyless environment so be it. Mahatma Gandhi realized that conflict in employee employer interests sixty years ago when he advised Nehru that long term sustainable growth in India is only possible through cottage industry in every hut in every village. Nehru chose instead the path of industrialization. Sixty years after independence, the country has great economic growth which benefits top ten percent of the population while the majority suffers increasing destitution. Of course every one suffers from impure water and breathing air without even realizing it. Heavens forbid the global warming bringing a dry summer season: the country of more than a billion mostly underfed people will suffer famine on a scale never seen before.

Is it too late for us to change into a society where every individual is a craftsperson; where every adult produces what he/she enjoys making and therefore is good at and trades it for things he/she needs from people who can make it. Of course no one will make car or TV but then no one will spend a significant amount of time driving to work. One can’t watch the favourite program squeezed in between infernal ads for things one shouldn’t need but one can enjoy family and friends performing for their enjoyment. Of course, this is reverting to life as it used to be a few centuries ago when many people died young and most illnesses had no cure. But this assumes that our transformation will make us forget what we have learnt over the centuries. Perhaps the sophisticated medical care of today will not be available, but people will not forget the rules of hygiene and many drugs will still be available. No doubt life will be simple; it will also be less stressed and generally more enjoyable.

My primary concern is that seven billion and growing population of the planet can not consume at the rate a few million of us do and the rest want to. The gluttonous among us must consume less, much less, for an average human on the Earth to live in reasonable comfort. If we do so, the industry, instead of continuously growing, must shrink to a sustainable size which will, of course, be different for different communities. A less dense population like Canada could have some industrial production although on a much smaller scale than now and densely populated countries of Asia would have small scale cottage industries. This model sustained humans for millennia before industrialization began in eighteenth century. On the other hand, ever accelerating economic growth has brought us close to annihilation in less than three hundred years. Fortunately, we have a few decades to adjust to new/old reality. But to achieve this, our leaders will have to first appreciate and then promote the drastic changes required in our thinking process. This work will have to start soon; there is no time for dithering.

If humans don’t change the way they live, nature will do it for them. History has shown that Nature’s ways are cruel and drastic and it behooves us to take charge for the sake of our future generations.