Capitalism is different from a regular market in that it is not just trying to make a profit in order to have enough money to exchange for useful goods and services.
Capitalism demands that your profit grows and grows and grows. It’s growth for it’s own sake. A capitalistic economy like our world economy needs to grow 3% or so every year or it gets into a recession. 3% doesn’t sound like much, but it’s exponential growth, doubling every 25 years or so. This growth doesn’t come out of thin air, but from extracting from value from other people, our world and so on.
And measuring an economy by GDP is incomplete, because it doesn’t take uncompensated labor, human happiness and wellbeing, and public goods (like a healthy nature) into account. When a factory owner pollutes and dries up the river while employees have no choice but to work 16 hour weeks, GDP goes up.
In nature, things grow until they are mature. That does not mean progress halts. Adults don’t grow anymore, but continue to learn.
My try to explain why money and markets are okay, but growth for it’s own sake (growthism you may call it) is destroying our societies, making us unhappy, and is also killing us with the climate and biodiversity crises.
Capitalism is different from a regular market in that it is not just trying to make a profit in order to have enough money to exchange for useful goods and services.
Capitalism demands that your profit grows and grows and grows. It’s growth for it’s own sake. A capitalistic economy like our world economy needs to grow 3% or so every year or it gets into a recession. 3% doesn’t sound like much, but it’s exponential growth, doubling every 25 years or so. This growth doesn’t come out of thin air, but from extracting from value from other people, our world and so on.
And measuring an economy by GDP is incomplete, because it doesn’t take uncompensated labor, human happiness and wellbeing, and public goods (like a healthy nature) into account. When a factory owner pollutes and dries up the river while employees have no choice but to work 16 hour weeks, GDP goes up.
In nature, things grow until they are mature. That does not mean progress halts. Adults don’t grow anymore, but continue to learn.
My try to explain why money and markets are okay, but growth for it’s own sake (growthism you may call it) is destroying our societies, making us unhappy, and is also killing us with the climate and biodiversity crises.