Conventional economics has no goal except one by default: indefinite growth. In nature, this is the principle of cancer. To get back to health, it is time to give the economy a more meaningful purpose.
| This post is part of a reading series on Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth. To quickly access all chapters, please click here. Disclaimer: This chapter summary is personal work and an invitation to read the book itself for a detailed view of all the author’s ideas. |
As illustrated by a widely used contemporary textbook,1 economics is taught as “the study of how society manages its scarce resources.” Therefore, the focus is on evaluating and monitoring production conditions. This is technically accurate but does not say anything about the goal of economic activity. It is assumed that this goal is merely producing goods and services. By default, this means growth for the sake of growth.
Since the 1950s, under the seemingly reasonable assumption that we all prefer more to less, growth has indeed been presented as the panacea for virtually all human ailments. Prosperity is supposed to provide peace through the betterment of the human condition. As Kate Raworth reminds us, psychologically speaking, “The idea of ever-growing output fits snugly with the widely used metaphor of progress being a movement forwards and upwards.”
However seductive the idea that economic growth equates to human progress might have seemed during generations, it is increasingly questioned today. Confronted with the planet’s physical limits and recycling capacities, the concept of growth needs to be refined by answering which type of growth is referred to, how it is produced, and for what.