The Trouble With Infinite Growth

Consider the earth as a closed system. In order for its collective economy to grow, it needs to expand the services rendered and goods produced. The only way to expand services rendered is to increase the amount of goods produced (b/c the money from services must come from somewhere, i.e. tangible goods). The only way to produce more goods is to harvest more resources, otherwise (if you are just recycling resources) you can't have net growth across the whole--if perfectly efficient, the economy would remain stagnant, in reality it would shrink. When you consider that simple fact that for economies to grow in perpetuity they need a continuous supply of fresh resources, the impossibility of an infinitely growing economy becomes evident. We live in a finite world with finite resources and that's not a political statement, it is a statement of fact. Combine the need to consume ever greater amounts of resources with a ballooning world population and an already stressed ecosystem and it seems that we are racing head first into a brick wall.

The world economy is an immensely complicated organism, but the fact that a growth based economy cannot possibly continue ad infinitum in a closed system is undeniable. in order to stave off systemic failure (both societal and environmental), we need to transition away from a growth oriented world economy towards a steady state economy--one which takes into account the finite nature of our planet's resources.

On the Economy

A friend of mine spends a lot of time surfing the internet in an effort to attain a greater understanding of this world. He and I share a lot of ideas, including a similar world view. Lately he has spent a great deal of time learning about this financial crisis that we seem to be slipping further and further into. He's learned a great deal about our political and economic systems and found some people who seem to have a good bearing on what's going on. By "some people" I don't mean Wolf Blitzer, Tom Friedman, Bill O'Reilly, George Bush, or Barrack Obama (to arbitrarily pick some popular names), but people who have what seems to be a true understanding of what's going on. What I've learned from him is quite frightening. The more I find out about this situation, the more frightening it is.

Sadly, this situation is far worse than it seems. The people who have gotten us into this mess are the same ones that own/run the Fed, they are the same ones who run the corporations that control the media, and they are the same ones that run the corporations that run the country. There's a revolving door between the treasury department, the fed, and these big banks so these corporations get to have their cake and eat it too. Taxpayers get the short end of the stick: when these big banks profit, we don't see a cent, when they gamble recklessly and fail, we fill their pockets with our money anyway and tell them it's okay! This industry either needs much more regulation or none at all. If we regulate, then this problem doesn't happen because these corporations aren't allowed to take these gambles. But do you trust the government to regulate? After all, it is the corporations that are running the government... If you want evidence of this look at who Henry Paulson and Alan Greenspan worked for before they worked for the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve, respectively. If government regulation won't work, then why not let the invisible hand of the market self-regulate? That way, with no one waiting to catch these corporations when they fall, they will be far less likely to make these wild gambles. Sure from time to time companies will bust, and that would mean hard times for the US right now, but if we continue on with our current practice of non-regulation and then bailout, the entire system has the potential to bust!

In short, unless the United States radically changes the way it does business, and soon, things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. Hopefully we can figure it out before the bubble bursts, if not it might be a long time until we figure out where the bottom of this mess is.

Here's a great website about these issues:
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/