[p2p-research] The end of growth?

[Michel Bauwens]

Kevin,

I really like your last paragraph, and wonder if you could expand it to a
full blog article?

i.e.

A drastic reduction in inputs required per unit of output, and the
disappearance of the price mechanism altogether for much of what we
consume, would register in conventional econometric statistics as a
catastrophic economic collapse.  But it would be entirely compatible
with a radical increase in actual material standard of living.

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 3:50 AM, Kevin Carson <
free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 8/8/09, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > But it is only a particular kind of growth that has become impossible,
> the
> > kind that neoliberalism and friedmanism promoted that refused to take
> into
> > account any externalities.
> >
> > A steady state economy, that recognizes that any input has to recycled
> back
> > into the system to the degree that it depletes physically limited
> resources,
> > has tremendous 'alternative growth' potential.
>
> Exactly.  The question of whether "growth" can continue is meaningless
> until the neoclassical conception of what "growth" itself means is
> pinned to the board for a thorough dissection.
>
> Since conventional measures of economic output and GDP reflect
> primarily the economic value of inputs consumed, they are largely
> irrelevant.  The GDP consists largely of the cost of Bastiat's "broken
> windows" and of the cost of waste.  The more superfluous steps are
> added to the Rube Goldberg mechanism of material production, and the
> more tribute we have to pay for proprietary design and content, the
> higher the GDP--even if we're working longer hours to pay for the same
> stuff.
>
> A drastic reduction in inputs required per unit of output, and the
> disappearance of the price mechanism altogether for much of what we
> consume, would register in conventional econometric statistics as a
> catastrophic economic collapse.  But it would be entirely compatible
> with a radical increase in actual material standard of living.
>
> --
> Kevin Carson
> Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
> Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
> http://mutualist.blogspot.com
> Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
> http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
> Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
> http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html
>
> _______________________________________________
> p2presearch mailing list
> p2presearch at listcultures.org
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>



-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Research:
http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org

Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20090813/4d20d98b/attachment.html>