The Crash Course, Revised Edition

CHAPTER 7An Inconvenient Lie: THE TRUTH ABOUT GROWTH

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self‐evident.

—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860)

Unless our leadership is careful, they might accidentally pursue growth when what we really want is prosperity. The problem is that growth and prosperity used to occur coincidentally, but from now on one will come at the expense of the other. We can't have both because they each result from ample surplus net energy and that is now stagnant and soon to decline. So, if we reflexively fund growth out of habit, we'll see a steady erosion of prosperity. As my website name might indicate, I am a huge fan of prosperity, and I am quite biased toward it over growth.

Growth appears to solve many problems. It creates jobs and adds new money to perpetually hungry government coffers. At the same time, new opportunities often coincidentally arise. Growth is so central to our economic models and thinking that many economists will, and with completely straight faces, refer to recessions as periods of “negative growth.” If that doesn't reveal a bias toward growth, I don't know what would.

It's nearly impossible to listen to a presidential press conference on the economy without hearing about growth and how important it is that we create more of it. Economic growth is unquestionably assumed to be desirable, and that's pretty much all there is to the story.

Anybody who ...