Re: Does capitalism really need growth to survive?

["Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Economists need to learn the difference between growth and expansion.  GDP
denominated growth is often merely guantitative expansion.  Growth has to do
with improved quality of life which was of economic concern breifly in the
60s, with notions of "limits of growth" being circulated.

Henry C.K. Liu

"Forstater, Mathew" wrote:

> A lot of Marxist economics emphasizes the impossibility of a no growth
> capitalism.  "Accumulate, accumulate, that is Moses and the prophets!"
> "Accumulate or die!"
>
> If you are interested in the intersection of this Marxist notion and
> environmental sustainability, there is a decent edited book collection
> called "Is Capitalism Sustainable?" and an article a few years back in
> Rethinking Marxism called "Grow or Die."
>
> Georgescu-Roegen, who was one of the key economists to argue that
> economies operate in the physical world and therefore must obey the laws
> of thermodynamics, actually did not agree with his student, Herman Daly,
> who popularized the "steady-state economics" (here meaning what the old
> classical economists called the "stationary state" and not what modern
> growth theory means by a steady-state.).  Georgescu-Roegen argued, I
> believe that a no growth system is impossible, not because the economy
> must grow, but because he believed the 2nd (entropy) law means that the
> only possible system is a shrinking one!