and when we're all rich, then what?

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

What do we really want?

Economic growth is seen as good, yet it makes many in the rich world miserable

George Monbiot
Tuesday August 27, 2002
The Guardian

There is scarcely a discussion of climate change on the radio or television that does not
involve a "climate sceptic" - someone who believes there is no problem. This would be
unexceptionable if the media always promoted dissent: if, for example, someone was brought
in to attack capitalism every time the economy was discussed. But the coverage the
anti-environmentalists receive suggests that the dissent that reinforces an underlying
orthodoxy is welcome while that which challenges it is not. Whatever the explanation may
be, the airtime their views receive is out of all proportion to the scientific support
they muster.

But let us, for a moment, assume that they are right. Let us imagine that climate change
does not exist, that pollution does no damage to ecosystems or human health, that
fisheries are not collapsing, freshwater reserves are not drying up, topsoil is not
eroding, and forests and coral reefs are not disappearing. Let us pretend there is no
conflict between two of the avowed goals of the current earth summit: relieving poverty in
the poor nations while enhancing economic growth in the rich ones. Let us pretend that
there is no competition for resources between rich and poor. Let us accept, in other
words, the myths of neoliberalism.

This is the position taken by the farmer and philosopher Simon Fairlie in his new
pamphlet, The Prospect of Cornutopia. He envisages the future that most of the rich
world's governments, economists and media foresee. In this vision, economic growth
proceeds at some 3% a year, without threatening the earth's capacity to support its
population. By 2100, if this rate is sustained, we will be 18 times richer than we are
today.

Fairlie asks the question that so many economists have ducked. When we possess this
fabulous wealth, how will we spend it? "A fraction of this amount," he notes, "will
provide all of us with the one car per two people which appears to be the saturation rate
... What next? Will everyone be jetting around the world on a weekly basis from airports
in every town? Will each home have 10 rooms and a swimming pool and, if so, where are we
going to build them?" Will we then inhabit the terrestrial heaven that the advocates of
endless growth have promised us?

I hardly dare to mention this for fear of being accused of romanticising poverty or
somehow conspiring to keep people in the picturesque state to which I would never submit
myself. But it is impossible not to notice that, in some of the poorest parts of the
world, most people, most of the time, appear to be happier than we are. In southern
Ethiopia, for example, the poorest half of the poorest nation on earth, the streets and
fields crackle with laughter. In homes constructed from packing cases and palm leaves,
people engage more freely, smile more often, express more affection than we do behind our
double glazing, surrounded by remote controls.

This is not to suggest that poverty causes happiness. In southern Ethiopia people
desperately want better healthcare, better education, better housing and sanitation, not
to mention smart clothes, motorbikes, refrigerators and radios. But while poverty does not
cause happiness, there appears to be some evidence that wealth causes misery. Since 1950,
25-year-olds in Britain have become 10 times more likely to be affected by depression. And
it is surely fair to say that most of us suffer from subclinical neuroses, anxiety or a
profound discomfort with ourselves.

Perhaps one of the reasons why people in Ethiopia appear to be happier than we are is that
they have less to lose by letting other people into their lives. The more wealth we
possess, the more isolated we become. We must defend it, and ourselves, against the
intrusions of other people.

An increase in wealth is always either preceded or followed by an increase in property
rights. Over the past 20 years, for example, wealthy people have laid claim to human
genes, public archives, town squares and village greens, playing fields, beaches, even
clouds and landing spaces on the moon. Having enhanced their wealth, they retreat to gated
communities, hire guards and install CCTV and movement sensors.

The rich lock themselves in and lock everyone else out. So many fences rise to exclude us
that after a while we are no longer shut out but shut in. And if we try to cross those
barriers we pay dearly, for the increasing freedom of capital has been accompanied by
unprecedented rates of imprisonment. For both the secluded and the excluded, the fruits of
economic growth become a substitute for human interaction: we prefer watching TV than
talking to our neighbours.

Plenty of evidence suggests that as we become richer, we become less content with
ourselves. It is incorrect to say that necessity is the mother of invention. In the rich
world, invention is the mother of necessity. When people already possess all the goods and
services they need, growth can be stimulated only by discovering new needs. Advertising
creates gaps in our lives in order to fill them. We buy the products, but the gaps remain.

Already, in the rich nations, the beneficiaries of development spend much of their money
on escaping from it: it costs a fortune to live in a place that does not assault your eyes
and ears with ugliness. To absorb our increasing wealth we must keep building. Our new
cars need new roads, our new goods and services must come from new shops and warehouses
and offices. One day there may be nowhere left in which we can shut the noise out of our
heads.

Wealth also appears to reduce our capacity to act. Our reliance upon technology supplants
our reliance upon ourselves and other people. As George Orwell suggested, "the logical end
of mechanical progress is to reduce the human being to something resembling a brain in a
bottle".

In other words, as Simon Fairlie argues, the rich world is approaching the point at which
"satiation turns into deprivation". Even if we were to forget the damage our growing
economies inflict upon the environment, even if we were to ignore the conflict between our
greed and the fulfilment of other people's needs, we should be able to see that economic
growth in nations that are rich enough already is a disaster.

Environmentalists have been fudging this issue for far too long. We have been demanding an
accommodation between the irreconcilable objectives of ever-increasing wealth and
environmental protection, an accommodation we call "sustainable development".

We know that the world is already rich enough to meet all real human needs, but that this
wealth is not trickling down from rich to poor. We know that while there is a desperate
need for redistribution, further growth in the rich world is likely to make everyone more
miserable. We know that wealth has been romanticised. Yet we are afraid to ask for what we
really want. Unless we are brave enough to confront the notion that growth is good, the
world will shop until it drops.

The Prospect of Cornutopia can be obtained by emailing chapter7@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

George Monbiot's website can be viewed at www.monbiot.com