by From Ken Zimmerman (originally a comment) Uneconomic growth is growth that produces negative externalities which reduce the overall quality of life. This is also known as unsustainable growth, where the negative social and environmental consequences outweigh the short-term value of an extra unit of growth, making it uneconomic. But in spite of this quandary growth remains the primary goal. It holds that place because growth is equated with progress. The idea of progress seems one of the theoretical presuppositions of modernity. One can even regard it, not without reason, as the real ‘religion of Western civilization.’ Historically, this idea was formulated earlier than generally thought, around 1680, during the quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, in which Terrasson, Charles
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from Ken Zimmerman (originally a comment)
Uneconomic growth is growth that produces negative externalities which reduce the overall quality of life. This is also known as unsustainable growth, where the negative social and environmental consequences outweigh the short-term value of an extra unit of growth, making it uneconomic.
But in spite of this quandary growth remains the primary goal. It holds that place because growth is equated with progress. The idea of progress seems one of the theoretical presuppositions of modernity. One can even regard it, not without reason, as the real ‘religion of Western civilization.’ Historically, this idea was formulated earlier than generally thought, around 1680, during the quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, in which Terrasson, Charles Perrault, the Abbé of Saint-Pierre, and Fontenelle participated. It was then developed on the initiative of a second generation, including principally Turgot, Condorcet, and Louis Sebastien Mercier. It is not a populist notion. But very much the work of intellectual and commercial elites.
In basing our lives on the idea of progress, we must not pursue the analogy of humanity with an individual man and anticipate a period of old age. For unlike the individual, humanity “being composed of all ages,” is always gaining instead of losing. The age of maturity will last indefinitely, because it is a progressive, not a stationary, maturity. Later generations will always be superior to the earlier, for progress is “a natural and necessary effect of the constitution of the human mind.” (Fontenelle, Digression.)
Progress can be defined as a cumulative process in which the most recent stage is always considered preferable and better, i.e., qualitatively superior, to what preceded it. This definition contains a descriptive element (change takes place in a given direction) and an axiological element (this progression is explained as an improvement). Thus it refers to change that is oriented (toward the best), necessary (one does not stop progress), and irreversible (no overall return to the past is possible). Improvement being inescapable, it follows that tomorrow will be always better than today. Much like the precept of Calvinism, later taken on by other Protestant denominations that wealth is a physical manifestation of one’s salvation economic growth is considered a physical manifestation of progress.