Post-growth: a path towards sustainable prosperity ?
12 min reading
1 year ago
Post-growth is this autumn’s buzzword. What does this daunting word mean? Can it be seriously considered without cascading into a historical fall back? What opportunities does the post-growth economy offer? And what implementation frameworks can we imagine? InTent addressed these questions during Building Bridges earlier this October.
What does "post-growth" mean?
Simply put, a post-growth system is one where the fundamentals of society don’t depend on economic growth to function (we’re talking health system, pension, education, food system…). It questions economic growth as a fundamental of well-being, in developed economies.
Post-growth is often confronted to green-growth, which differs as it doesn’t challenge economic growth itself but how economic growth is generated. In a green-growth system, growth doesn’t happen at the detriment of nature and people.
To dig deeper in definitions, we recommend to listen to the words of young economist Thimothée Parrique in the podcast "The Great SImplification #32", by Nate Hagens
Picture this. We are in a car, speeding at full speed towards a wall. As we get closer to the wall, it gets more daunting. Is our car strong enough to take the hit? Probably not. As we realise this, we initiate a rushed curve. Is our curve radical enough to avoid the wall? Is it too steep, going to make us lose the control of the wheel? Are we going to hit another car that isn’t taking the same curve as us?
These questions are difficult. But the tough one is: why are we here, so close to the wall, with six planetary boundaries crossed and nowhere near reaching the SDG's? We’re driving the wheel of an incredibly powerful system, that allowed to generate enormous amounts of wealth and wellbeing. But we are way past the point of safe driving: it’s time to initiate a bold curve.
Of course, in our current globalised profit-driven economy, a post-growth economy is one that is difficult to imagine, let alone collectively imagine. Does that mean we shouldn’t try? Of course not. While we try to reorganise value production around societal and planetary well-being rather than around consumption and accumulation, it’s precisely there - in the difficulties and tension points - that we have most work to do.
Many great thinkers and economists have paved the way of post-growth approaches towards prosperity. Among many, we suggest to read:
Earth for All - A survival guide for humanity An antidote to despair and a road map to a better future proposed by The Club of Rome. Key turn-arounds are exposed to achieve prosperity for all within planetary limits in a single generation.
The End of Growth For Richard Heinberg, the expansionary trajectory of industrial civilisation is colliding with non-negotiable natural limits. He shows why growth is being blocked by three factors (resource depletion, environmental impacts and crushing levels of debt) and how these converging limits will force us to re-evaluate cherished economic theories and to reinvent money and commerce.
Small Is Beautiful: Economics as If People Mattered Old but gold. A collection of essays published in 1973 by economist E. F. Schumacher advancing small, appropriate technologies, policies, and polities as a superior alternative to the mainstream ethos of "bigger is better".
We invite you to dive into one of the above readings. Ideas are referred to as “alternatives" until they are shared and implemented enough to become the norm.
