On Growth & Capitalism

Excerpt from Jonathan Franzen's Freedom (2010):

"Mainstream economic theory, both Marxist and free-market, Walter said, took for granted that economic growth was always a positive thing. A GDP growth rate of one or two percent was considered modest, and a population growth rate of one percent was considered desirable, and yet, he said, if you compounded these rates over a hundred years, the numbers were terrible: a world population of eighteen billion and world energy consumption ten times greater than today's. And if you went another hundred years, well, the numbers were simply impossible. So the Club of Rome was seeking more rational and humane ways of putting the brakes on growth than simply destroying the planet and letting everybody starve to death or kill each other.

[The Club of Rome is] a group of people who are challenging our preoccupation with growth. I mean, everybody is so obsessed with growth, but when you think about it, for a mature organism, a growth is basically a cancer, right? If you have a growth in your moth, or a growth in your colon, it's bad news, right? So there's this small group of intellectuals and philanthropists who are trying to step outside our tunnel vision and influence government policy at the highest levels, both in Europe and the Western Hemisphere."

Walter, not seeing the little neck-slicing gesture that Patty was making, pressed on. "The whole reason we need something like the Club of Rome," he said, "is that a rational conversation about growth is going to have to begin outside of the ordinary political process. Obviously you know this yourself, Joyce. If you're trying to get elected, you can't even talk about slowing the growth rate, let alone reversing it. It's total political poison. But somebody has to talk about it, and try to influence policy, otherwise we're going to kill the planet. We're going to choke on our own multiplication."

....

Capitalism can't handle talking about limits, because the whole point of capitalism is the restless growth of capital. If you want to be heard in the capitalist media, and communicate in a capitalist culture, overpopulation can't make any sense. It's literally nonsense.

"The reason the system can't be overthrown in this country," Walter said, "is all about freedom. The reason the free market in Europe is tempered by socialism is that they're not so hung up on personal liberties there. They also have lower population growth rates, despite comparable income levels. The Europeans are all-around more rational, basically. And the conversation about rights in this country isn't rational. It's taking place on the level of emotion, and class resentments, which is why the right is so good at exploiting it."

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America, you do excess like no other. Perhaps you are rivaled only by Saudi princes in your wastefulness.