The modern world is constantly subjected to crackpot movements that eventually fail, but not before causing serious damage. Karl Marx was a crackpot. So was the John Birch Society in its mission to fight communism “behind every tree.” The latest is Modern Monetary Theory and unlimited dollar creation for government spending, which caused today’s runaway inflation.
In the 1970s, the Club of Rome insisted that for the world to be ecologically sound, we needed a “no-growth economy.” This was as dumb as the debunked Malthus theory that population growth would outstrip food. The disgraced Club of Rome thankfully went dormant. But it’s baaaack.
The new craze is “de-growth.” Proponents demand we “put well-being ahead of profit.” Normally, I’d say “Pfffft, ignore them,” but none other than the Davos dudes of the World Economic Forum are featuring arguments for de-growth. Weird because mostly growing global companies pay the WEF’s bills—tributes to the woke dons. The WEF’s website is filled with scholar-infested nonsense including a video asking, “What would a post-economic-growth world look like?”
It wouldn’t be pretty. Like Manta rays that must keep swimming or die (sharks too), societies that don’t grow eventually devolve into oppression, chaos, anarchy and then ruin. The Roman Empire. The Soviet Union. Venezuela. De-growth is living with less. Capitalism’s productivity is doing more with less. Big difference.
What would this mean for the U.S.? No growth means no investment for innovation. This leads to stagnation—freezing everything in place. Then comes command and control. Experts to allocate slices of a finite pie. Unions (see how they treat independent gig workers as meat to organize). True collectivism. Eventually “Lord of the Flies” chaos. The Fyre festival. Everyone for himself.
Growth is oxygen.
