Sustainable Development Commission: Economy is Broken

According the the U.K. Sustainable Development Commission the Economic System is Broken with Committment to Growth being Defect Number One

The Sunday Herald, a leading Scottish newspaper, recently published an article about a report written by the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC), a group of 19 experts charged with advising the Scottish and UK governments environmental issues. The title of the report is Prosperity Without Growth. Here are some excerpts from the Sunday Herald article:

THE ECONOMIC system is broken, and attempts by governments to fix it by kick-starting growth and consumerism are "delusional" and "pathological", the Westminster and Holyrood governments will be warned by their own advisers this week.

The pursuit of economic growth, founded on the increasing consumption of material goods, has failed to bring social justice, prosperity or happiness, the report says.

"The narrow pursuit of growth represents a horrible distortion of the common good and of underlying human values," the report concludes. "The market was not undone by rogue individuals or the turning of a blind eye by incompetent regulators. It was undone by growth itself."

The report presents a fundamental challenge to the economic policies being pursued in London and Edinburgh, raising questions about some of the basic tenets of modern capitalism. We are living in an "age of irresponsibility", it says.

"Questioning growth is deemed to be the act of lunatics, idealists and revolutionaries, but question it we must," says Tim Jackson, a professor at Surrey University and the SDC's leading economics expert.

"The myth of growth has failed us. It has failed, spectacularly, in its own terms, to provide economic stability and secure people's livelihoods."

A society founded on the "relentless pursuit of novelty" undermines social well-being. "The economy itself is dependent on consumption growth for its very survival," the report says. Market economics have to be questioned and consumerism has to be reversed, the report urges.

I find it quite amazing that language like this could have come from any government appointed commission. In the U.S. I cannot imagine similar language coming out of a government funded study. Maybe our thought control is more advanced than that of the U.K.

If you read the whole article you will see that the reaction of the Scottish and U.K. governments to this report was quite negative. This negativity is about as surprising as the blue tint of the sky or the Catholicism of the Pope. I find it interesting, however, that the only counter weight given to the spokespeople of the SDC is comments by a couple of government ministers. The Sunday Herald does not quote some other group of 'experts' who have a more optimistic view about the potential of 'clean technology' to preserve economic growth into the indefinite future. Without endorsing the views of the SDC report, the Sunday Herald reporter seems open to the idea that these views might actually be correct.

April 2, 2009