[Ngo-sanrm] More on "growth"

Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resources Management Working Group ngo-sanrm at ngocentre.org.vn
Sun Nov 3 17:13:13 GMT 2013


This is an outstanding critique, clear, well-written, and on-target.
However, it does not address what I think to be the crucial
political/economic question: Are his policy solutions achievable in a
capitalist economy?  My own answer: no.  That said, would socialism be the
alternative?  Well, I assume Vietnam still considers itself
"socialist"....what does that teach us?  And China...the most hideous
example of "socialism" combined with growth ideology.  There are no
positive role models on a national level anywhere in the world.  My point
is that most of those who speak and write as Speth do fail to deal with the
politics involved.  And unless they do, their proposals are essentially
well-intentioned wishful thinking.


On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 10:32 AM, Chuck Searcy <chuckusvn at gmail.com> wrote:

> This is slightly at the margins of the interests and mission of the
> Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resources Management Working Group, but
> since I circulated Dr. Vandana Shiva's article earlier and a number of
> people sent me positive comments, I'm passing along this essay by James
> Gustave Speth entitled *"*5 Reasons Why Prioritizing Growth Is Bad Policy
> ."
>
> Speth quotes from a book by historian J. R. McNeill entitled *Something
> New Under the Sun* in which McNeill writes that the "growth fetish"
> solidified its hold on imaginations and institutions in the twentieth
> century:
>
> "Communism aspired to become the universal creed of the twentieth century,
> but a more flexible and seductive religion succeeded where communism
> failed: the quest for economic growth. Capitalists, nationalists -- indeed
> almost everyone, communists included -- worshiped at this same altar
> because economic growth disguised a multitude of sins. ... Social, moral,
> and ecological ills were sustained in the interest of economic growth;
> indeed, adherents to the faith proposed that only more growth could resolve
> such ills. Economic growth became the indispensable ideology of the state
> nearly everywhere."
>
> In his essay, Speth suggests some alternatives.
>
> CHUCK
>
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> *============================ CHUCK SEARCY71 Tran Quoc Toan, Hanoi,
> VietnamMobile:      +84 (0) 903 420 769
> <%2B84%20%280%29%20903%20420%20769>Email:         chuckusvn at gmail.com
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>
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