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Economic Growth & Dematerialization What is Economic Growth? Who benefits from it? Where did it come from? How can it be stopped or changed? Can we go.

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Presentation on theme: "Economic Growth & Dematerialization What is Economic Growth? Who benefits from it? Where did it come from? How can it be stopped or changed? Can we go."— Presentation transcript:

1 Economic Growth & Dematerialization What is Economic Growth? Who benefits from it? Where did it come from? How can it be stopped or changed? Can we go from Growth to Development?Growth to Development

2 Industrialism: Accumulation Production-for-productions-sake Invisibility of key factors Centralization of production, massive upfront investment Focus on labour productivity : resources substitute for human energy Cog-labour: humans as component parts Regulation: controls as limits Scarcity-based: role of waste since WWII Globalization: free trade & intellectual property

3 Industrialism & Capitalism technical financial matter money workplace labour market (cogs) (commodities)

4 Questions can financial and material accumulation be severed? does the profit-motive need to be the main economic driver? does use-value always need to be a spin-off, side-effect, by- product, or trickle-down of monetary accumulation? can markets be driven by social & environmental values?

5 Markets and Material Connection between needs, wealth & markets. the Invisible Hand: worked... 1.for an economy focused on meeting primary needs simplicity. 2.in a situation of relative scarcity 3.in the absence of sophisticated information technology

6 Class Society...based in relative scarcity: 1. control of scarce resources &... 2. monopoly of high culture...by a minority.

7 The Threat of Abundance Productivity boom of the Roaring Twenties –output outdistances worker wages Crisis of effective demand & structural overproduction: Great Depression as a reaction to potential abundance. White-collar work, universal education: the threat to cultural monopoly. –increasingly social character of production; rise of industrial unionism

8 Propping Up Effective Demand after WW II The Waste Economy: suburbanization, permanent war economy. The artificial reproduction of scarcity. The Effluent Society. The Paper Economy: planned inflation and the establishment of the debt-based economy. The economic treadmill.

9 The Postwar Waste Economy Permanent War Economy The Suburb Economy: Oil / Autos / Subdivisions

10 The greatest misallocation of resources in human history. …James Howard Kunstler

11 The Next Phase (post-1980) : Casino Capitalism 70s: Costs of waste come due Rise of the Info economy: –new source of effective demand: producer services –new sources of empty wealth creation: in effect redistributing real wealth from poor to rich. Financialization of the Economy: diversion of information revolution into new forms of waste.

12 Living in De-Material World Redesign not controls Direct focus on human (& environmental) need The Service Economy: Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) encouraging provision of services not stuff. Servicizing (voluntary EPR). The Lake Economy: economic biomimicry: sectoral orientation: regenerative food, energy, manufacturing, c ommunications. New forms of economic security Conscious support of the Commons Disarming the autonomous power of money Building a community/ecosystem base: localization.


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