Malignant growth

Ernest Schumacher

Joseph Pearce is the author of the book Small is still beautiful, whose title clearly indicates the influence of Ernest Schumacher's best-known work, Small is beautiful. In this book, Schumacher proposes the idea that large companies and organizations are not the most efficient way to achieve human happiness, which in fact should be the goal of every economic activity, rather than increase the profits.

Pearce addresses the question of the Gross National Product (GNP), usually used to measure growth. GNP is often taken as a measure of success: the higher its growth, the better the economy is supposed to be. In Pearce's opinion, this way of measuring economic success is not appropriate for the needs of society, because it presents the following problems:

Permanent economic growth is unsustainable

2009 World Economic Forum Meeting

Politicians and economists often tell us that job creation requires a GNP growth above 2 or 3%. According to them, the optimum situation and the end of the crisis will be reached when a permanent growth is achieved above these figures, the higher the better. Not many seem to be considering whether such a situation is possible in the long run.

Let us take the simplest case: assume that it were possible to achieve a cumulative annual growth of 3% GNP, indefinitely continued. Would we have achieved utopia, would we be living in the best of worlds?

Maybe, but not for long.