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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.