A new dig at liberalism

Urban environments and indeed their shopping possibilities cannot exist without the destruction of natural ecologies. Everything made for the development of the urban environment has been made possible by destroying a non-urban environment. Every inch of granit paving, every bottle of ground water, every grain of imported rice, every petro-packaged good, every garment for sale that appears in a capitalist paradice of desire – the city – has originated from some form of abuse.

The liberal ideology that has so successfully and civilly implemented this system, and which encases the dominant psychology of the city, probably did originate from a "good" place (in terms of social inclusion), in other words the distribution of wealth to a greater majority. But liberalism's failing, outside of the social construction of the "wage-slave" (David Graeber, among others), has been its exclusion of ecologic functioning for the inclusion (or obsession) of human aspiration. For the past 200 years of liberal idealism we are now beginning to pay the price. And what is ultimately the price of a society based on ever-expanding desires? I believe it will be in the form of the re-distribution of poverty; designed, if we're smart, violent and horrible if we continue to be not.

Steady-State Economy

Ecological economists have offered empirical evidence that growth is already uneconomic in high consumption countries (see ISEW, GPI, Ecological Footprint, Happy Planet Index). Since neoclassical economists are unable to demonstrate that growth, either in throughput or GDP, is currently making us better off rather than worse off, it is blind arrogance on their part to continue preaching aggregate growth as the solution to our problems. Yes, most of our problems (poverty, unemployment, environmental degradation) would be easier to solve if we were richer-that is not the issue. The issue is: Does growth in GDP any longer really make us richer? Or is it now making us poorer? Herman Daly, A Steady-State Economy, 2008

The re-distribution of poverty that will happen over the next century will either occur as a deliberate and considered mass movement predicated on a collective understanding of what the landbase will actually support, or if we do nothing the re-distrution of poverty will be violent and horrible. Either way, the fat years are most probably over.