Session 12
Session 12. Is Current Capitalism Addicted to Economic Growth that Destroys the Natural Environment? (1) Ideas as to Why There Is a Growth Addiction. (2) Why So Many Ecosystems And Environmental Resources' Being Common Property Means That Growth-Addicted Capitalism Can Easily Destroy Them. (3) Various Ways in which the Market Mentality Throws Out of Whack the Negative Feedback Loops Needed by the Environment.
Read first: Myron Gordon and Jeffrey S. Rosenthal, "Capitalism’s Growth Imperative," Cambridge Journal of Economics 27 (2003): 25-48. [ClassesV2]
Then read: Garret Hardin, "The Tragedy of the Commons," Science 13 December 1968: 1243-1248.
Then: John S. Dryzek, "Ecological Rationality in Practice," Rational Ecology: Environment and Political Economy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), pp. 40-54.
Finally: John S. Dryzek, "Markets," Rational Ecology, pp. 67-87. [ClassesV2]
So you'd like to know more...
Jerry Cohen, appearance on Opinions, directed by Stephen Lennhoff (1986)
This videotaped lecture examines three arguments for capitalism, and critiques each. In the second critique, he gives a
pithy explanation of how capitalism is addicted to growth.
Douglas E. Booth, "Conspicuous Consumption, Novelty, and Creative Destruction," "The Macroeconomics of Being Hooked on Growth," Hooked on Growth: Economic Addictions and the Environment (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004): 11-36, 37-53
E. J. Mishan, "Growthmania," "The No-Choice Myth," The Costs of Economic Growth, revised edition (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1993): 3-9, 10-15 [ClassesV2]
First and second cartoons by Ken Avidor illustrating the tragedy of the commons