“You will either step forward into growth, or you will step back into safety”
Abraham Maslow
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Theodore Roosevelt December 3 1902 first annual message to Congress. “No country has ever occupied a higher plane of material well-being than ours. While this has favored the growth of so much that was good it is also favored somewhat the growth of what was evil. Our industrial and development must not be checked but side by side with it should go such progressive regulation as will diminish the evils and regulate the combinations of capital which are or may become injurious to the public.”
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“Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.”
Dorothy Parker
- – author’s note: this is a summary of a larger project where I debated with degrowth proponents
Google ‘surviving growth’ and you get 1,570,000,000 results in 0.45 seconds and almost all within the first 3 pages have to do with “you need growth to survive” or “having a growth mindset.” Today I am not talking about any of that, in fact, I will speak to the opposite – how do we successfully survive growth? And before you ignore this question, just take a minute and think about this current situation. Today is August 28, 2024 and tonight the technology darling Nvidia is reporting their earnings and the entire stock market is on the edge of their seats. But its not nervous about Nvidia** failing, but rather will earnings not be good enough, but better than expected, i.e., are they growing enough. Uhm. They will report a growth of over 100% year to year. Uhm. They will report a profit margin of over 74%. Uhm. And they will ‘disappoint’ if they do not overdeliver on all that. That’s nuts. Oh. It gets nuttier. Because I kept screwing around with this piece the Nvidia earnings reports was released – and Nvidia beat all expectations. On all metrics. Good, right? Well. “While Nvidia’s results are impressive — the company’s growth is slowing down. For example, the AI chip designer’s earnings growth grew at an average of 500% while the company’s revenues grew in a range of 206% to 265%, during the previous three quarters, according to Investor’s Business Daily.” This just encapsulates the nuttiness of growth and, well, surviving growth. Anyway. The point for today. Survive is a pretty critical word so let me parse it. The truth is that the key component of today’s version of growth tends to be efficiency. The problem is that efforts to increase resource efficiency, production efficiency, and people efficiency have rarely led to any reduction in resource use, in fact usually an increase. Both energy and material consumption is tightly linked to economic activity. Typically, the gains in efficiency tend to lead to the paradox situation that it actually increases consumption. This is known as Jevon’s paradox. The reality that we face today is that economic growth is responsible for increasing resource extraction – at a multiplicative level not just an additive level. So, when I speak of survive what I’m speaking of is how can we continue growing economically without growing unhealthy – to humans and earth – levels of allocation, i.e., the things which ensure thriving not just surviving. Circling back to the Nvidia example, It used to be that successful growing companies would show a thoughtful mix of present-day profits and future planning. That seems kind of old fashioned in today’s world. Now the emphasis is potential – all the time. Growth devours & corrupts. Okay. Maybe that was a bit harsh. How about we appear to be incentivized to grow forever which, if you squint hard enough, can see that is a perverse incentive. Why? Well. It will inevitably affect human (and institutions) values, and behaviors, because ‘growth’ tugs everything toward ‘advantage’ or competitive zero-sum mindsets.
“The world may be going to hell, but there’s a lot of cool stuff you can buy.”
Daniel Brandt, 1994
Which leads me to this is not about degrowth.
While I do believe the degrowth movement encourages important discussions, the name ‘degrowth’ and some of the objectives seem counterproductive. Growth is the engine of innovation and reinvestment. This doesn’t mean growth needs to be exorbitant nor does it have to be zero-sum exploitation of people and resources, just that growth, done correctly and done well, fosters progress. Nor does growth have to fit within existing measurements <GDP is a dull axe assessment of what is actually good for society and ‘better growth’>. The European Environment Agency has stated that “societies need to rethink what is meant by growth and progress” and that post-growth and degrowth alternatives offered “valuable insights” and I agree. That said. In today’s world we struggle to discuss growth well. What I mean by that is we appear to get caught up in some unhealthy debates over what is good and what is bad and how growth should be achieved. For example. Let’s think about growth as energy and the human body (thanks to David Amerland who tucked this thought in my head). The reality is that humans can improve their health, their performance and ultimately their longevity in a variety of different ways. One way would be to significantly reduce calories as well as put on significant muscle mass. This is typically embraced in a short-term objective-based process. Let’s call that the reduction and growth method. Alternatively, someone can choose to increase muscle in small percentages on a consistent basis while maintaining basic calorie count. Both would show proof of better health, better strength and longevity. However, the key difference would be that should the body be hit with a significant health crisis it would be the latter that would offer more resilience in order to defend itself as well as to pick up progress faster. I use that as an example because both paths are viable and both paths are defendable, but in today’s world in which short term results seems to be a priority people and businesses like to discuss growth and scalability the former way – efficiency and fast growth. Let’s say I am more interested in speaking about growth the latter way wherein the body maintains resilient health and optimizes its longevity while still increasing its performance steadily. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that in neither case there is degrowth (maybe just some de-resourcing) and to that point growth is the engine for all progress. You either need more people, more knowledge, more funding or more capital to feed the engine of progress. Period.
Which leads me to growth versus progress. We have stripped progress of substance (albeit the push for “Purpose” is an attempt to rebuild progress’s objective). That said. The reality is somewhere along the way we replaced progress with growth and from there we were off to the limitless abundance, consume more, and quantitative measurement races. Let’s just say growth is indifferent to humans in its pursuit of abundance and numbers and, yet, we humans have embraced it as the path to ‘better.’ It is a fundamentally flawed narrative especially when it gets attached to scale and Ray Kurzweil’s “Law of Accelerating Returns.” Basically, we embraced an incredibly unhealthy relationship with growth instead of progress. More people, more stuff, more money, more employees, more profit, more revenue, even personal growth (an industry in & of itself). The theme is if you are not growing (getting more), you are dying. I would suggest attitudes toward money or wealth DO lead to real action. More is never enough and there are no rules when it comes to maintaining or protecting one’s wealth. If you buy into that thought, or thoughts, then we need to become concerned when the institutions of money <people with money> rule the world. We should be concerned because when those people begin to talk about fairness or shared prosperity they do so with a catch. The catch is “as long as it does not infringe upon my pursuit of my money and my wealth.” Without context, that is a fine and dandy thought. But in a zero-sum mindset it suggests HOW I got my money and wealth was fair and equitable and the system of money rewards those who deserve it.
“We’ve made it really easy for good people to do the wrong things.”
Josh Tetrick
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Here’s the rub. Chasing the limitless is both dangerous and freeing, but in a zero-sum world it is just corrosive. The truth is chasing limitless piles of money degrades actual value – the only value is more and each additional dollar placed on the large stack diminishes in actual value to its owner <it is simply a prize, not prized>. Chasing anything with no limit can be a freeing feeling, but what I would suggest, in this case, is the no limit actually represents a soulless cage. I could go on and on about how zero-sum growth attitude begets zero-sum behavior which begets lousy extremes <because ‘winners’ increase probability of more winning not because of skill/better but because they have, well, more money>. I don’t begrudge people money, but, zero-sum doesn’t create a fair game for all players.
Which leads me to growth and wealth-clustering.
Left to its own devices, wealth clusters and decides how it wants to live. This is true in actual money and housing and cities and, well, everything. Clustering in and of itself is natural and if based on fairness isn’t bad. The problem is within today’s system, and institutions, the wealth is not only clustering but it continues to get amplified so it grows exponentially versus the rest of the system in which, at best, is additive. You either remove the exponential aspects or make it easier to shift from additive to at least multiplicative. Make the race more equitable or clusters will grow to such a point equity is impossible.
Clustering always existed in capitalism, but it seemed to become more of a business science, rather than simply power-driven, when Milton Friedman’s essay for the New York Times was published in 1970. The “greed is good” philosophy became a business acumen <with theories, practices and models> based on the economist’s idea that the sole task of executives was to enrich shareholders – provided they played by the rules. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out “the rules” became vague outlines as business people relentlessly pursued profit and growth. The rules become even vaguer if a business embraces growth and velocity. What I mean by Velocity is:
- value creation initiatives which increase velocity of value offered
- velocity initiatives which increase the velocity of the organization itself & indirectly enhances value.
Velocity is, and has been, a great concept. The challenge is in a world in which everything gets simplified to a point of meaninglessness this concept has been screwed. Velocity, in general, gets screwed because it often gets confused with growth. Anyway. I would suggest business, since the industrialization age, has always had an unhealthy relationship with growth – “if you are not growing, you are doing something wrong.” This attitude actually encourages a flatness to business growth (if not false growth) and does not encourage the true pursuit of potential & opportunity or even progress. Most importantly this attitude ignores the fact most growth actually needs to gestate, have some stillness, at some point before blossoming. Velocity is not speed nor is it growth. If a business confuses it with speed, it will simply jump onto a hamster wheel and eventually wear itself out (but feel like they are making progress all along the way to death). If a business confuses it with growth, they will mismanage it. In fact, if they manage it like growth (consistent, milestone driven, incentive laden), they will never achieve velocity (only growth) and most likely get frustrated and, well, wear itself out. The point is that if you, as a business, do not understand what velocity is; don’t aim for it. It’s a waste of time.
Regardless, through our obsession with growth we are burning out both resources and people while market dynamics distort the benefits transaction by transaction ultimately making surviving growth a challenging prospect because “we have lost the boundaries surrounding accumulation.” This is meaningful because earth has what is called “a carry load.” That is the capacity, resources/people/consumption, of Earth. In other words, this is a measure of human impact – how many people can the earth support and at what consumption level. This means that human impact needs to be assessed not just in population, but in patterns of consumption, resources necessary to fulfill that consumption and the impact of resources used. Oh. And the fact the business institutions do not encourage responsible consumption, or thoughtful accumulation, but instead encourage ‘constant growing accumulation’ – bigger and more. The problem with that is not only does the earth get consumed, but the accumulation is not evenly dispersed and the haves become farther and farther away from the have-nots so there is no center – and then it all collapses in on itself.
So, in our relentless pursuit of ‘more’ we ignore how it causes, and contributes, to some significant power shifts. Growth increases the trajectory of power and actually systematically creates an incredible dependence, of people and their money, upon growth. It creates what Toffler called “surplus order.” Surplus order is the excess order imposed not for the benefit of the society, but exclusively for the benefit of those who control the state – in this case, business. The business that imposes surplus order on its employees subverts not only the needs/meaning of individuals, but also warps the entire intent of business – to contribute to the benefit of people. Inevitably they lose their moral legitimacy in a larger business world.
Anyway. Circling back to velocity, growth accelerates, well, everything. And acceleration effects, well, everything. It shrinks time intervals in everything which creates an ongoing choice making architecture where the default is growth – no more or less. I make this point to make a point about those who choose to NOT jump on the growth train. The gap between growth acceleration only increases the heights of winners (and power) versus the heights of the, well, satisfied. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out this will inevitably create an asymmetry of power. There will be an imbalance of size and resources and we live in a world in which the ‘big’ businesses drive much of the construct of growth for everyone. I bring up power because technology spurs both long tail thinking/ideas and Schumpeter’s Creative Destruction. And while both suggest the small can ‘destroy’ the big we should all be worrying that while technology enables both theories it , simultaneously, threatens the existence of both theories. Yeah. As our technologies are going through exponential development and exponential increases in power, their capacity to affect the world and their capacity to cause widespread damage has lead to a time when win-lose becomes lose-lose, as Daniel Schmachtenberger puts it.
This is because the tools we have today allow us to extract limited resources much faster than they can regenerate.
Which leads me to what can hold growth accountable.
Accountability can be found in, well, humans or maybe call it the collection of organizations and associations that can be loosely called “community.” What do I mean by the word community? I mean those formal or informal associations that bind people together in some way. It can be the neighborhood you live in, with the relationships and way of life that give the place an identity of its own. It can be a trade union, in which workers band together. Or it can be a church, where the institution not only serves a religious purpose, but also gives a sense of identity and stability to its members.
These institutions of community fulfill three functions that are particularly important in making growth accountable.
First, communities enable people to act together for some common objective or simply to protect each other from the pressures and uncertainties of growth. In this way, they reduce anxiety and the feeling of being overwhelmed by growth. One of the ways in which communities typically do this is by including a system of rules or codes of behavior. Often these expected behaviors are not even put in writing. One just behaves in certain ways to be accepted, and these invisible rules we follow strengthen our communities and enable them to function effectively. The rules and codes provide a strong framework or skeleton that enables individuals to gain strength from the structure itself.
Second, the community serves to reinforce the general ethics of the society. Thus, in combination with strong families and a strong sense of religious commitment, communities are another element in a social system of ethics that provides a stable foundation helping people to withstand pressures from growth.
Third, a key function of the community is that it acts as an intermediary or bridge between the individual and the larger institutions of a society, such as government or large businesses driving growth. The community almost becomes a representative body as well as an organization that can provide services at scale to the individuals within the community.
Which leads me to downward leveling.
“When corporations and governments lower costs by reducing environmental protection, wages, salaries, healthcare and education, the result can be malignant – a downward leveling of environmental, labor, and social conditions. Downward leveling is like a cancer that is destroying its host organism – the earth and its people.’
Jeremy Brecher
Globalization, in its insatiable pursuit of growth, scours the earth looking for places that offer them the best incentives to set up business – cheap labor, tax breaks, lax environmental standards and unlimited access to resources. Everywhere around the globe, countries/cities/communities, thinking in a zero-sum way, compete for the business dollars by relaxing regulatory standards, promising benefits, subsidize infrastructure, and environmental waivers. This creates a race to the bottom, a downward leveling, with business (seeking profits) arcing toward those communities who will do whatever is necessary to reap the benefits of the business’s pursuit of growth. An additional aspect of downward leveling is that it downward levels wages, environment and the tax base of communities. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out there are no stop signs on this growth race – it is a free fall with no logical stopping point except in some miserable human existence at some low level. But it can get a bit worse because there are a number of people levels downward levels creates. As growth becomes the principle around which societies are organized, people without money get left behind and don’t really have many pathways to get ahead. This is simultaneously a threat to human wellbeing as well as earth wellbeing (a doom loop). Social trends, moral compass, growing inequity, changing work patterns, worker and job migration, the loss of natural resources and the breakdown of communities are consequences. In addition the expanding growth grows scarcity of oil, energy and water leading to food shortages, competition for resources and migration (not tied to ‘the market’ but rather sustenance). Within the current system the effects will most likely compound since none of this is happening in a vacuum as businesses, increasingly interacting with systemic conditions which amplify the dangers, will aggravate the conditions and multiply them in their pursuit of ‘exponential growth.’ And maybe that is my point. Exponential growth objectives, dependent upon multiplicative extraction of resources, will inevitably aggravate the system as well as humans. Look. I am not claiming that globalization is causing all our issues, I am claiming relentless pursuit of growth is. And, in fact, I would argue that institutional forces combined with technology, will actually consolidate corporation forces and destruction increases. The race to the bottom is fueled by a race to the top. Institutional pressures drive these businesses to seek profit and expansion by any means possible because it is simultaneously fighting for its own survival and winning the race to the top. The pace of the race to the bottom/top is accelerating and I am not sure we know where the bottom/top is. I would be remiss if I didn’t say that society is tracking along side by side. Returning to an earlier thought, as the market becomes the principle around which societies are organized the deeper into the abyss business goes the deeper into the abyss society goes – excepting the few attached to the ‘race to the top’ winners.
“Genius is finding the invisible link between things.”
Vladimir Nabokov
Sustaining globalization, or even the business world in general, in its existing form is requiring a number of miraculously absurd steps. To maintain the narrative almost demands we ignore everything has to do with everything else. That’s absurd. Business and the world exists within is a succession of events that link with each other – whether we want them to or not.
Which leads me to the future of a healthy growth.
Growth ignores the present because the solution always resides in the future. A quantitative orientation justifies this flawed thinking as we extract the results we want by increasingly dubious measurement. In addition, just to make that thought a little bit worse let me use some words from EF Schumacher. “The most striking thing about modern industry is that it requires so much and accomplishes so little. Modern industry seems to be inefficient to a degree that surpasses one’s ordinary powers of imagination. It’s an efficiency therefore remains unnoticed.” I share that thought in combination with the general thought about growth to suggest it’s madness for everybody to be pursuing rapid increasing growth as an objective when the global resources are finite. It becomes a race in which prosperity and wealth increases until there is nothing left for the race itself. In addition, growing constantly demands some human costs. In the end, the winners have to pay the price of winning in one way or another. The bigger the divide, the bigger the price that has to be paid. The winners end up having to take care of the losers, or two totally different cultures are formed, as is happening in bigger cities today. Polarization then leads to radicalization. Psychologically, competitive games create shadow games of losers competing at losing. That was horrible to write. We should embrace progress as the objective, not growth, therefore we increase the likelihood society is focused on improving the lives of people while responsibly using natural resources to sustain ongoing progress needs.
In the end, it is clear that we need systemic change to avoid ecological collapse and facilitate well needed progress. And when I say systemic change, I mean that we probably need to think about redesigning society – the rules, the laws, the economy, the social structure – to facilitate an idea of healthy growth. It is fairly easy to observe the current society and see that while growth has certainly enhanced prosperity and aspects of progress, it has done so at a high cost to the essential social fabric of humanity. I personally don’t believe that we need to advocate for radical thinking with regard to growth. Humans always seek to create to produce and to innovate and to grow. All of those things are pieces and parts of progress. So maybe the question is ‘what would society look like with a new growth mindset?’ and build to that society so growth is a means to an end and not the end itself. Anyway, I’m probably not saying anything new here. What I do know is I would love to see ideas being more openly debated in public so that more people realize there are alternatives to the existing system – alternatives that may actually work better for each person and all of us. New ideas that focus on social and economic policies that promote progress and well-being, without relying on excessive economic growth. All I know is what the existing system has done, as a mechanism for growth at all costs, is to burn the future. And the future is the least renewable resource. Ponder.
Great companion reads:
– Social Limits of Growth by Fred Hirsch
– Limits To Growth by Club of Rome (Dennis Meadows, Donella Meadows, Jørgen Randers, William W. Behrens III)
** Nvidia: in the good old days a company who made shit (manufacture), and sold a lot of shit, and made a lot of money (73% margin) is a company anyone would have dreamed of and applauded
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Labor, as in ‘work’, is one of those topics of which it is almost getting absurd to think about. Between work-from-home, quiet quitting, trophy generation, Purpose, and, well, at least a dozen other things I could argue we are losing sight of what work is all about – diligent labor.
include creating new rules. I state that because many rules are constraints and fluidity often demands new rules. Anyway. Successful labor depends in large part on diligence and the ability to adapt — to proactively shape changing events to our advantage as well as to react quickly to constantly changing conditions. This can sound exhausting, but the cadence of labor in fluidity fluctuates from periods of intense activity to periods of information gathering and reflection. This actually means diligent labor is found in the competitive rhythm, i.e., conflict, between entropy (or desire to replicate and standardize) and emergent fluid organizing intent to optimize events to suit the purpose of the business (and the individuals). In addition, this is fluidity between self-interest (impact) and collective interest (impact) and generated value. This fluidity feeds diligent labor at an individual level. That is, well, work.
The last point above is very important. Flow can be asymmetrical and it can also contain a variety of speeds. I often refer to 
enlightening infinite games, i.e., not all infinite games are created equal. The sooner you can recognize what is finite and what is infinite in labor, the sooner you can be more diligent in how you apply your labor and the sooner both fluidity and flow can be optimized (or functionally applied). And, yes, diligent labor is not just about ‘work applied’, but also functionally attaining some progress or meaning. Not that I need to remind you, but it was Victor Frankl who said “The ultimate meaning in life is ‘to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment’.” Regardless. Much of the discussion about work and labor these days, if you are not careful, is an infinite suckhole of mental masturbation. We must be, well, diligent in our discussions of what is meaningful labor. This is important. Its important because freeing business potential, freedom to be the best it can be, is a bounty which could only be harvested by diligent labor. I end with that thought because I would bet you will not hear one ‘future of work pundit’ say anything like that. And maybe that is why you should think about what I just wrote.
Google ‘poverty of concepts’ and you will get ‘about 292,000,000 results (0.21 seconds).’ The problem is almost all 292mm results are discussing, well, poverty. My poverty, today, has to do with thinking and concepts; and ethics I imagine. I added ethics because they are important when it comes to concepts because they offer the guardrails as a concept races down time’s highway. It was Bernard Williams who said ‘our ethical life is too untidy to be captured by any systematic moral theory.’ Well. How about that? Too untidy. That’s an important thought as I share the difference between a poverty of ideas and poverty of concepts. Let’s just say, in my opinion, we have an abundance of ideas and a scarcity of concepts in today’s world; not just on ethics but in business, politics, and, well, everything. Ideas are a dime a dozen. So let me spend a minute discussing the difference between ideas and concepts. Ideas have characteristics of a moment of stillness; of nonmovement. An idea is usually bounded by time and space. On the other hand, a concept is resilient in motion. What I mean by that is that while a concept may have fixed principles, they are fluid not only during their development but within time and space. The concept will always have something that will hold them fast – an idea or some facts at the beginning – but none of those things that hold them fast will impede its successful motion and evolution throughout time and space. Maybe what I’m suggesting is that concepts are ideas that successfully mature. All I really know is that movement is the only constant and ideas always run the risk of not being able to keep up; while concepts thrive in keeping up.
Which leads me to thick and thin concepts.
Let me begin by suggesting everyone pick up a copy of Toffler’s book The Third Wave and flip to page 435. There begins a section called “Minority Power” and it outlines the future as seen from 1980. Its, well, futuristic gold. Next. I actually wrote 
We ‘see’ something and then extrapolate it out in our minds to being a larger systemic issue. And maybe that is Trump’s most egregious asshole superpower. He distorts “the one” into “the many.” He implies an isolated situation is indicative of the greater whole. And he does it with such hyperbole <and lies> even if most people do not believe it, it elevates whatever perception you may already have a little higher <therefore, he drags more people closer to believing we are in a shithole, i.e., not great>. I imagine the fear Trump should have is that if he drives his dystopian view of who and what America is so far down into some wretched dark hole that people will only see darkness and enough people will sit up, look around or out the window and say “shit, it isn’t that bad or dark.” Oops. Not a shithole.
against all varieties of fear. The Trump vision encourages us all to believe this, therefore, it encourages us to dwell on your individual fear that you live in a shithole. It suggests your worry is not only an immediate worry, but a long-term worry, i.e., even if in your own life it doesn’t feel like a shithole, the shithole seems imminent. From there they offer no real solutions for progress and prosperity, just dubious tactics to salve your individual worry. Trump a black hole of no solutions. Shit. Trump IS a shithole asking people to live in his shithole view. But those who do see themselves in the shithole worldview, well, they are camels. And even a camel will drink poisoned water if it thinks it is dying of thirst. Ponder.