Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
between advertising and consumption in her 1942 topic
Why Work
:
“A society in which consumption has to be artifi cially stimulated in
order to keep production going is a society founded on trash and
waste, and such a society is a house built upon sand.”
5
There is an
apparent belief that economic disaster will occur if restrictions are put
on the number of varieties of cold breakfast cereals, cleaning products,
drinks, and many other items. Such restrictions are considered an
example of creeping socialism, a term that is anathema to nearly all
Americans.
Choice is fi ne and desirable. No one should be forced to purchase an
item because it is the only one available due to arbitrary restrictions
placed on manufacturers. But is there no sensible limit? The tens of thou-
sands of items in the average U.S. supermarket may well include more
than fi fty kinds, sizes, and brands of breakfast cereal. One hundred and
fi fty linear feet of shelves containing a cornucopia of essentially identical
unhealthy cold breakfast cereals testifi es to the waste (waist?) built into
American society, a defect summed up by poet Gary Snyder in “Four
'Changes'”: “Most of the production and consumption of modern societ-
ies is not necessary or conducive to spiritual and cultural growth, let
alone survival. . . . Mankind has become a locust-like blight on the planet
that will leave a bare cupboard for its own children—all the while in a
kind of addict's dream of affl uence, comfort, eternal progress. . . .
True
affl uence is not needing anything
” [italics added].
6
Snyder's viewpoint is,
of course, economic heresy. Growth to most economists is as essential as
the air we breathe. It is, they believe, the only force capable of lifting the
poor out of poverty, feeding the world's growing population, meeting the
costs of rising public spending, and stimulating technological develop-
ment, not to mention increasingly expensive lifestyles. They see no limits
to growth, ever. To most economists, shifting from vertical growth to
horizontal development is seen as a naive and utopian idea with no
chance against the dominant forces of economic capitalism.
Perhaps they are right; perhaps humans are inherently avaricious—
grasping, greedy, and miserly. America's dominant Christian theology
would agree that humans are inherently sinful but believes they can be
redeemed. The concept of development over growth was fi rst enunciated
by John Stuart Mill, one of the founders of classical economics, in his
1848 treatise
Principles of Political Economy
. He predicted that once
the work of economic growth was done, a “stationary” economy would
emerge in which we could focus on human improvement: “There would
be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral
