Re: [ox-en] Necessary growth (was: Re: Explanation of interest)

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Hi Stefan:

I think there are 2 issues:

- growth in immaterial aspects: that may be considered, given a few caveats
(such as the material basis on which it may rest), potentially infinite

- growth in material aspects: possible as long as it is compatible with the
rate of renewal of the resource

So a culture can learn to limit its material growth in certain areas,
nurture physical relative abundance wherever it is possible, and refocus its
core efforts on the immaterial aspects of culture

Michel

On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 6:21 PM, Stefan Merten <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi list!
>
> Last week (9 days ago) Michel Bauwens wrote:
> > but
> > infinite growth is a problem in a finite environment
>
> This is certainly true. But the question is whether human society is
> completely described by a finite environment.
>
> Of course I agree that natural resources are limited in the sense of
> limitations I explained a few days ago. And these limitations of
> course impact human society. But does this mean that growth is limited
> as well? I don't think so.
>
> The interesting question perhaps is what growth actually means. As
> someone interested in a good life for everyone I certainly do not
> think that growth in the sense of improvements of life always mean an
> expansion of the use of limited resources. In particular I don't think
> that a growing amount of Selbstentfaltung necessarily means a growing
> use of limited resources. For instance if you more often apply your
> abilities in producing useful things successfully then your
> Selbstentfaltung grows. But this does not mean necessarily that you
> use more limited resources than before - rather in the contrary.
>
> When I think about generalizing peer production (i.e. open and
> Selbstentfaltung-based production) people often complain that there
> are necessary tasks people need to be forced to - for instance by
> bribing them with exchange. You can re-read this complaint this way:
> There is not enough use value in (technical) means of production so
> the necessary tasks need to be addressed by labor. To overcome this a
> growth of the use value of things is ultimately necessary.
>
> In this sense growth of use value is a necessary pre-condition of an
> expansion of peer production.
>
>
>                                                Grüße
>
>                                                Stefan
> _________________________________
> Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
> Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
> Contact: [email protected]
>



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