Growth
Growth why focusing on growth?
Nowadays, in our society, growth represents the main focus. For example a country aims to reach a growing level of gross national product (GDP), a company tries to increase profit, a man or a woman wants to grow his or her wealth.
Let's define an entity a country or a company or a woman or a man. Every entity want growth. Why?
First, let's define growth? Growth can be characterised by something which increases. It can be triggered consciously or unconsciously.
We will try to understand how the concept of growth has developed over time. As we have already done in other analysis (see Communication - Humankind beginning discussion), we will proceed to a simulation with assumptions. Suppose during the prehistoric period, a human is trying to survive, which constitutes his primary objective. To survive, the human needs food such as nuts and fruits for example. When he finds a nice tree with plenty of fruits, he will eat some to appease his hunger and probably keep some for later. How will he store the surplus of food? Let's assume he is digging a hole where he can bury the food, then he can come back and eat later. It means the human has to stay around to avoid long walk to get his food when he is hungry. If he finds another tree nearby with fruits, the possibility of coming back easily to his hidden place allows him to store more food and to contemplate the growth of his treasure.
If we step back a little bit, the first feeling of growth comes from a certain abundance of food greater than what it is needed to appease hunger at that specific moment, allowing at the same time the human to save food for the future.
From this point, the human objective will be focusing on increasing his savings in order to survive in this harsh environment. It means the human has a sense of future scarcity and savings will help to mitigate this risk of scarcity.
If the human was living in an environment where food was available at all time, then he will not need to save for the future and to contemplate the growth of his saving.
Therefore the first concept of growth is linked to the environment where food scarcity pushes the human to save for the future. On the other hand, if food was abundant, the human would not need to save.
Moving on the time spectrum to our current society, growth has become the main driver how the different entities interact. In the prehistoric time, food represented the main good the entity was focusing on to grow. Today, food has been replaced by money. Every entity are trying to increase their amount of money in order to be able to buy any goods.
The main issue resides in an environment with limited resources. Each entity thinks of growing their wealth for the future.
If we come back to our simulation in the prehistory, when the human found these trees with more food than needed, he has been made aware of several concepts unconsciously and simultaneously. We mentioned the concept of growth, we can now say the human has developed the idea of saving and also the thought of the future. Growths, saving and future have become gradually part of the human life, mostly unconsciously, then progressively with more and more conscious of these new concepts.
Nowadays, in our society, growth represents the main focus. For example a country aims to reach a growing level of gross national product (GDP), a company tries to increase profit, a man or a woman wants to grow his or her wealth.
Let's define an entity a country or a company or a woman or a man. Every entity want growth. Why?
First, let's define growth? Growth can be characterised by something which increases. It can be triggered consciously or unconsciously.
We will try to understand how the concept of growth has developed over time. As we have already done in other analysis (see Communication - Humankind beginning discussion), we will proceed to a simulation with assumptions. Suppose during the prehistoric period, a human is trying to survive, which constitutes his primary objective. To survive, the human needs food such as nuts and fruits for example. When he finds a nice tree with plenty of fruits, he will eat some to appease his hunger and probably keep some for later. How will he store the surplus of food? Let's assume he is digging a hole where he can bury the food, then he can come back and eat later. It means the human has to stay around to avoid long walk to get his food when he is hungry. If he finds another tree nearby with fruits, the possibility of coming back easily to his hidden place allows him to store more food and to contemplate the growth of his treasure.
If we step back a little bit, the first feeling of growth comes from a certain abundance of food greater than what it is needed to appease hunger at that specific moment, allowing at the same time the human to save food for the future.
From this point, the human objective will be focusing on increasing his savings in order to survive in this harsh environment. It means the human has a sense of future scarcity and savings will help to mitigate this risk of scarcity.
If the human was living in an environment where food was available at all time, then he will not need to save for the future and to contemplate the growth of his saving.
Therefore the first concept of growth is linked to the environment where food scarcity pushes the human to save for the future. On the other hand, if food was abundant, the human would not need to save.
Moving on the time spectrum to our current society, growth has become the main driver how the different entities interact. In the prehistoric time, food represented the main good the entity was focusing on to grow. Today, food has been replaced by money. Every entity are trying to increase their amount of money in order to be able to buy any goods.
The main issue resides in an environment with limited resources. Each entity thinks of growing their wealth for the future.
If we come back to our simulation in the prehistory, when the human found these trees with more food than needed, he has been made aware of several concepts unconsciously and simultaneously. We mentioned the concept of growth, we can now say the human has developed the idea of saving and also the thought of the future. Growths, saving and future have become gradually part of the human life, mostly unconsciously, then progressively with more and more conscious of these new concepts.
Comments (33)
This doesn't seem very plausible to me. What anthropological or archeological knowledge do you have that makes you think this is how the gathering of wealth started. Without any specific knowledge, I have always assumed that the collection of wealth began when agriculture and civilization developed. On the other hand, there are nomadic hunter/gatherers in Africa who measure their wealth by the number of cattle they have.
So I propose an alternative: lust for growth derives from fear of Them.
If we are content to just sit here with what we have, even if it is sufficient, and They continue to grow, They will overrun us.
So we must grow, too.
I have worked for a couple of companies in my life which continued to seek growth and grow to the point where they 1) collapsed or 2) lost their identity by selling themselves to larger companies which were also trying to grow. My understanding is that it is accepted fact that, in business, you have to grow in order to survive. Grow in terms of revenue, grow in terms of market share. If you want to get rich, you have to continue to grow.
Of course, there are many businesses which do not follow this plan. You've never heard of them because they remain small local concerns. They may provide a good living for their owners and a good job for the people who work there, but for some, that is not enough.
The logic here? - If you want to grow, you must grow.
Well, yes.
It's not my logic, it is what I understand many people feel is necessary.
My apologies; what I am saying is that wanting to be rich does not explain wanting to grow, because wanting to be rich is wanting to grow.
To paraphrase myself,
lust for wealth derives from fear of Them.
If we are content to just sit here with what we have, even if it is sufficient, and They continue to grow, They will overrun us.
So we must seek wealth, too.
I agree with both points. In first world countries there is dissatisfaction with ones relative wealth, which can prompt you to try to keep up with the Jones'. It is when we look up from behind the steering wheel of out 1996 Ford at the 22 year old driving the Ferrari that we yearn for more.
We may often consider ourselves poor, but when we go to some third world countries and see what poverty really looks like we get a different picture. Often though, in those places, they seem relatively content with their lot, because just about everybody is in the same boat.
Wealth and lack of wealth is very much associated with social status and all the perks that go with it. The prehistoric man who had the food tucked away could distribute it to his tribe in times of need and thus raise his social status.
We also live in what I call 'the age of plenty, and plenty cheap' which is catching a lot of baby boomers, who are used to scarcity, out. They snatch up something on the shelf before it disappears, and before long they are hoarders.
There is the story of Moby Dick, which was based on a real event. According to the real event, the crew ejected into their lifeboats and resorted to cannabilsation after their food ran out. After his rescue and for the rest of his life the captain hoarded food at his house.
The growth in companies has similar motivations. Social status - prestige, protection against competitors by cornering the market. etc.
I think you are right. That is part of the belief system I was describing. That doesn't change the fact that many companies operate differently. There is no great drive to grow. Of course, given the great consolidation of smaller companies I have seen in the business I work in (environmental engineering) that does make a company vulnerable.
Small is beautiful. The flaw in permanent growth has been known and spoken about for centuries. But unfortunately once the idea of competing against the other sets in, it would appear to be all-pervading.
Growth is a relatively new fetish. I blame Alexander.
This is confusing. You state here correctly that humans' primary objective is to survive, then you say that he was doing so by growing. Humans barely managed to survive for thousands of years with little or no growth. As the traveled around searching for food there was no way the could accumulate possessions because there was little to actually possess and there was even less worth carrying around.
Several developments made it possible for them to survive easier.
Taming animals and planting(not agriculture) made no difference to their main objective, it was still survival.
Learning to breed captive animals (domestication) and the beginning of agriculture still only made it easier to survive because the population had started to increase. But this made it necessary for them to spend most of their time in one place.
Once there was enough food available and they had learned ways to store it life became easier, and then it was possible for the groups to maintain a certain number of craftsmen that specialized in creating things that again made life easier. Now they had things that they could own and a place to own it.
Genghis Khan and his killing of millions as he rampaged through Asia and Europe started it all.
It also seems to be the case that most stock-issuing companies have to keep growing because they don't retain a lot of their profits. Each quarter they pay out dividends. (Well, Apple Corporation has something like $261 billion in cash; i don't know what they are planning on doing with it. I feel like I've done enough for Apple Corporation over the years that they could and should send me a free new iPhone or iPad. Hell, send both.)
So, several market forces keep the pressure to grow on companies.
Crop yields can keep going up only as long as one can sell the harvest at a high enough price to pay for the increased yearly inputs that are required to sustain yield growth year after year. Eventually, however, the inputs no longer work because the soil is exhausted--structurally as well chemically. Then yields start to fall, no matter what, for maybe... 5000 years, until the soil is rebuilt by natural processes -- if we are lucky. Meanwhile...
Population can keep growing only as long as sufficient food, water, shelter, lifestyle magazines, and beauty products can be delivered. When food and water, especially, but shelter too become unobtainable, then population crashes. This happens among wild animal populations, and will eventually happen to the tame animal population to which we belong.
There may not be a practical limit on how much wealth one can accumulate. If one's wealth is derived from financial manipulation rather than production, there isn't much limit. On the other hand, one can consume only so much stuff, even if that amount is very large. After one has bought a mansion on the moon and Mars, after one has dressed one's self in the rarest of fabrics (probably golden orb spider silk) after one has eaten the finest food, after one has installed the major orchestras of the world in one's various houses around the world, after one has bought a bullet train to get one from this estate to that estate... eventually one runs out of time to buy something new and one is dead.
But the Mongols did it better and more of it.
Yeah, but they did not do it all in one man's lifetime.
Long live the Khan.
not quite. He only conquered about half of its eventual territory.
Genghis Khan “The greatest joy a man can know is to conquer his enemies and drive them before him. To ride their horses and take away their possessions, to see the faces of those who were dear to them bejeweled with tears, and to clasp their wives and daughters in his arms.”
For Genghis the meaning of life is conquest, theft, suffering, and rape. Note what does not even make the list: the love of a child or the passion of a woman or the joy of creating or the excitement of achievement.
Genghis was a predator in practice.
In his son's, Ogadai, life time was when the bigger part of the empire was acquired. The total time was only about 60 years.
Yes, although there is also the (mostly) post-enlightenment lust for knowledge, which leads (in the realm of technology) to innovation, greater efficiency and savings, surpluses, and therefore growth. Maybe this isn't cleanly separable from the simple lust for material wealth, and military technology is certainly largely based on fear of them, but there's a bit of a knot to untangle.
He was worshiped as a hero in his time. The speed of the empire's growth was unheard of in those times and for many years to come. Total destruction of everything that opposed them as they moved, stopping only to collect the riches from the conquered. It must have been scary as shit knowing they were coming.
If the Khans had continued to rule those that surrendered to them and continued to collect tributes for centuries who do you think would have been a world power today? What language would we be speaking?
I shudder to think what someone like that would be capable of in today's world.
What if we break growth down into its constituents? To me, growth boils down to value. If a product is more valuable (better than the competition in terms of efficiency, efficacy, greenness, cost, etc.) then the producer will experience growth. Viewed this way, growth is no more than a byproduct of healthy competition - an essential feature of a vibrant economy.
It seems to me that, being quantifiable, growth gets the limelight and thus the misunderstanding. Economics isn't about growth per se. It's about supplying ''better and better'' products to the market. This translates, mathematically, to growth figures.
Mankind's basic thought process towards growth can be summed up fairly easy.
Get something bigger to hit it with.
I tried to explain a certain process of thoughts linked to growth. How it has been developed. By doing a simulation in my comments at the prehistoric era and again I insist on simulation, I deducted growth appeared with food scarcity and the perception of future in time as the individual is starting to save in my simulated process of thoughts.
Nowadays, the societies have moved on and are developed with rules, the law of supply and demand. Past and current analysis regarding growth describe perfectly its advantages..
However, if products become abundant, then its value decreased and its demand as well. The need for growth generated by demand is not required anymore. You can pick and choose while if the individual finds hard to acquire a rare product then he might think of ways to get that product and focus on how to grow this rare product.
It can, in part. But it's not the only possibility. Lust for wealth (and growth) can be driven by a desire to cause certain changes as well, so power (wealth, growth, etc.) then becomes necessary - a means to an end.
But consider that scientists are not the ones that generally drive growth. Creative personalities do. Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, etc. etc. They do not create new technology and knowledge. They use existing knowledge and technology to solve different puzzles or problems. So growth is not driven by the lust for knowledge.
Ultimately, I agree with you. We all want to shine, being the center of attention. From this point of view, we can say my objective could be described as making sure my communication allows me to shine in front of people. This directs me to a discussion I posted a few days ago: Humankind beginning and communication. I am talking about the survival and communication objectives. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this specific discussion if you have time.
So what you need is bigger ideas to hit people with. When I said get something big to hit them with I did not necessarily mean sticks.