Ever since the start of the Industrial Revolution society has sought to “improve itself” through economic growth. The inventions of the spinning Jenny led to more efficient production of materials which could then be sold within the country and for export. This in turn fostered international trade which encouraged transportation and communication systems and so on. In the process, those countries at the forefront of trade saw their standard of living rise dramatically. However, those unfortunate enough to have a less developed society, or rather a society that wasn’t hell-bent on trade, saw their standard of living improve only marginally. The latter countries also saw their culture being overrun by those of the dominant trading nations, a fact that in many cases was amplified by their colonialization and subjugation.
Thus the first big problem was a huge imbalance of wealth and a cultural dominance by those few countries who were the first out of the starting blocks and the most ruthless advocates of economic growth.
This legacy continues to this day. The poorer nations are getting poorer by the minute as the major trading nations force them to grow crops they can’t eat and excavate and export vast portions of their natural resources in the hope that someday their lifestyles could catch up.
It is a battle they’re doomed to lose, even though they’ve seen some improvements in living standards, longevity and health.
For every $1 per capita raise in GNP of the poor nations there is a concomitant $99 raise in the leading nations. The dominant trading nations hit the poor countries extremely hard. This is not surprising – it’s called Darwinian Evolution. Man is still an animal, he wants, not just everything he can get, but everything he can steal from his neighbour into the bargain.
We did not climb to the top of the evolutionary ladder by handing out our hard-earned gains to the Neanderthals. We have been at war with each other since the dawn of history. Man is vicious, that’s how we progress. Modern man is no different. Just 140 years ago we wiped out the Tasmanian Aborigines, even though we’d invaded their land and they were no threat to us and we did it in a few decades. Make no mistake, modern man is as savage and as ruthless as our prehistoric ancestors.
Politicians, bankers and economists the world over tell us that to resolve the problems of the poorer nations we must rely on economic growth. But they fail to see that this would jeopardize their own position and thus is impossible. A vibrant, peaceful Africa full of educated, healthy, middle class people is a threat to the western powers. Africa might no longer accept cultural dominance by the west, they might trade in things that are useful to themselves and defy the accepted norms. Heavens knows, they might even form an effective political block similar to the EU – and worse still, they’re not all Christians!
This is however a dream (or nightmare) that will not come to pass. Not just because the west won’t allow it, but also because there is no sustainable path to it, at least not under the aegis of economic growth. To grow their economies in the traditional sense, the poorer nations have to produce more, export more and consume less. They have to raise their education standard to reduce their population and enable a rise in GDP. However, the western countries will not trade fairly with them, they will raise tariffs, subsidize their own products to below their actual production costs and they will continue to insist that the poor countries produce and trade goods that do not benefit them. So, the poor countries must band together and trade exclusively between themselves. However, assuming that this could be done, there is still the faulty mechanism of economic growth to consider.
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