Throughout human history societies have been informed and instructed by the superstitions of their age. For thousands of years we believed a single person – a king, a pharaoh, a high priest – should have life and death power over us. Any other social structure was unthinkable. We believed the gods that brought drought could be appeased only by animal and, sometimes, human sacrifice.
Today these superstitions seem ridiculous. How could thinking people ever have believed such preposterous notions?
But here we are. August 2011. And the zeitgeist has given birth to a new superstition. One that will bewilder future generations as much as the belief in the absolute power of pharaohs or drought reflecting the anger of the gods does ours.
What is this new superstition? The belief that we can grow the economy by shrinking it.
The idea defies common sense. And yet in just two short years it has become the fundamental guiding principle of public policy.
~ from We Will Grow the Economy By Shrinking It by David Morris ~
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".. grow the economy by shrinking it. "
ReplyDeleteIf a Taoist sage had said that -- and it has that sound -- you might think it was terribly profound.
I wonder if people really all thought it was right to have just one guy in charge over them, their lives, families, properties, etc. I'm sure many were resentful of it. But, being powerless peasants, or, being peasants brainwashed to believe they were powerless, they acquiesced.
ReplyDeleteby the way, the faster the economy grows, the sooner it is going to collapse. The earth is finite.