s better is an argument that needs much qualification.The concept of an optimal scale of the total world economy cannot be seen in today's macroeconomic theories. There can only be a sustainable economy, when the economy improves knowledge, technical efficiency, organization, and does this by not just adding more of the ecosystem into itself to alleviate burdens. The sustainable economy must limit itself to a scale to which would allow the ecosystem to renew itself. By limiting itself, the economy will be nongrowing but that does not mean ressionary. One of the more prominent arguments for development is that more growth would enable us to take on the burden of pollution. Though we would be in a position to better cleanup after ourselves if we were made richer, the fact is that we would not be richer ‘in fact’. Since we do not actually take into account all costs of production (cost to environment), we do not actually know if we are better off. The cost of building a factory might actually be exponentially larger than the revenue taken in from all its production. That is to say that prices do not reflect the true costs so we are not actually richer for having developed. In fact we may very well be much poorer if all the math is done. Also, how can we be advocates of cleaning up the environment through more growth, when it is usually the growth itself that is the cause of worldwide levels of environmental destruction. It is this thinking that was responsible for the Texaco fiasco in Ecuador. Texaco under the flag of growth and development for Ecuador set up shop, and was responsible for ecological destruction that is still taking its toll on people there. I wonder if Texaco accounted for all the environmental damage and all the ailments the people of Ecuador experiencing to this day. And how do you quantify human suffering? Then there are those who claim that growth is necessary to help the poor. True it can be argued that g...
