Attendees
Jose, Suubi, Gordon, Josh, Jason, Alpha, Mingming, Xiaofei, Nikhil, Dayo, Harsha, Rohit, Vanessa, Martin
Moderator
Introduction
Village is a diverse community of people who are genuinely curious about understanding the world and the people around them better. We get together once a month for moderated discussions on important issues like sustainability, health & wellbeing, and education. At last month’s dinner, we discussed mental models. You can read the full write-up on our previous discussion here.
This month, we shifted our focus to growth. As GDP growth fell 1.4% in the first quarter of 2022 and we prepare for the possibility of a recession in the U.S., we took a step back to question: why is growth imperative? Oftentimes, we use GDP as an approximation of the economic well-being of a country. Many have claimed that this is a bad metric or a metric with a lot of limitations. Are there alternative metrics to GDP? What are the consequences of slowing down economic growth to optimize for equality and total happiness? In this post, we take you through our full discussion with the group.
Driving Question: Is growth imperative?
View 1: It depends on how you define and measure growth.
If we use GDP as the way of measuring growth, we end up missing the full picture. One member pointed to how much oil and gas contributes to GDP, but how growing that aspect of GDP may not actually be good for growth and beneficial to society in the long run.
Another member expressed an alternative view to this critique of GDP, suggesting that GDP is one of the only universal ways to measure a society against another (given that it is used in every country today). Without looking at GDP, there is no way to truly compare the growth of one society to another.
The way to measure growth should be to look at achievement of equal opportunities for people, and when measured this way growth is imperative.
It’s hard to determine whether or not growth is imperative because it’s not clear what the end-goal of growth is - is it to live forever? Is it to be happy? Is it something else?
The definition of growth is a value judgment that changes throughout time. Historically, GDP may have been the best way to approximate the growth of humanity overall, but moving forward this may not be the best measure.
View 2: Growth used to be imperative, but may not be imperative anymore (in some societies).
A small but mighty group of VFC members were under the belief that growth may have been imperative in the past when we were working on solving fundamental challenges to the long term viability of humanity and the survival of the human race, but in modern society growth is less imperative.
Growth without development is meaningless. By focusing on growth in the sense of things that are social constructs, such as GDP or another capitalistic metric, we end up missing out on measuring progress and development in a more evolutionary sense. Members shared many examples in favor of this viewpoint, such as the worsening effects on the environment, the decline in mental health for people across the world, and more.
Other members pushed back on the environmentalist view, by asking the question: “what is the alternative to growth”. If we stop growing while we face these challenges with the environment, it’s possible our society would no longer survive (if we consider saving the planet a component of growth).
A level-setting idea that one member proposed was that it is necessary to look at growth from all perspectives. Historically, society in the U.S. has grown but that hasn’t been true for Native Americans. From what perspective should we measure growth and progress?
One member felt strongly that we have been focused on the Western definition of growth by looking at things such as wealth (GDP), happiness, and physical health without enough focus on spirituality and mental health. From this individual’s view, growth in the more material sense has actually caused regression in terms of the less-materialistic factors.
View 3: Growth is imperative and fundamental.
Society is much better off now than we were hundreds of years ago due to growth and advancements in medicine, technology, women’s rights, etc. Without growth and the pursuit of progress, we would have a much lower quality of life with a slieu of challenges (infant mortality, mass starvation, and more).
Some VFC members pushed back against this with the view that growth should be measured in terms of happiness and fulfillment, which could be worse off now among the average human compared to the average human hundreds of years ago.
Some members recognized points made by the contrarian camp and suggested that growth needs to be measured across all human society and not among or between individual groups (i.e. not one country vs. another, but humanity overall). Until all society has reached a pinnacle point of equality, growth is necessary.
What is the motivation behind growth?
Regardless of members’ views on whether or not growth was imperative and the metric or definition or goal of growth, we shifted our focus to discussing the motivation behind growth.
View 1: Envy.
Comparison to others generates a feeling of inequality and motivates people to grow and create new opportunities for themselves.
One member pointed out that in history, oftentimes growth has been driven by envy - one group of people feeling its inequality as compared to another group of people and a desire to grow to reach an equal state.
One underlying assumption in this view is that if inequality is solved, there may no longer be a motivation for continuous growth.
View 2: Discomfort.
As long as people are uncomfortable, we’ll be forced to grow to find comfort. The discomfort that is felt by the individual is unique, but everyone feels discomfort and is motivated to find comfort for themselves.
View 3: The motivation depends on the individual, and applying a general motivation leads to issues.
One person may be motivated to grow because of envy, another may be motivated to grow because of discomfort, another may be motivated by sheer passion and willpower to solve a specific problem, but all of these are individual feelings that can influence someone. There is no universal motivation that can be applied to all people.
Closing thoughts
Through the group’s discussion, it became clear that the way of measuring growth is the primary factor in whether or not someone considers growth imperative. Some members considered growth of GDP fundamental to survival of the human race because it is the best approximation to social progress. Other members pointed to various challenges to viewing growth within a social construct like GDP because we may miss certain perspectives (the environmentalist perspective, the Native American perspective, etc.). Ultimately, the main camps in our discussion were materialistic growth (GDP, happiness, health) versus non-materialistic growth (spirituality, happiness). Some people took the position that growth in one camp would cause regression in the other, but others felt that growth in all areas is possible when looking at humanity and development in the long-term. If we continue to grow with the goal of surviving, we’ll inherently balance the underlying factors within growth that are the most important to pursuing that goal.
If this post sparked your curiosity at all, consider joining us for our next Village Forecasting Club dinner. Apply to Village here.