Are social movements drivers of progress?

 

In considering this question my focus is on Mikayla Novak’s recent book, Freedom in Contention, Social Movements and Liberal Political Economy.

Mikayla describes social movements as “sustained collective engagement by multiple participants … aiming to effect change within society”. Mikayla provides an enlightening account of the nature of social movements, the role of entrepreneurship within them, the tactics they use, and of factors that contribute to their success. I focus here on Mikayla’s view that social movements have played a critical role in the realization of liberties enjoyed today in the Western democracies. That line of argument is central to the book, and closely linked to the question posed above.

Before going further, I should note that Mikayla uses an “entangled political economy” framework to examine social networks. That framework, developed by Richard Wagner, views individuals and groups as being intertwined in overlapping relationships of different kinds - collaborative or competitive, or consensual or exploitive. In pursuing their goals, social movements have an irrepressible tendency to entangle with other movements, and with economic and political organizations.

In making the case that social movements have contributed to expanding economic, political, and social freedoms, Mikayla discusses the historical role of some important social movements. The American revolution is discussed as the culmination of a movement resisting imposition of unfair taxation. The Anti-Corn Law League is discussed as a movement rallying public support in opposition to agricultural tariffs that benefitted landowners at the expense of consumers. The movements involved in progressive extension of the voting franchise, including female suffrage activism, are discussed as part of a struggle to gain recognition that all individuals should have equal standing to participate in politics. The success of the American Civil Rights Movement in expanding economic, political, and social freedoms is argued to have inspired subsequent movements including anti-war, environmental and feminist movements.

The author’s coverage of contemporary social movements highlights responses to regulation limiting voluntary productive entanglements of an economic nature. Movements discussed include the Tea Party and the campaign to counter restrictive effects of regulation on availability of medication for people living with HIV/AIDS.

Mikayla also highlights the ongoing challenges posed by cultural-institutional environments that fail to prevent those with political influence using it to obtain benefits at the expense of others, and which repress social movement activities. She paints an alarming picture of rising illiberalism:

“Economic freedom has waned, minorities and many other groups around the world are victimized by violent, reactionary backlash dynamics, and, increasingly, we are meeting the end of a police baton or are being haunted by the constant eye of the surveillance state. All in all, the disturbing trend is that illiberalism appears, again, on the rise.” (p 136)

However, that is followed immediately by a more optimistic message about the future of freedom:

“Nevertheless, it is our position that great encouragement should be taken from the demonstrated self-organizational abilities of ordinary people, worldwide, to formulate social movements to demand their liberties and human rights.” (p 136)

Progress

Although Mikayla does not discuss the concept of progress to any great extent, she makes the important point that social evolution tends to be discordant and discontinuous. As a liberal, she focuses on the role of social movements play in the evolution of free and open societies, and expresses strong opposition to “totalizing schemes (drawn up by social movement participants, and by others) aiming at wholesale change to society”.

I believe that social movements have been an important driver of progress, as the concept is defined in my book Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing.  I define progress as growth of opportunities for human flourishing – that means growth of opportunities for all individuals to meet their aspirations more fully. I don’t discuss the role of social movements explicitly, but note that social changes accompanying economic progress have played an important role in improving the opportunities available to women and members of minority groups.

My view of cultural evolution as largely benign and emancipative is consistent with the view of social movements that Mikayla presents. There is, however, a slight difference in emphasis. I view cultural evolution as the net result of progressive struggle and conservative resistance, and argue that conservative resistance serves a useful purpose in averting social changes that might later be widely regretted. Mikayla recognizes that counter-movements may be informed by ideological commitments rather than being reactionary, but she leaves the impression that they are more likely to oppose liberal freedoms than to advance them. (See pages 90-91.)

There is also an interesting difference between the items that Mikayla and I discuss as illiberal tendencies. As noted above, Mikayla emphasizes the tendency for minorities and many other groups around the world to be victimized by violent, reactionary backlash dynamics. The things I write about under this heading include cancel culture, attempts to suppress views of opponents, and terrorism. I think we are both right!

Summing up

Mikayla’s book makes an important contribution in reminding readers in the Western democracies of the emancipative role of social movements in realization of economic, political, and social freedoms that they now tend to take for granted.  In that context, social movements have been important drivers of progress, including the spreading of opportunities for more people to meet their aspirations more fully. Although I am somewhat concerned about the illiberal tendencies in some contemporary social movements, I share Mikayla’s optimism about the abilities of ordinary people to formulate social movements to advance and protect liberty.

Do people have a right to choose where they will live?

 

                                        Vietnamese boat people arriving in Australia in 1976

In the Western liberal democracies there are few people who claim that individuals do not have the right to choose where they live. However, many people set limits on the extent to which they recognize that right. They only recognize that foreigners have the right to live in their neighborhood if they meet stringent immigration requirements.

Is that a reasonable view? If people readily accept that individuals should be free to choose where they will live within national borders, why are they reluctant to accept that individuals have a right to choose which country to live in?

If you view national borders as arbitrary lines on maps, it will seem absurd to you that immigration requirements should make it more difficult to re-locate across national borders than within a nation. International migration could normally be expected to be as beneficial as migration within national borders. For example, the potential benefits to both the employees and employers concerned when workers relocate to take up employment opportunities are not necessarily reduced when national borders are crossed. Similarly, the potential benefits to both the grandparents and grandchildren of living in the same locality are not necessarily reduced when national borders are crossed to enable that to happen.

I have been pondering such questions while reading Ilya Somin’s recent book, Free to Move: Foot voting, migration, and political freedom. Somin presents a powerful argument in favour of foot voting – choosing to move to a different country, city, condo etc. because you prefer its rules to the ones you currently live under. Foot voting enables individuals to make a choice that actually matters to them, whereas voting in an election offers individuals only a miniscule chance of affecting the outcome.

I didn’t need to read Somin’s book to be persuaded of the potential value of foot voting. It would be difficult for an economist engaged in public policy not to be aware of those benefits. I also had the benefit of considering the issues involved many years ago when I read Robert Nozick’s famous book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia.

However, it is one thing to accept the potential benefits of foot voting as an ideal, and quite another to advocate removal of current obstacles to foot voting posed by migration regulations.

Somin suggest that the sovereignty argument – the view that the right to bar migrants is intrinsic to the existence of an independent nation state – has little support among political theorists, although it often arises in public discourse. Somin mentions Donald Trump and his southern border wall proposal in this context, but John Howard, a former Australian prime minister, advanced the argument just as strongly in 2001:

 “National Security … is also about having an uncompromising view about the fundamental right of this country to protect its borders. It's about this nation saying to the world we are a generous open-hearted people, taking more refugees on a per capita basis than any nation except Canada, we have a proud record of welcoming people from 140 different nations. But we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.”

While national governments continue to exist, it would not be realistic to expect them to refrain from accepting responsibility for migration policy. However, that does not mean that it is beyond the realms of possibility for governments to adopt something more closely approaching an open borders policy. As Somin points out, sovereign nations existed for centuries without exercising a general power to bar peaceful migrants. Most governments made significant efforts to restrict entry only in the late 19^th century.

The reason why the sovereignty argument seems persuasive to many people must be related to their perception that illegal or unauthorized migration has adverse consequences. They want immigration regulation enforced because they believe it serves a useful purpose.

Somin discusses in some detail various reasons that have been advanced for immigration restrictions. These include fear of terrorism and crime, possible reduction of wage levels, burdening of the welfare state, destruction of the environment, and the spread of harmful cultural values. He recognizes the validity of some objections to freedom of international migration, but suggests that “keyhole solutions” are available to meet negative side-effects of expanded migration. These keyhole solutions aim to target real problems, minimizing risks of adverse outcomes without imposing unnecessary restrictions on foot voting.

As in many other policy areas, carefully targeted regulation which minimizes adverse side-effects is clearly preferable to blanket bans and restrictions that are directed toward meeting political demands of anti-migrant nationalist groups. Somin recognizes that such groups are the main obstacle to international foot voting.

This brings me back to the sovereignty argument. It seems to me that anti-migrant nationalist groups had greater sway in Australian politics 20 years ago when significant numbers of people seeking refugee status were arriving by boat without prior approval. Under those circumstances it was relatively easy for the opponents of immigration to claim that “people smuggling” and “queue jumping” by refugees was likely to lead to huge social problems.

The government’s action to enforce regulation and discourage unauthorized arrivals seems to have enabled the public debate about immigration levels in Australia to become somewhat more civilized in recent years. It may also have reduced public disquiet about the relatively high migrant intake in recent years (prior to the Covid 19 pandemic).

The sovereignty argument is clearly opposed to recognition that people have a right to choose which country they will live in. Nevertheless, Australians seem generally to have become more relaxed in their attitudes toward high levels of immigration since the government stridently asserted sovereignty by taking effective action to discourage unauthorized arrivals.

Postscript

The last couple of paragraphs have attracted some comment in response to a Facebook post by Boris Karpa: https://www.facebook.com/548209107/posts/10159829476419108/

The issue is whether there is any evidence to back up my assertion that Australians seem generally to have become more relaxed in their attitudes toward high levels of immigration since more effective action was taken to discourage unauthorized arrivals.

Survey evidence certainly suggests that immigration has gone off the radar as a major political issue in Australia over the last decade (Scanlan Foundation, Mapping Social Cohesion, 2020, p24). 

The total number of migrants has increased, but there has been substantial opposition associated with the "somewhat more civilized debate" that I referred to. It now seems possible for people to argue for a lower migrant intake on grounds of pressure on infrastructure, impacts on unskilled wage, and house prices etc. without being accused of racism, or lack of sympathy for refugees.

The refugee intake has not risen much over the last decade. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be survey data on perceptions of whether the current refugee intake is too high or too low for long enough to assess whether attitudes have changed over the last decade. The Scanlan Foundation's report for 2019 suggests that in recent years opinion has been evenly balanced between those who say the intake is too small and those who say it is too large.

I think the Australian public would now be receptive to a larger refugee intake, provided people don’t arrive uninvited. However, that is just my personal view. I guess we will see whether or not I am right over the next year or so. 

Further comments are welcome.

 

Is it still self-evident that all humans have natural rights?

 

The United States Declaration of Independence states:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”. (The accompanying painting by John Trumbull depicts the Declaration of Independence being presented to Congress.)

It is strange that at a time when nearly everyone pays lip service to human rights, few intellectuals still recognize that, properly understood, such rights are self-evident and natural. Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl note that it is not even common now for classical liberals and libertarians to appeal to the natural rights of individuals. They explain:

“a large part of the reluctance to appeal to natural rights in explaining and justifying liberty has to do with the idea that speaking of the nature of things is not needed and is not defensible, and indeed that metaphysical realism is either false or senseless” (p 340).

Before explaining metaphysical realism, I must first provide context for the quoted passage. It is from The Realist Turn: Repositioning Liberalism, recently published by Palgrave. This book is the third in a trilogy. The others are: Norms of Liberty, in which the authors explain how liberty enables self-directed individual flourishing to occur without one form of flourishing being given structural preference over others; and The Perfectionist Turn, in which the authors explain, among other things, that self-directedness - exercising our rational capacity to pursue and achieve relevant goods and virtues - is fundamental to human flourishing.

Metaphysical realism is the belief that “there are beings that exist and are what they are apart from our cognition of them and that we can know both the existence and nature of these beings” (p 8). That may be self-evident to you. If so, you have managed to avoid being unduly influenced by philosophers who follow Immanuel Kant in maintaining that the nature of what is known in human cognition is the result of a priori structures of the human mind, rather than the nature of things that exist.

Much of the book is devoted to defending metaphysical realism from its critics. Those critics have a range of differing views, but many claim that the mode of our cognition must enter the content of what is known. It is possible to give a brief sketch of the nature of the responses provided by Rasmussen and Den Uyl, by reference to the way a human can be defined in terms of distinguishing characteristics. The relationship between our conceptual knowledge of the nature of humans and the real nature of humans is analogous to the relationship between a map and the territory it depicts. We begin with an imperfect conceptual map and proceed to improve it step by step to distinguish the characteristics of humans from other kinds of things. Our knowledge of reality is partial and incomplete, but capable of being revised. To cut a long story short, as we condense a vast amount of knowledge, we can come to the view that rationality is a fundamental operating feature of human nature (pp 292-296).

Chapter 3, entitled “On Principle” was of particular interest to me because it involves consideration of similar issues to those discussed by Friedrich Hayek in a chapter of Law, Legislation and Liberty discussing principles and expediency. Rasmussen and Den Uyl end up in much the same place as Hayek. For example, this paragraph seems to me to have a Hayekian flavour about it:

“We do not stick to principle because experience and practice are in need of being ordered, but rather because principles reflect an underlying order that will again come to reassert itself if only those principles are followed. In the economic environment in which we now live, for example, the Aristotelian might advise a steadfast adherence to the principles of a market order rather than piecemeal attempts to patch up the economy and stave off unpleasant consequences, precisely because of an understanding that market principles are the way to bring health back to the economy, even if that means a rough road along the way” (p 117).

That paragraph still makes sense to me if I substitute ‘Hayekian’ for ‘Aristotelian’. Hayek expressed similar sentiments in arguing against “a spurious ‘realism’ which deceives itself in believing that it can dispense with any guiding conception of the nature of the overall order” (LLL, V1, p 64).

However, when I think about the paragraph further I see a problem in accepting that Aristotle’s views – including his just price concept and opposition to lending money at interest - were consistent with “steadfast adherence to the principles of a market order”. Perhaps it is necessary to distinguish what a modern Aristotelian might advise – having had the benefit of having read the works of Adam Smith etc. – from what Aristotle advised.

Rasmussen and Den Uyl define the Aristotelian view of principle thus:

“Here principles are generalized expressions of the nature of things. Like the empiricist, the Aristotelian holds that principles do depend upon experience; unlike the empiricist, the Aristotelian holds that principles are not distortions of reality but expressions of its nature” (p 117).

I see no problem in accepting that the spontaneous order of a free market is an expression of “the nature of things”.

It would be unfortunate to allow the most important point that Rasmussen and Den Uyl make about principles to be lost in a discussion of labeling issues. They argue that “there is in the end no antipathy between principles rightly understood and consequences fully considered”:

“The following of principles is itself an exercise of securing good consequences; and good consequences are to be conceptualized in terms of principles” (p 103-4).

When people discuss natural rights a question that often arises is where they come from. To believe in natural rights do we have to believe in a Creator who endows them? Rasmussen and Den Uyl do not appear to address that question explicitly, but they make a strong case that it is possible to reason our way from an understanding of human nature to recognition of such rights as being necessary to prevent various forms of human flourishing from being in structural conflict; and to protect people from having their lives, possessions and conduct used or directed by others for purposes to which they have not consented. The authors contend that a cultural change that enables the natural order to be seen as the basis for individual rights will be required to bring about an understanding of a proper defense of liberty (p 343). As discussed previously, I think a consideration of the nature of human evolution can also help us understand why we (as individuals) tend to have intuitions that other humans have natural rights that should be respected.

Of course, as Rasmussen and Den Uyl acknowledge, there are some people who choose not to recognize or follow ethical principles requiring the rights of others to be respected. As I see it, even in the liberal democracies large numbers of people believe that it is in the nature of things that the political/legal order must involve a struggle by different groups to have their flourishing advantaged at the expense of others. However, the authors have reinforced me in the belief that even when it appears impossible to implement a political/legal order that would sufficiently recognize and protect liberty, it is still worth considering ideal moral frameworks because such visions provide us with reason and motivation to care about practical problems of implementation.

What are innovation commons?

“An innovation commons is a system of rules for cooperation to facilitate pooling of information in order to maximize the likelihood of opportunity discovery”. That is how Jason Potts defines innovation commons in his book of that name.

Hopefully, that brings to mind hobbyists meeting in coffee shops, somewhere on the internet, or at backyard barbecues where they are tasting home brews and exchanging information about recipes. If so, you are on the track toward an understanding of innovation commons. If you have heard stories of successful entrepreneurs who obtained their most valuable ideas by interacting in similar ways, you might sense that innovative commons can be very important.

It might surprise you to learn that until recently few economists understandood the importance of innovation commons. Of course, those with an interest in technology would have read at some stage that Steve Jobs was once a member of the Homebrew Computer Club, and know of similar stories about other entrepreneurs who started as hobbyists or enthusiasts exchanging information freely with people with similar interests. However, it is one thing to know such stories and something quite different to realize that your professional understanding of the innovation process needs an overhaul.

Economists have thought of innovation in several different ways that view a single organization or individual as a prime mover. Innovative firms allocate resources to research and development, which leads to the launching of new products or adoption of cost-reducing technologies. Joseph Schumpeter’s bold entrepreneurs play the central role in innovation, leading to a dynamic process of creative destruction. Israel Kirzner’s innovative entrepreneurs are alert to profit opportunities. Edmund Phelps’ grassroots innovators are struck by new ideas, and then become investigators, experimenters and managers of innovation.

You might think that economists should be excused for overlooking the importance of innovative commons because they are a relatively new phenomenon. Jason Potts makes the point that common-pool innovation has existed since the beginning of market capitalism. He cites discussion of the Republic of Letters by Joel Mokyr, an economic historian. The Republic of Letters set up norms and incentives that supported a market place of ideas among the educated elite in Europe in the latter part of the 17^th and early part of the 18^th centuries (for a brief summary see my review of The Culture of Growth). In The Enlighted Economy, Mokyr makes a strong case that in Britain during the 18^th century the ‘legitimization of systematic experiment carried over to the realm of technology’. He suggests that the proliferation of provincial ‘philosophical’ societies discussing practical and technical issues often served as clearing houses for useful knowledge between natural philosophers, engineers and entrepreneurs (p 48).

Recent examples of areas of technology where innovation commons are important include blockchain, civilian drone technology, AI and gene editing.

Jason Potts’ own innovative contribution has been to develop an economic framework to explore the collaborative processes through which information comes to be available in a form that a potential entrepreneur can discern as a profit opportunity, if sufficiently alert. The framework Jason has developed contributes to understanding of the knowledge, coordination and governance problems associated with innovation commons. In developing that framework, he draws heavily on insights of Friedrich Hayek about the importance of distributed knowledge, and insights of Elinor Ostrom about governance of commons.

Innovation involves a knowledge problem because relevant information is distributed so that each person with relevant expertise can only know part of the picture, and there is great uncertainty about how that information might be useful. Innovation commons enable individuals with expertise to cooperate to pool information and discover opportunities. The formation of such commons is ad hoc and rules for governance develop spontaneously to promote cooperation.

Innovation commons tend to be temporary. Once they have created information about entrepreneurial opportunities, that valuable resource is likely to be exploited by some member who can effectively capitalize on it. At that point the conventional model of entrepreneurship comes into its own, and the commons collapses to some other institutional or organizational form.

Much of the book is taken up by discussion of rules of innovation commons, institutions such as industry organisations and a critique of conventional approaches to innovation policy (public investment in innovation and building infrastructure for innovation).

There is also an interesting discussion of ways to combat an increasing tendency for enemies of innovation to prevent it, thus contributing to a slowdown in productivity growth, particularly at the technology frontier. The enemies of innovation present themselves as having concerns with safety, sustainability, tradition, fairness, justice etc. even when their intention is to avoid the losses they are likely to incur from disruption of existing technology.

Who will engage those enemies? This is a collective action problem: the costs are borne individually, but the benefits are an industry-specific public good that accrue to all who follow.

In some instances, the first mover can capture sufficient benefits to make it worthwhile to engage the enemies of innovation. Uber may have done that with its ride-sharing technology.

Jason suggests that governments may also help. One role he suggests is promoting collective learning to demystify a new technology. He mentions public broadcasting in that context, but public broadcasters seem to have been more comfortable helping the enemies of innovation. At a more ambitious level, he suggests that governments should work toward “a social contract, culture and institutional system that are tolerant of innovation and prepared to engage with its enemies”. Good luck with that!

Jason also suggests that innovative commons can play a role in creating a large pool of participatory stakeholders, each with a vested interest in developing the technology and its institutional (regulatory) framework. Examples include open-source software and technologies that have emerged from hackerspaces, such as 3D printing and cryptocurrencies.

Are innovative commons likely to result in a fundamental change in society?

Jason Potts’ answer:

“The innovation commons—including the adaptive behaviors and the institutions that compose it—are … a natural part of an open, evolving, market economy. They are not prima facie evidence of an emerging turn to a new type of more cooperative economic society.”

That is probably right! Nevertheless, as previously discussed here, it is possible to conceive of circumstances in which new technologies that are evolving in innovation commons - blockchain technology and decentralized collaborative organizations – could result in some quite fundamental changes in society.

Is cultural change responsible for a long term decline in productivity growth?

The story of cultural change that Edmund Phelps tells in Mass Flourishing has a happy beginning and a sad ending.

Phelps’ cultural story of the advent of rapid economic growth in Britain and America in the 19^th century is much like that of Joel Mokyr and Deidre McCloskey (discussed here and here). The main difference is Phelps’ greater emphasis on grassroots innovation within firms.

Phelps makes a strong case that Joseph Schumpeter, famous for his theory of entrepreneurship, over-emphasized the importance of exogenous scientific discoveries (external to innovating firms) as a source of innovation. Phelps probably goes too far in downplaying scientific advances, but his story about the importance of grassroots innovation to the emerging modern economies seems highly plausible. He suggests:

“a modern economy turns people who are close to the economy, where they are apt to be struck by new commercial ideas, into the investigators and experimenters who manage the innovation process from development and, in many cases, adoption as well” (p 26).

Phelps describes a modern economy as “a vast imaginarium – a space for imagining new products and methods, imagining how they might be made, imagining how they might be used” (p 27).

A substantial part of the book is devoted to a discussion of socialism, as practiced in the Soviet Union, and corporatism, as practiced in Italy and Germany in the 1930s. The contemporary relevance of that discussion become relevant later in the book in his discussion of reasons for the decline in productivity growth that seems to have occurred in the U.S. since the 1960s.

Phelps’ focus on the U.S. economy as the main driver of technological progress seems appropriate. He notes that European countries experienced high productivity growth while playing the technological catch-up game, but their productivity growth has generally been lower than in the U.S. in recent decades. He attributes their lack of dynamism to ongoing corporatism over the decades since World War II. The classical corporatist model - involving state direction of industry and promotion of solidarity and social responsibility – has been augmented with codetermination of labour and capital (instead of owner-control) and stakeholderism (instead of a focus on income generation).

The author suggests that corporatism has also grown in the United States. Industries that have been subject to government policy interventions have been affected by a new populist type of corporatism as businesses have sought to use their political influence to mould government regulation to their advantage. The result is a “densely interconnected system of mutually beneficial relationships between private and public’, which tends “to redirect the economy’s innovation toward politicians”. He notes that supporters refer to that system as industry policy and detractors refer to it as corporate welfare. It should be referred to as rent-seeking.

The cultural change that Phelps sees as leading to a decline in economic dynamism is not fully reflected in changes in economic freedom indexes. He sees a deterioration in the “core functioning” of modern economies. This involves, among other things:

• Managerialism, short-termism and the rise of a “money culture” in business, with wealth-seeking turning people away from innovation.
• A rise in the litigiousness of American society - people who devote their time and energy to suing one another have less time and energy for innovation.
• Excessive patent protection resulting in an economy clogged with patents – “a creator of a new method might require as many lawyers as engineers to proceed”.
• More people aspiring to attain social station rather than to achieve something.
• Adolescent culture – less willingness to accept temporary austerity in the quest for achievement; less ability to concentrate intensely (unable to resist distractions of social media).
• A resurgence of traditional values putting more pressure on business to allow people to work from home etc.

Has this cultural change in U.S. business caused a decline in the long-term productivity growth rate? If so, what can be done about it?

In a series of posts written in 2015, I was sceptical that there had been a decline in long term productivity growth. I suggested that the slow-down in measured productivity growth in the U.S. and some other countries may be attributable, in part, to difficulty in measuring the outputs of the information and communications technologies (ICT) industries. I also noted research findings suggesting a technological diffusion problem, rather than a slow-down in technological advances, with productivity growth of global frontier firms remaining relatively robust.

The addition of a few more years of data seems to lend support to the view of the historical pessimists that there has been a long-term decline in U.S. productivity growth. And Phelps’s cultural change explanation does seem plausible.

Unfortunately, the remedies that Phelps offers are less plausible. He suggests that governments can act to restore dynamism if they become aware of its importance and gain some practical knowledge of how innovation is generated. He suggests:

“Nations will have to push back against the resurgence of traditional values that have been suffocating in recent decades and revive the modern values that stirred people to go boldly forth toward lives of richness”.

Edmund Phelps seems to be hoping that a reinvented corporatism, perhaps inspired by the starship Enterprise, will foster grassroots innovation and be less prone to rent-seeking than the industry policies it replaces. Good luck with that!

I prefer to put my faith in the potential for new technologies to disrupt and subvert populist corporatism.

Does democracy cause growth?

This question has contemporary relevance, but it came to mind as I was reading Mass Flourishing, by Edmund Phelps, who won the Nobel in economics in 2006. Mass Flourishing, published in 2013, is subtitled How grass roots innovation created jobs, challenge and change.

Phelps’ hypothesis:

“Political institutions arguably played a significant role in the creation of the modern economy. One of these was representative democracy, which arose rather close to the emergence of economic modernity” (p 92).

That challenged my prior view that political change favouring economic freedom, innovation and productivity growth came first, and that voting rights came later to redistribute the fruits of economic progress.

Phelps recognizes that democracy involves downside risks (e.g. tyranny of the majority, interest group politics) but gives plausible reasons why democracy may have helped promote economic growth:

• A democracy would push the public sector to support the interests of lower and middle classes, thus encouraging business activity (including grassroots innovation) and public education. By contrast an autocracy would tend to be more interested in serving landed interests, national prestige etc.
• Rule of the people tends to lend credibility to rule of law, thus reducing sovereign risk.
• Elected politicians have an incentive to heed voters, whereas autocrats may not even be aware of their interests or concerns.

However, in my view Phelps' line of argument runs into problems when he considers whether the mechanics of democracy occurred at the right time and place to trigger an explosion of economic dynamism. He looks at the experience of five countries: Britain, America, France, Belgium and Germany.

In respect of Britain, he refers to the revolution of 1688 as having given representation to new wealth and new cities, and the Reform Act of 1832 as extending the franchise to men without property. The Glorious Revolution didn’t establish democracy and the Reform Act was too late to be a trigger.

Phelps refers to the U.S. Constitution of 1788 as having created a government that was radically more representative than Britain’s parliament at that time. However, my American friends keep telling me that their Founding Fathers established a republic rather than a democracy.

The experience of France seems to support the hypothesis. Both democracy and dynamism were slow to arrive in France. The experience of Belgium was ambiguous.

German experience didn’t support the hypothesis. There was strong innovation in Germany in the latter half of the 19^th century, but little democracy except at local levels.

Phelps’ conclusion suggests a smaller role for democracy than his original hypothesis:

“In any case, the reasonable inference is not that modern democracy caused the modern economy or vice-versa, but that both sprang from the same matrix of values and beliefs—the same culture” (p 96).

Joel Mokyr has emphasized the role of institutional adaptability, rather than democracy, in facilitating growth. He responds as follows to the observation that commercial energy was combined with stable rule by an exclusive elite in 18^th century Britain:

“Yet British institutions also had to possess a built-in capability to adapt to radically changing circumstances, and every such adaptation led to further changes in the economic structure of Britain. It is this kind of dynamic that created the success that allowed the growth of useful knowledge and technological ingenuity to become the foundation of sustained economic development” (The Enlightened Economy, 2009, p 427).

The adaptations that Mokyr refers to include the reform of many institutions that had supported rent-seeking and redistribution. He suggests that by 1850, “the elite that ran British government no longer saw political power as a means to acquire more privileges”, but instead “made sure that no other political group would be able to do the same so it could keep what it already had” (p 395).

As noted at the beginning of this post, the question of whether democracy supports economic growth has contemporary relevance. Bill Easterly’s examination of economic growth experience in his book, The Tyranny of Experts, (discussed here) suggests that political leaders matter very little for either good or ill in driving economic growth. He argues that freedom promotes individualistic values that favour economic development. By contrast, autocrats tend to promote the interests of the kingdom (or state) above those of the individual and foster collectivist values that are inimical to economic development. 

China’s experience of autocrats promoting limited economic freedom, which has resulted in a major growth dividend in recent decades, is interesting in that context. As in Germany in the latter part of the 19^th century, the leaders of China may see a degree of economic freedom as a way to promote the interests of the state.

 Finally, as a matter of empirics, there is evidence that if you classify countries as either democratic or non-democratic and control for other factors, the democratic countries have better growth performance. In a recent study covering 175 countries, Daron Acemoglu et al have found that democratizations increase GDP per capita by about 20 percent in the long run [JPE, 2019, 127 (1)].

Unfortunately, those findings do little to allay my concerns about the impact of interest group politics on future productivity growth in the western democracies. I will write more about that, and about Edmund Phelps views of possible causes of declining dynamism, in a later post.

When and how did the concept of progress originate?

Are you one of those people who has not given up hope that following generations will have better opportunities than you have had? If so, you may be interested to know when and how such hopes came to be considered realistic.

If progress is defined very broadly in terms of hope for advancement of mankind, it is possible to argue, as does Robert Nisbet, that the concept has ancient origins:

“the Western idea of progress was born of Greek imagery, religious in foundation; the imagery of growth. It attained its fullness within Christianity, starting with the Church Fathers, especially Augustine” (Idea of Progress: A Bibliographical Essay by Robert Nisbet, 1978-79).

Augustine held that prior to Judgement Day, the blessed will know an earthy paradise.

However, that is probably not what you have in mind if you hope that following generations will have better opportunities. As Nisbet acknowledges, “there is almost no end to goals and purposes which have been declared the fulfillment or outcome of mankind's progress”.

The goals I have in mind relate to growth of opportunities for human flourishing – the pursuit and achievement of happiness in a worthwhile life. More specifically, as discussed in a recent series of posts, flourishing entails opportunities for individuals to have the basic goods of a flourishing human: wise and well-informed self-direction, the prospect of a long and healthy life, positive human relationships, psychological well-being and living in harmony with nature.  Hope for progress involves, among other things, an expectation that useful knowledge will continue to accumulate, and the material conditions of humanity will improve from generation to generation. In those terms, hope for progress isn’t necessarily associated with faith in the possibility of either an earthy or heavenly paradise.

J B Bury, the author of The Idea of Progress: An inquiry into its origin and growth (1921) viewed progress as movement of civilization in the direction of “an ultimate happy state … or of some state, at least, that may relatively be considered happy”. Bury’s emphasis on happiness seems appropriate, but the idea of “an ultimate happy state” seems inconsistent with the idea of ongoing progress.

I disagree also with Bury’s suggestion that “you have not got the idea of Progress until you … conceive that [civilization] is destined to advance indefinitely in the future”. Individual humans are destined to seek to advance their own happiness by reason of their human nature, but it doesn’t follow that civilization is destined to advance. Those who hope progress will be ongoing have a better grasp of the idea, in my view, if they acknowledge, with Karl Popper, that there are “conditions of progress” and “conditions under which progress would be arrested” (The Poverty of Historicism, 1957, p 142).

If we view progress in terms of the advance in useful knowledge and ongoing betterment of the material conditions of humanity, Bury’s claim that it is of comparatively recent origin seems correct. As noted by Joel Mokyr:

“A belief in future progress … requires an implicit model of what could have brought about such progress as well as evidence that such progress had happened in the past” (A Culture of Growth, 2017, reviewed here).

Mokyr argues that the relevant model - in which advances in useful knowledge came to be viewed as an engine of economic progress through improving production techniques - emerged in Europe in the 17^th century.

French rationalists and advocates of liberte’

In Bury’s opinion, Bernard LeBovier Fontenelle “was the first to formulate the idea of the progress, of knowledge, as a complete doctrine”, in his Digression on the Ancients and Moderns (1688). Fontenelle argued that superior methodology, logical rigor and critical faculties enabled the science of the moderns to surpass that of the ancients. He also predicted that one day the current generation would themselves be ancients and their achievements would be surpassed by later generations.

Bury’s opinion of Fontenelle’s importance in the history of progress has been disputed, but Mokyr suggest that “although Fontenelle was no towering intellect”, “he was eloquent, well positioned, and influential”, and “part of an intellectual movement that reached its zenith with Condorcet” (p 262). 

Before we discuss Condorcet, mention should be made of Abbe’ Saint Pierre and Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot. The Abbe’ widened the compass of progress to embrace progress toward social perfection. Bury notes that he “shared the illusion of many that government is omnipotent and can bestow happiness on men”.

Turgot viewed history as a record of human progress, advancing through periods of calm and disturbance toward greater perfection. Unlike some other French Enlightenment thinkers, particularly Voltaire, Turgot acknowledged Christianity as having been a powerful agent of civilization. He noted that the development of human societies has not been guided by human reason, but has occurred as a result of passion and ambition. Nisbet suggests that Turgot’s celebrated discourse, before an admiring audience at the Sorbonne in 1750, “probably” represented “the first full and complete statement of progress”. Mokyr observes that Turgot “seems to fall in the Candidesque error of thinking that almost any event in history, no matter how calamitous, led to progress in some fashion” (p 263). Mokyr’s judgement may be too harsh because Turgot’s laissez faire views on economics were apparently based on an appreciation of the mutual benefits of free exchange (see comments by Murray Rothbard).

The Marquis de Condorcet (known as Nicolas de Condorcet) was a supporter of the French Revolution, but his Sketch of a Historical Picture of the Progress or the Human Mind was composed after that, in 1793, during the Terror, while he was hiding from Robespierre. Condorcet viewed the history of civilisation as the history of enlightenment – he saw an indissoluble union between intellectual progress and the progress of liberty, virtue and respect for natural rights. Based on his analysis of history, he reasoned that humanity was on the cusp of a grand revolution toward a happy future. He seems to have viewed that outcome as inevitable, provided appropriate help was provided by people who wanted to be on the right side of history. He asked:

“What can better enlighten us to what we may expect, what can be a surer guide to us, amidst its commotions, than the picture of the revolutions that have preceded and prepared the way for it? The present state of knowledge assures us that it will be happy. But is it not upon condition that we know how to assist it with all our strength?”

Bury notes that Condorcet’s “principles are to be found almost entirely in Turgot”, but “Condorcet spoke with the verve of a prophet”. As prophets go, Condorcet seems to have been successful. He predicted equality of the sexes, mitigation of inequality in wealth by means of education, economic development obliterating distinction between “advanced and retrograde races”, and advances in medical science increasing life expectancy. His prophesy of cessation of war has yet to be fulfilled, but if Steven Pinker is right, there may even be a trend in that direction.

Scottish moralists and economists

Nisbet recognises the importance of Adam Ferguson’s contribution in documenting the history of arts, sciences and institutions, without mentioning his most important contribution. Bury mentions in a footnote that Ferguson “treated the growth of civilization as due to the progressive nature of man, which insists on carrying him forward to limits impossible to ascertain” and “formulated that process as a movement from simplicity to complexity”.

Further explanation is required. Ferguson argued that “man is susceptible of improvement” because of “a desire of perfection” stemming from “the powers that nature has given”.  As humans strive “to remove inconveniencies, or to gain apparent and contiguous advantages” they “arrive at ends which even their imagination could not anticipate”. He suggests: “the forms of society are derived from an obscure and distant origin; they arise, long before the date of philosophy, from the instincts, not from the speculations of men”. His main point:

“Every step and every movement of the multitude, even in what are termed enlightened ages, are made with equal blindness to the future; and nations stumble upon establishments, which are indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design” (An Essay on the History of Civil Society, 1767).

Bill Easterly has noted recently that Ferguson used lack of intentional design to challenge the notion of innate European superiority leading to the right to coerce non-Europeans. He argues that superior group outcomes could not reflect innate superiority because those outcomes “arose from successive improvements that were made, without any sense of their general effect” (The Review of Austrian Economics, 2019).

Bury and Nisbet both recognize the importance to an understanding of progress of Adam Smith’s great work, The Wealth of Nations (1776). Bury notes that as well as a treatise on economic principles, The Wealth of Nations “contains a history of the gradual economic progress of human society, and it suggests the expectation of an indefinite augmentation of wealth and well-being”.

Smith’s well-known contributions on the gains from specialization and trade helped promote a broader understanding of economic progress, and of the potential for governments to hold it back. 

Although he didn’t present a complete model of technological progress, Smith also made an important contribution to understanding of productivity growth. Smith suggested that “the invention of all those machines by which labour is so much facilitated and abridged, seems to have been originally owing to the division of labour”. He observed that people are “much more likely to discover easier and readier methods of attaining any object, when the whole of their minds is directed towards that single object”. That observation anticipates Friedrich Hayek’s insights on the importance of specific knowledge and Edmund Phelps insights on the importance of grassroots innovation to the economic development process.

In my view, Smith’s account of spontaneous order, building on the insights of Adam Ferguson, represents his greatest contribution to an understanding of progress. Smith observed:

“This division of labour, from which so many advantages are derived, is not originally the effect of any human wisdom, which foresees and intends that general opulence to which it gives occasion. It is the necessary, though very slow and gradual, consequence of a certain propensity in human nature, which has in view no such extensive utility; the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another”.

In his oft quoted passage about the “invisible hand”, Smith suggested that an individual pursuing his own commercial interests,

“by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain; and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest, he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it”.

Smith viewed progress as an outcome of voluntary exchange process with potential for mutual benefit. Bill Easterly reminds us that The Wealth of Nations, which is most famous as a critique of zero-sum mercantilist thinking, is also a critique of zero-sum colonialist thinking. Smith was scathing in his criticism of the conquest of the Americas. He wrote:

“The savage injustice of the Europeans rendered an event, which ought to have been beneficial to all, ruinous and destructive to several of those unfortunate countries”.

We can’t turn back history and there is a limit to what can be done to compensate for the injustices of the past, but we should ensure that our personal views of progress are consistent with generation of mutually beneficial outcomes, rather than use of force to enable some to prosper at the expense of others.

Conclusion

Hope for progress involves the expectation that useful knowledge will continue to accumulate, providing growing opportunities for human flourishing, including opportunities for voluntary and mutually beneficial exchange. That concept of progress emerged in Europe in the 17^th century and was fully developed in the 18^th century. Thinkers who were important in developing the concept include Fontenelle, Turgot and Condorcet, in France, and Adam Ferguson and Adam Smith, in Scotland.

What determines opportunities for humans to flourish?

A series of recent articles on this blog has shown that some societies offer better opportunities than others for individuals to have the basic goods of a flourishing human. My aim in this post is to draw threads together to provide an overview of the links between the basic goods and determinants of opportunities to have those goods.

First, I will recap how the basic goods were identified.

Criteria

As explained in the first article in the series, I have adopted the criteria for the basic goods of “the good life” used by Robert and Edward Skidelsky: 

• Universality: not specific to eras or cultures;
• Finality: not just serving as a means to a more basic good;
• Sui generis: not incorporated in some other good;
• Indispensability: lack of the good leads to loss or harm.

Those criteria were developed by Skidelsky and Skidelsky in their book How Much is Enough (2012). Those authors also presented a list of basic goods that I used as a starting point for thinking about the items that should be regarded as basic goods.

The basic goods that I think a flourishing human could be expected to have are:

1. The prospect of a long and healthy life.
2. Wise and well-informed self-direction.
3. Positive relationships with family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances and trading partners.
4. Psychological well-being: emotional stability, positive emotion, satisfaction with material living standards, engagement in doing things for their own sake and learning new things, perception of life as meaningful, a sense of accomplishment, optimism, resilience, vitality, integrity, and self-respect.
5. Living in harmony with nature.

I think my list is comprehensive and have given reasons why I think the items included on it are basic goods. Nevertheless, my perceptions of what it means to be a flourishing human are not incontrovertible.

Some items on this list could be grouped together. Longevity and psychological well-being are both aspects of health. Positive relations with other humans and living in harmony with nature are both aspects of relationships with other living things. However, I think the differences between the items concerned are large enough to warrant separate listing.

Links between the basic goods

The chart shown at the beginning of this post suggests that the basic goods are linked together as an integrated whole when a human is flourishing.

Wise and well-informed self-direction is of central importance. As discussed in the post on that topic, self-direction helps individuals to maintain other basic goods that are necessary to their pursuit of chosen goals.  The exercise of practical wisdom helps individuals to live long and healthy lives, maintain positive relationships, manage their emotional health, and live in harmony with nature.

Psychological well-being depends heavily on other basic goods. As noted in the post on psychological well-being, much of the international variation in life satisfaction scores can be explained by factors that are closely related to other basic goods that a flourishing human could be expected to have. 

The causal link between psychological well-being and self-direction runs in both directions. Sanity is necessary for wise self-direction.

The prospects for people to live long and healthy lives have always depended on living in harmony with nature. That is true even in the modern world. For example, the severity of damage resulting from bushfires recently experienced in Australia may be attributed to failure to have enough regard to living in harmony with nature. In addition to the immediate threat to life posed by the fires, may people have been adversely affected by smoke, which includes particulates that can be detrimental to long term health.

Determinants of opportunities to have the basic goods

Conclusions of the posts relating to each of the basic goods are outlined below.

• Wise and well-informed self-direction: Individuals have strong incentives to learn how to make wise and well-informed choices in societies where there is a great deal of economic and personal freedom. They are likely to have easier access to relevant information in countries with relatively high skill levels.
• The prospect of a long and healthy life: Health spending, income growth and education have contributed substantially to increased longevity. The more fundamental determinants are the cultural and institutional factors that have contributed to economic development, including economic freedom. Long healthy life expectancy is associated with high levels of economic and personal freedom.
• Positive relationships with other humans: The extent to which others can be trusted has an important impact on the opportunities for positive human relationships because it improves incentives for trade and other mutually beneficial activities. Trust levels tend to be higher in countries with relatively low crime rates and adherence to rule of law. Generalized trust, which gives greatest weight to trust of people who have just met and people from different religions and nationalities, tends to be greatest where people hold emancipative values, involving greater tolerance of diversity. Networks of individuals who can rely on each other for social support tend to be strongest in high-income countries.
• Psychological well-being: Countries with the highest average life satisfaction are characterised by relatively high income levels and life expectancy, accompanied by perceptions of strong social support, freedom and low corruption. The percentage of the population who are dissatisfied with life tends to be relatively low in such countries.
• Living in harmony with nature: The sense of kinship that people feel toward some animals living in the wild is similar to their feelings toward household pets. Human reasoning seems likely to continue to expand this sense of kinship to encompass more living things. Rising incomes make people more willing and able to afford more humane treatment of animals.

Common elements among determinants

The most pervasive common elements among the determinants of opportunities to have the basic goods are high incomes and high levels of economic and personal freedom.

The pervasiveness of high incomes as a determinant of opportunities for human flourishing points to the importance of economic growth. I have recently argued that it seems likely that for the foreseeable future the aggregate outcome of choices freely made by individuals as consumers and producers of goods and services will continue to involve further economic growth, even in high income countries.

However, it is possible that, over the longer term, increasing numbers of individuals will choose a lifestyle involving stable incomes and more leisure to one with rising incomes. Such an outcome would be consistent with ongoing growth of opportunities for individuals to live the lives that they aspire to have.

Once we recognize that economic growth is only one possible outcome of personal choices in the context of expanding production and consumption possibilities, that opens the way for us to focus on the determinants of productivity growth, rather than GDP growth outcomes. The cultural and institutional factors that have led to economic growth in the past have potential to continue to raise productivity levels, and thus enable opportunities for human flourishing to continue to expand, even if aggregate demand for goods and services does not continue to grow.

Cultural and institutional factors that support individual self-direction and opportunities for mutually beneficial exchange and cooperation are important not only in enabling people to make effective use of known technology, but also in bringing about improvements in skills, innovation, technological progress and advance of knowledge that enable productivity growth to occur.

Important institutions supporting the ongoing growth of productivity include liberty and rule of law. Individuals need liberty in order to exercise self-direction, and they need trustworthy trading partners and collaborators to engage with for mutual benefit. The perception that others can be trusted is enhanced by widespread adherence to rule of law. Culture is directly important in supporting the advance of knowledge, respect for innovators, and tolerance of diversity. Culture also underpins the values supporting liberty and the rule of law.

 Conclusions

Wise and well-informed self-direction is of central importance among the basic goods of a flourishing human because it helps individuals to maintain the other basic goods. The exercise of practical wisdom helps individuals to live long and healthy lives, maintain positive relationships, manage their emotional health, and to live in harmony with nature.

At a societal level, liberty and rule of law are among the most important determinants of opportunities for individuals to have the basic goods of a flourishing human. That poses the question of why there is greater liberty and adherence to rule of law in some societies than in others.  In order to understand the determinants of opportunities for human flourishing we need to understand the evolution of cultures supporting liberty and the rule of law.

"How dare you?"

I have stopped laughing about Greta Thunberg’s performance at the United Nations a few months ago.

At the time, I was amused by her quixotic antics in attacking world leaders. People who think they can change the world by staging tantrums do not deserve to be taken seriously. It was predictable that Greta’s outburst would have a negligible impact on climate change policies.

I was also amused by Greta’s misconceptions about the relationship between economic growth and climate change.

On reflection, however, those misconceptions are no laughing matter. They are more widely held than I had imagined, including among some people who have had a great deal more education than Greta. By making economic growth the villain, climate activists seem likely to antagonize many of the people who would like more action to be taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Global climate change is perceived to be a serious problem by a high proportion of the population in many different countries. However, there is much less support for action to be taken to limit greenhouse gas emissions. The obvious obstacle is the additional cost to consumers of transition to alternative energy sources (including the cost of energy storage and backup to ensure reliable supplies). The advocates of zero economic growth add another obstacle by telling people they will have to make huge changes in their lifestyles to mitigate climate change. The lifestyle changes required for adaptation may seem preferable to many people.

The nature of economic growth

Misconceptions about the relationship between economic growth and climate change stem largely from ignorance about the nature of economic growth.

When economists talk about economic growth, defined as an increase in the amounts of goods and services produced, some environmentalists just think of increases in the amount of stuff they don’t like. A little further thought might enable them to acknowledge that much additional stuff is being produced these days under environmentally friendly conditions. They might even be particularly fond of some additional stuff e.g. organic food, solar panels, electric cars and batteries. There are also some services they might like, such as health and education. 

Greta and her followers are probably concerned that economic growth requires us to dig up more and more natural resources until there are no more to be discovered. If that was true, it would be easy to understand why they might see endless economic growth as a fairy tale. However, growth in capital stock - created by transforming natural resources into equipment, buildings and infrastructure - typically accounts for only a small proportion of economic growth. In the 1950s, research by Robert Solow, a Nobel prize-winning economist, showed that only one-eighth of the increase in gross national product per man-hour in the United States between 1909 to 1949 could be attributed to increased capital stock. The remaining seven-eighth, which became known as the Solow residual, was attributed to technical change. Subsequent research has shown part of the Solow residual to be associated with improvement in labour skills, with the remainder, often described as total productivity growth (or multifactor productivity growth) being attributed to innovation, technological progress and the advance of knowledge.

Economic growth will probably end one day, but there doesn't seem to be anything inherent within the growth process that must bring that about. How do Greta and her followers propose to end economic growth? Do they propose to require people to take the benefits of technological progress in the form of more leisure, rather than more goods and services? Or do they propose to stop the advance of knowledge and innovation? 

The former approach seems more likely. It is certainly not unprecedented in human history for the advance of knowledge to come to a virtual standstill for long periods. However, it would be surprising to see the environmentalists of wealthy countries advocate policies to make that occur.

Environmental impacts of growth

If economic growth is largely about innovation, technological progress and the advance of knowledge, does it necessarily have adverse environmental impacts?  Of course not! In recent years, a significant amount of research, development and innovation has been directly related to development of alternative energy or other environmentally friendly activities.

Much of the other innovation that has occurred over the last decade or so - for example, improvements in communication technology - seems to have been benign in terms of its environmental impacts. It is possible to think of technological innovations that have raised environmental concerns, e.g. fracking and genetically modified crops, but that could hardly justify the blanket ban on innovation that is implicit in a zero economic growth scenario.

My view of growth

At this point some readers might have gained the impression that I am an advocate of endless GDP growth. That is not so. My reservations about GDP as a measure of well-being, and of GDP growth as a societal objective have been on display in articles I have written over the past 15 year (for example one on the priority given to economic growth in Australia, and one on the concept of Gross National Happiness).

As discussed previously on this blog, I advocate growth in opportunities for human flourishing - that is, growth of opportunities for individuals to live the lives that they aspire to have. If increasing numbers of individuals choose a lifestyle involving stable incomes and more leisure to one with rising incomes, I can see no reason to object (unless they want me to subsidize their lifestyle choice). In my view, there is certainly no case for governments to require or induce people to work harder or longer to foster growth of GDP.

However, it seems likely, even in high income countries, that for the foreseeable future the aggregate outcome of choices freely made by individuals as consumers and producers of goods and services will continue to involve economic growth. That outcomes seems likely, even in the presence of the minimal restrictions on individual freedom are necessary to achieve widely accepted environmental goals.

Those who urge the introduction of policies to stop economic growth are contemplating a great deal more interference with the rights of individuals to manage their own lives than could possibly be justified to pursue widely accepted environmental goals.

Bottom line

Despite substantial reductions in the cost of alternative energy that have occurred over the last decade or so, the cost of transition to alternative energy still seems to be a major obstacle to effective international action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Those who make the false claim that economic growth is incompatible with widely accepted environmental objectives are adding a further obstacle to effective international action.

Instead of frightening people by urging governments to impose huge changes in lifestyles on citizens, perhaps environmental activists could pursue their goals more effectively by making a case for further government funding of research to help make alternative energy more affordable.