Economic Growth—A Saving Deity or Life-Threatening Cancer?

In the past 25 years Growth has risen in the pantheon of financial deities. Our economy depends on it so much that the financial sector and government have changed the rules to allow more and more phantom products to be created—all to keep the market indicators growing. But on a planet created with limits, releasing Growth from limits gives worship to a deity who will destroy us, not save us.

“Our economy needs a serious makeover,” writes David Korten, “It is a design issue. In January 2009, Korten launched his book, Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth. Appropriately, the launch came at a venue, Trinity Church, New York, at the corner of Wall Street and Broadway, because the cover announces, “Why Wall Street can’t be fixed and how to replace it.” In less than 200 pages, Korten not only gives a 12-point agenda for a new economy, he shows how Wall Street has become irrelevant to the wellbeing of people, the Earth, and local communities. The market indices, which business news follows so closely, measure what he calls phantom wealth, but are increasingly disconnected from real wealth. In the past it has been argued that the Dow or S&P are close enough to real wealth to serve as proxies for it, so that our wellbeing can be quantified and measured. But that no longer describes today’s economy.

Korten contrasts phantom wealth—money made off of money without creating anything of value for anyone but the trader—with real wealth, which creates goods and services for people. He notes that business news does not typically report any adequate measures of real wealth. GDP, for example, does not give us reliable information about human or planet well-being, because it cannot distinguish between when an industry is polluting the river and air or cleaning it up. It registers growth in both cases, but registers nothing if a pristine lake and woods remains untouched, though the wooded lake contributes greatly to the valuable resources in a community.

This dysfunctional economic design has been unmasked by the financial power plays since 2008. No longer can we have faith in an economic design that MUST grow in order to thrive and prosper. We must change the design. Korten’s 12 point agenda for a new economy resonates with the jubilee economy on this website.

A number of economic commentators are now making the analogy between cancer cells and a growth-based economy because both require unlimited growth, feeding on their host, even though their host has limited resources. It’s a recipe for system failure, even death. The argument is growing that living economies and societies do best to mimic nature’s processes of growth rather than unlimited growth. The continuing creation and evolution present in nature is the result of billions of years of research and development on how life can thrive. Copying creation rejects unlimited growth.

In 1996, I was diagnosed with two cancers. Surgery was scheduled but it was a long three weeks later. During those three weeks I read a lot about what to do to help my seriously diseased body and spirit. I read that cancer cells were overwhelming and outwitting my immune system. Though they appeared to be strong cells, in truth, they were weak. They survived ONLY by unlimited growth. Their growth demands on my limited body would ultimately defeat them because both they and my body would die. There had to be radical intervention to stop them. In my case that intervention included surgery and chemo as well as personal lifestyle changes. I needed to become a devoted friend of my immune system, and not demand it do more than it could.

As a result, cancer became a transformational kiln in which I was able to hear more clearly God’s change of direction for me. Through this redirection, I began to focus my energies on a new economy, one biblically and spiritually based, one that was ancient and cutting edge at the same time. With the help of others, the nonprofit sponsoring this website was born.

That was in 1996. Now, understanding the patterns and mysteries of economics has become my passion, because I believe that in our daily economic choices, we either strengthen the immune system of creation or weaken and overwhelm it. Either we feed the cancer of an economy requiring endless growth on a limited planet, or we boost the immune system that controls growth through unswerving commitment to life. These choices are now before us every day. Where we buy, invest, donate, and deposit our money supports institutions connected to phantom wealth and the economy of death or real wealth and the economy of life. The choices in our daily lives are as much a matter of a wholly/holy new direction economically as were the changes I needed to make in my life and relationships when cancer showed me I was out of balance. Similarly, our choices need to honor the Creator’s design and the amazing immune system of our planet, Mother Earth.

Cancer continues to be a dreaded word—one we don’t want to hear used for anyone we love or know. The same dread applies to cancerous economic growth. Just as our immune systems deserve our love and devotion, so, too, do the economic choices that shun unlimited growth for an economy that mimics nature. Earth’s immune system is now energized and the processes of rejecting unlimited economic growth are present throughout the environment. Nature’s design insists on real wealth, the resources of life.

At this moment, the corporate and economic officials leading the global economy continue to plan for growth without regulation or limits. No intervention in this cancer economy is being touted. Apart from these leaders of the Dominant Economy filled with cancerous disease is the work of millions working daily for an economy with healthy limits and regulations. Korten’s 12 point agenda or the themes advocated in a jubilee economy help us choose an economy of life. Growth is not a saving deity.