Growth: A Reckoning Hardcover – by Daniel Susskind

 

The Amazon introduction starts

"Over the past two centuries, economic growth has freed billions from poverty and made our lives far healthier and longer."

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Growth-Reckoning-Daniel-Susskind/dp/0241542308

But is this even true?

Poverty is relative not absolute. If we break human history into slices, in each slice the amount of poverty is relative to the scale of the richest. If we go back 10,000 years then there was very little poverty. No one expected to have a mobile phone, and so no one was in "mobile phone poverty". There is much greater poverty today because the wealthy have much more wealth than the poor in any period of previous history. So economic growth has actually plunged billions into poverty.

Next up it says our lives are much healthier. It's important to remember that Capitalism split the world into the owners and the owned until slavery ended. Slavery then morphed into employment. Capitalism drove people off the land and created poverty. So people were thrown into unhealthiness in the 1700s by Capitalism. We need to go back before the 1700s. And in the UK we had Feudalism from 1066 where the population had 50% iof their produce stolen by the wealthy. But under Feudalism at least some ordinary people actually had rights to their land and prices and lives were protected unlike the price destruction and exploitation of Capitalism. So it's hard to argue that there has been an increase in healthiness. Certainly a look at mental health issues and anxiety along with sedentary lifestyles of in modern society points to a rapid decrease in healthiness.

Finally our lives are longer. Well that is true but as analysed in this blog it's because of a break-through in understanding of infectious disease that instantly started to help in particular mother and child after birth. This may or may not have led to economic growth, but what is certain is that growth did not lead to an increase in life span. Susskind is making a basic logical error there. A bit of analysis could even say the opposite is true. When Helicobacter pylori was identified as the main cause of stomach ulcers it actually threatened to create an economic contraction! The reason was that one of GSK's main products was used as a remedy for ulcers but they made money from not curing them. Anything that could cure ulcers would create a huge dent in profits. Lawyers from GSK tried very hard to close down the H. pylori research but it was so easily provable and conclusive that they failed. This is classic Capitalism putting growth and profits before patient health and wellbeing. Ideally a truly successful economy shrinks as people become satisfied more easily and for longer. Growth in fact is the enemy of human and planetary well being.

So its quite interesting how the issue here is that people start with a paradigm of Growth and then fit everything into it.

If "growth" is just a box into which people like Susskind try to force things, then there has been no growth! It is rather an approach to understanding the world, a culture, a dogma and one that can be seen to actually counter its supposed aims.

As well analysed in this blog the reason for this is simple. Greed. The wealthy do very well from growth because it makes them money from investing in growing companies. Armed with an insatiable desire for easy money and theft from the poor they instinctively promote any economics that promotes this. Growth and Capitalism have come to the fore as the easiest way for the rich to get even richer. Control of the press in the West then makes it impossible for people to contradict the rich, and control of public opinions and money makes it easy to attack and bomb other countries that try to oppose Western Capitalists taking over and buying up their nations, resources and economies.

Given that Daniel Susskind is a rather dangerous ideologue pedalling and looking post-hoc for justification for an economic system that has destroyed the lives of billions, killed billions and destroyed the planet. I have not read the book but unless he ends up arguing that Growth is the problem he fails to overcome the dogmatic problem at the heart of the problem.

Another angle to this is quite interesting. Daniel Susskind is Jewish. Now the Jews have a long, long history with Usury. Usury is the basis of Capitalism, in that normal people earn money to buy what they need. Capitalists however buy what they don't need to rent it out to those in need thus generating an income stream. The Bible both identifies that the Jews did this, but also identifies that it is harmful because the Jews are not allowed under Jewish law to lend at interest to other Jews. Why should this be banned if it was deemed a helpful and constructive activity? So the Bible tells us at the very start pretty much that usury is harmful. Now the history of Jews is pretty much the history of the harm that they have caused through this Capitalism, and the resentment that Gentiles have for them as a result. Altho it has been whitewashed over by post war propaganda when the Germans blamed the Jews for the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire in the 1930s, we cannot know for sure that is true without considerable research, but it fits into a long history of Jews and makes them certainly likely suspects.

A bit of further history illustrates here how the Jews became so marginalised. I forget the details of which city in Spain and the problems began because Christians and Arabs expand the Bible Law to mean no usury amongst Gentiles also. This meant that the Jews were the only money lenders at interest, and it meant that they lived under different laws from the rest of Europe that meant that they were gradually excluded into their own separate communities. They were given the choice to join the usury laws of the Gentiles and they rejected that preferring their own communities. And so money became the object that dragged the Jews into isolation and ultimately led to all the problems they have faced. In Jewish mythology there is this idea that the cause of all the hardship lies in persecution and that most famously illustrated by captivity in Egypt. But this never happened. Even in the Bible the Jews refer to life in Egypt as good where they lived in their own houses and traded freely. Moses little adventure into the desert in search of the Promised Land is just a Jewish fanciful folly. Now in the West we have this ridiculous concept of "Anti-Semitism" which is really under the hood just basic racism. But in order for the Jews to continue this myth that they are particular hard done by they have a particular type of racism that only happens to them (if that is not racially discriminatory itself - I mean I think the Blacks, American Indians and Gypsies have much more of a case for persecution that the Jews!). SO it really is time we just rid our selves of Jewish propaganda and just saw things how they are. Jews are particular self-serving and have a deep mythology that justifies and protects this, part of which is the whole division of Jews/Gentiles itself. There is no such thing in reality. The Jewish prophet Jesus most famously ran into problems with this division realising that all people were God's children and while the Jews may be foremost that guarantees no place or favour by itself with Heaven. Jews would seriously benefit from lifting the lid on all this nonsense and looking at the harm they have done. And "Growth" comes straight from Jewish thinking. Hearing Susskind realising that things are not good in Jewish thinking is great. But reading the start of the Amazon summary you realise he has literally no idea how deep the problems go. In many ways a Jew will be the last person on Earth to fix these problems because of  the almost ontological way they are welded to them. Susskind should deal with his Jewishness first before dealing with problems that affect everyone Jewish or not.

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On the question of Usury itself:

I wonder why other money lenders did not emerge in the Mediaeval period that just lent in the normal way of simply expecting the money back, perhaps with collateral if it was stolen. I mean if you have too much money then why not lend it? It does you no harm and its very useful to someone else. I mean you could just give it away in charity, that is an even better option. What mentality leads to you to charge the needy interest? You don't need more money yourself because you can get it the same place you got the other money. There is a very good reason that the Bible bans Usury, because it is ungodly. Now why it allows it between Jews and Gentiles is really something for the Jews to puzzle over and ask God.

"If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as a usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury." [Exodus 22: 25]

It is that "my people" which is the whole problem for Jews. I will investigate this further. But it is simply ignorant to suggest that the Jews have not heaped all their problems upon themselves.

Playfully I wonder as suggested in this blog before that the Jews really ended up following the Devil. Jacob is a shady character. Firstly with his mother's help he tricks Isaac into inheriting the family line, and then basis his calling on a suspicious dream he has at a place between Beersheba, and Haran. I think anyone of the time would be most suspicious of dreams and spirits met in the desert. I wonder that Jacob was not driven by the Devil to lead the Jews astray. His elder brother Esau was the true inheritor of the bloodline to Abraham. And that means that Moses was not of the main bloodline of Abraham and the Usury laws in Exodus are potentially corrupted. Much research to do but unfortunately no Jew will be able to do this research because it to too fundamental to them.