I rather like the following passage from yesterday's FT article by Samuel Brittan. In the early part of his article, he is arguing that various economic wisebirds are forecasting that economic growth will shortly pick up strongly in America. I am not at all sure about that myself, but this is beside the point because Brittan then proceeds to write some interesting words about the famous (or infamous) "no-growth" society that was much talked about 30 or 40 years ago when those dreadful environmental activists started raising their concerns about the sustainable future of the planet:

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[Of the resumption of growth.] What are the threats to this benign prospect? The first is debt; the second, imbalances. The third is concern about the "consumer society", which was first raised in the 1960s and 1970s and has since resurfaced at regular intervals. Does the health of western capitalism really depend on finding more and more gadgets and personal services, which the consumer at home or abroad will work or borrow to purchase? Will there be a point where "enough is enough", where a yearning for a less hectic pace of life takes over and we approach "the stationary state" enthusiastically outlined some 150 years ago by John Stuart Mill? These are important long-term questions. But for the near term a faltering in world growth would mainly reflect a failure of the economic mechanism rather than a deep change in attitudes. ("Despite debt and deficits, recovery is taking hold", Financial Times, 12 September 2003)

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For my part, I do not advocate a no-growth economy tout court. The results would be disastrous for most. But I think it might well happen, if not in the short term, but certainly in the slightly longer term. There are three factors which I think will bring it about:

1. As cheap and readily accessible oil and gas resources come under more competitive pressure, energy costs will rise enormously and will gradually restructure almost every practice of our everyday way of life, in particular, the costs involved in commuting and maintaining large megapolises;

2. The stress of life of those in the more responsible jobs is increasing remorselessy, together with a lack of time or energy to use more consumer products;

3. An increasing technical ability to decentralise a very great deal of our high-skill work (e.g. energy production, technical control, education) into communities and much smaller habitation patterns -- that is, villages and small towns rather than large cities -- so that there may be a more equitable distribution of jobs.

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St. Augustine:

O Lord, give me chastity and continency -- but not yet.

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