“I do not believe in struggling to take power, but to build it.”
Hugo Blanco
Growth is what everyone wants. Apparently. So we can pay the banks the interest on the money they created out of nothing.
We could join in too and become a pro-growth party. Just like the other ‘choices’ on offer. All hurtling towards the cliff’s edge at breakneck speed.
Or maybe not. A sick consensus may be a consensus but it is none the less sick for that. And it is our job to change it.
That won’t be easy. Our economy is so hard-wired for growth that failure to grow results in unemployment, political repression, war and other harmful consequences. We need to organise ourselves better so that growth isn’t the only road to prosperity and well-being because, ultimately, in a finite world, we cannot go on that way.
We are grateful to the Optimum Population Trust for drawing our attention to the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE). Some radical policy recommendations from that source can be viewed here.
The CASSE don’t yet have anything to say about devolution for Wessex but it certainly looks like the sort of agenda with which we could engage. Politics needs to be remade, comprehensively, to face the challenges of the 21st century in a non-domineering way. Our movement, for being ourselves in our own space, enjoying life within our reasonable means, is part of that building of power in place of fear.
