It's true that a growth economy is needed in third-world countries, but the curve is also steepening, so it's not as if we need another hundred years of similar

It's true that a growth economy is needed in third-world countries, but the curve is also steepening, so it's not as if we need another hundred years of similar progress in order for everyone to come closer to parity (that is, the curve of human progress in general) It's quite easy to argue against the underlying principle of the growth economy, because it pre-supposes that the previous 100 years of industrialized capitalism are what's going to continue to fix the world's problems. It also scares me that China's growth, for instance, is tied to me being able to go to walmart and get a cheap skateboard I'm never going to use and a huge LCD TV I'm going to throw away in two years. Our economic system of moving capital and wealth creation is now dependent on being convinced to want things we don't need, and shuffling around the systems of credit we created for that system. It used to be about creating value- mostly having to do with real things that fulfilled basic human needs, and now that the market's power isn't based on that, credit default swaps are what we come up with. It's a logical conclusion of a system that only has the principal of growth behind it. Obviously our market-based capitalistic system is the only viable way to efficiently move capital around right now, but you can't blame someone for being unhappy with the underlying message that growth is the only way forward, forever. Some people would argue that we've already reached the peak of the curve in the first world.