The No-Growth Society

Mancur Olsen, Hans H. Landsberg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780713001365
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134722334
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

First Published in 1975. Two policy proposals are particularly notable and owe nothing to the long-standing controversies between left and right. Rather, they suggest new perceptions of reality and a changing sense of values. They are thoroughly radical and indeed subversive since they attack two fundamental features of modern society: its tendency to exponential growth and its assumption of continuous progress. The two proposals are zero economic growth and zero population growth... Quite apart from the question of the desirability of a no-growth society, or even the possibility that it may even be a necessity, what properties should it have? How would its social, political and economic systems function? What would people be like in such a society? What sort of culture or ·consciousness· would be appro­priate in it? ...A careful examination of the no-growth proposals helps to reveal a number of the most fundamental failings and fears of modern life.

Index

Abortion, 23, 49, 60

liberal laws on, 24

Affluence, 37, 85

population policy and rising, 161–164

See also Economic growth

Afghanistan, 154

Africa, 140

Age structure

aged population and, 19–20

birth patterns and, 49

labor force and, 53–56

of U.S. population, 50–51

urban ZPG and, 202–203

Age-specific rates

stable population and, 18

U.S. institutions and, 46

Aged people, see Old people

Agricultural production, 34, 129, 130, 151

fertilizer and yield of, 142

Airplanes, 78

and jet flights in troposphere, 237

social effect of, 79

Air pollution, 65, 123, 239

See also Pollution

Air travel, 65, 67

Algeria, 160

Alienation, 85, 197, 234

Allende, Salvador, 160

Alonso, William, 191–206, 243

Aluminum, 158, 159

Amazon basin, 237

American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Committee on Population, 22

Angkor Wat, 100

Animals, extinction of, 153

Arab countries, 154

Atomic energy (nuclear energy), 10, 39

See also Fusion power

Australia, 35, 140

raw materials controlled by, 158, 159

Automobile, 110

deaths per year due to, 66

mass transit and, 38, 145–146

social effect of, 78–79

spatial pattern of population growth and, 37

Western European ownership of, 65

Automobile emissions, 124

decentralized control and, 128

in U.S. (1946–1967), 36–37

Ayres (author), 238

Banfield, Edward C, 87n

Barnett, H. J., 66, 136n

Batchelder, Alan, 169

“Bathtub model,” 90–91

Baumol, W., 137n

Becker, Gary S., 227n

Beckerman, W., 79n, 221

Beet sugar mills, 124

Beethoven, Ludwig van, 97

Benthamite utility calculations, 108

Bergson, A., 136n

Be...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Zero Population Growth: The Goal and the Means
• Population and the American Predicament: The Case Against Complacency
• Two Cheers for ZPG
• Ills, Bads, and Disamenities: The Wages of Growth
• The Shadow of the Stationary State
• The Risks of Growth
• On Reforming Economic Growth
• The Technology of Zero Growth
• Rich Countries and Poor in a Finite, Interdependent World
• Should the Poor Buy No Growth?
• Urban Zero Population Growth
• Growth vs. No Growth: An Evaluation
• Epilogue
• Index