I. The Birth of Classical Economics and the Growth Paradigm

The problem of unilineal economic growth began in 18^th century Europe, evidently in response to concerns about potential population growth. The human population “accelerated considerably after 1700,” Thomas Piketty wrote, “with average growth rates on the order of 0.4 percent per year in the eighteenth century and 0.6 percent in the nineteenth.” ^{Footnote 5} But the productivity of human labour at that time was limited. Most labourers lived hand-to-mouth. Arendt referred to them as ‘animal laborans.’ They quickly consumed the modest fruits of their labours and stored little that could be useful to their private lives or to others in any enduring sense. Arendt wrote, “Labor’s products, the products of man’s metabolism with nature, do not stay in the world long enough to become part of it.” ^{Footnote 6} The biological process of labour itself, which John Locke regarded as the sole source of personal and real property, was “unending,” according to Arendt. ^{Footnote 7} It was but one feature of “nature’s prescribed cycle, toiling and resting, laboring and consuming, with the same happy and purposeless regularity with which day and night and life and death follow each other.” ^{Footnote 8} Edwin Markham expressed this condition well for The Dearborn Independent in 1925. He wrote,

The 18^th century knew many such labourers, but it also witnessed increases of wealth, which consisted of capital, assets, and personal possessions enjoyed almost exclusively by a minority, propertied class. Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote of the great majority, “the supernumerary inhabitants, who were too weak or too indolent to make such acquisitions in their turn” and who “remained the same” while “everything about them changed.” ^{Footnote 10} Incremental developments in analogical technology facilitated differential improvements in living standards across 18^th century Europe. The labouring poor would have noticed and felt the increasing affluence of the rich. The situation was precarious for everyone, but “[t]he rich in particular” had more to lose from social unease. ^{Footnote 11} Rousseau postulated that society’s elite convinced the uneducated poor that everyone would benefit by following rules of universal applicability, knowing full well that such rules would disproportionately benefit themselves. ^{Footnote 12} This promise of substantive equalization via the rule of law could not have ensured social security if the poorest members of society were not lifted a little higher from their arduous lives. Jeff Madrick wrote of this time, “Continued material improvement was necessary to reinforce people’s confidence and newfound beliefs.” ^{Footnote 13} Classical economics was born from precisely this challenge of how to circulate wealth systematically in order to increase the standard of living for all. This social reform-minded focus was the root of the economic growth paradigm that prevails to this day, a “conventional wisdom” that exclusively governs social policy in all Western countries. ^{Footnote 14} But in 1972 William Nordhaus and James Tobin begged to differ. In their view, the “mainstream of economic analysis” was “not comfortable with phenomena of change and progress,” ^{Footnote 15} a proposition that seems patently at odds with history’s “march of events” ^{Footnote 16} and mainstream economic policy.

For reform-minded analysts of post-revolutionary France, such as Thomas Malthus, the economic challenge was not to end the daily struggle to subsist, for subsistence had been accomplished. It was to ameliorate hand-to-mouth living among the burgeoning population of peasants and menial labourers. ^{Footnote 17} The world in which Malthus, Adam Smith, and David Ricardo lived had been so poor for so long that “nothing was so important as to win an increase in wealth.” ^{Footnote 18} Malthus made clear that he was concerned with how population growth “Affects the Future Improvement of Society.” His mathematical premise, that human population growth increased exponentially (“in geometrical ratio”), whereas the earth’s food supply increased only “in arithmetical ratio,” underpinned his real concern about “the perfectibility of the mass of mankind.” ^{Footnote 19} He was concerned that all the members of society could never live “in ease, happiness, and comparative leisure” if population growth was not appropriately curtailed. ^{Footnote 20}

Malthus’ concern reflected prevalent thinking that natural resources, or at least human abilities to access them, were scarce. At least in theory, Europe’s significant population growth in the 18^th century threatened to intensify competition among individuals for the means of subsistence. The notion of competition was fundamental to the “central tradition” of economics, which Galbraith defined as the “main current of ideas in descent from [Adam] Smith.” ^{Footnote 21} In 1930 John Maynard Keynes wrote, “the economic problem, the struggle for subsistence, always has been hitherto the primary, most pressing problem of the human race—not only of the human race, but of the whole of the biological kingdom from the beginning of life in its most primitive forms.” ^{Footnote 22} Malthus wanted this struggle to be softer, consistent with his belief in the perfectibility of humankind.

Significantly, Malthus recognized that human population growth appeared to put pressure on the employment opportunities of labourers. He understood that increased competition for remunerated work led more labourers to work harder and to accept lower earnings for their work, which in turn financially enabled “cultivators” (i.e., farmers or land owners) to employ more labourers, thereby producing greater yields or “means of subsistence” from land. Increased yields in turn improved the living standards of the extended labouring demographic, leading to increased population growth among them, such that “the same retrograde and progressive movements with respect to happiness [would be] repeated.” Malthus believed that this cycle of human population growth, mass poverty, and population de-growth in America would take longer to materialize because “the reward of labour [was] at present so liberal” there. ^{Footnote 23} He was correct in very broad strokes. The American population growth rate increased sizably in the 19^th century, trailed off slightly in the 20^th century, and is expected to decrease to zero by the end of the 21^st century. ^{Footnote 24}

Scarcity was perceived to be the premise of the cyclical socio-economic problem Malthus had identified, so his solution was to alter that premise. Malthus proposed that only a concerted policy in favour of constant economic growth could de-couple the links of the cycle he had postulated. He contended that populations had not grown as “demanded” in Europe ^{Footnote 25} because “the funds necessary to support” increased populations had not been prepared. By his reasoning, if “cultivation” was promoted, then “the demand for agricultural labour” and “the produce of the country” would both increase. In turn, “the condition of the labourer” would improve and, most important, “no apprehensions whatever” would need to “be entertained of the proportional increase of population.” ^{Footnote 26} Thus, if the necessary funds were advanced—one may think of 20^th and 21^st century stimulus policies—Malthus believed that purposeful, unilineal material productivity and economic growth could indefinitely support population growth. ^{Footnote 27} Such a belief was the very seed of the economists’ growth paradigm that prevails today.

Europeans had not experienced long-term or sustained economic growth prior to the 18^th century. Galbraith observed, “[e]nduring success was at odds with all history and could not be expected.” ^{Footnote 28} Arendt traced the conceptual origins of “a limitless accumulation of wealth” to Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. ^{Footnote 29} Smith had “aggregate wealth” in mind and optimistically envisioned an economically “advancing national community, not a stagnant or declining one.” ^{Footnote 30} Arendt emphasized that Smith’s model of economic growth was auto-genetic and in that sense naturalistic. The belief that “money begets money” owes “its plausibility,” she contended, “to the underlying metaphor of the natural fertility of life.” ^{Footnote 31} This much is true, but natural fertility is not necessarily consistent with unyielding growth for any particular individual or species. As a biological norm, growth is limited for almost all of life’s flora and fauna. Ursula Franklin wrote, “Growth occurs; it is not made. Within a growth model, all that human intervention can do is to discover the best conditions for growth and then try to meet them. In any given environment, the growing organism develops at its own rate.” ^{Footnote 32} This observation is a perfect statement of a permaculturist understanding of and approach to growth.

Smith’s “invisible hand” is consistent with an auto-genetic growth or fertility metaphor. ^{Footnote 33} Capital does not automatically bloom. Its petals derive from a stem, which is rooted in the earth. National economies do not auto-genetically grow. As Madrick explained, “Through the Invisible Hand, consumers registered their desires and business received signals about where to invest or divest. The economy thus grew. This theory swept aside many of the seeming complexities of economic incentives and fairness, allowed them to be reduced to a single economic mechanism.” ^{Footnote 34} This magical force is metaphorically naturalistic just because nature does not make self-evident all the “seeming complexities” by which her regenerative processes operate. Mother Nature cannot answer the question: Why is there anything (such as nature) rather than nothing? ^{Footnote 35} Thus, unwavering free-market economists today speak of such economies as self-correcting because of the invisible hand. ^{Footnote 36} Within a permaculture paradigm, an economy could self-correct, but the self-correcting mechanism would be the invisible and visible organic interrelationships of the wider eco-system in which it is located.

Arendt rightly noted that the underlying logic of Smith’s economic free-market expectations rested on empirical or factual assumptions that were contestable. In particular she noted that classical economists “assumed that man … acts exclusively from self-interest” and is driven solely by “the desire for acquisition.” ^{Footnote 37} The validity of this assumption is difficult to test but David Hume proposed that “[m]en often act knowingly against their interest” and discussed how and why. ^{Footnote 38} Nordhaus and Tobin accept that “the philosophical problems raised by the malleability of consumer wants are too deep to be resolved in economic accounting.” ^{Footnote 39}

Because many variables influence the formation of personal and public wealth, the tendentious rhythm of economies is periodic, from growth to recession, and over again. Galbraith wrote that the “etymology” of the “so-called business cycle” emphasized the rhythm, not just the depressions, that would be followed by “good times,” just as “bad times followed good.” ^{Footnote 40} Smith’s unidirectional economic hope for national economies was a dismissal of eternally recurring natural rhythms ^{Footnote 41} —of the “purposeless regularity” with which the dead of winter follows the life of spring, to borrow Arendt’s expression.

II. The Growth of Real and Artificial Consumer Demand

In the 18^th century national wealth in Europe showed “a steady and persistent improvement,” an achievement, Galbraith noted, that “must be counted one of the momentous events in the history of the world.” ^{Footnote 42} Even so, economic problems were emerging that were only obtusely connected to the stubborn problem of sustaining society’s numerous poor. In the late 18^th century productivity was increasing as “the factory began to replace the household at an accelerating rate as the center of productive activity.” ^{Footnote 43} This development exemplifies Arendt’s observation that labour had moved gradually from the confines of private or domestic life into the public sphere. ^{Footnote 44} In the 18^th century and first half of the 19^th century discreet socio-economic groups benefitted differentially from the ever-increasing material output of labourers and machinery. Galbraith noted that “the improvement in the masses was far less evident than the increase in industrial and mercantile wealth.” ^{Footnote 45} Even so, improvements in standards of living were marked partly by increases in material comforts and possession of durable goods. A comparatively greater number of these durable or useful goods were being produced, meaning products not intended to be immediately consumed for nourishment, such as agricultural produce. Manufacturers expected that their wares would be used over the long term. A vicious economic circle was emerging from this expectation and, not coincidentally, “[e]conomic ideas began to take their modern form.” ^{Footnote 46}

The rate of production of durable goods was threatening to exceed personal need and the question needs to be asked: Why? Why did durable goods begin to be made on a scale that exceeded their necessity for personal subsistence or even modest levels of comfort? This question begs the further question: Why has anyone ever wished to produce any unnecessary thing. This question cannot be answered decisively but it must be addressed in order to make an important point about technological advancement.

Necessity was likely the mother of invention up to an historical point and then only again after invention became necessary to resolve problems it had created. Undoubtedly human subsistence and endurance were once facilitated by the creation of physical techniques and tools such as arrow heads and shafts, fishing nets, or snares, but any anthropologist, historian, or cognitive scientist would be hard pressed to prove that the mere stirring of the human imagination or intellect has always been contingent upon a need to subsist. Pan’s flute, John Keats’ Grecian urn, and Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night were not conceived from economic necessity.

Human intellectual activity is indefatigable and humankind wishes to realize or to fabricate the products of its mind. As H.G. Wells observed, “Man lives to make—in the end he must make, for there will be nothing else left for him to do.” ^{Footnote 47} In the 19^th century men who felt a strong impulse to create or to invent things were no less desirous of earning an income for their creative efforts than the likes of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci had been centuries earlier. Other persons who might seek to suppress the creative application of mechanical know-how must defend their selectivity—their belief that some imaginary designs deserve to see the light of day while others should remain in private minds. ^{Footnote 48}

During the Industrial Revolution the capabilities of invention promised higher standards of material living for an increasingly wider segment of society. As more wooden chairs and tables were made by more factory hands, more personal demand for these products arose. Whether chairs, tables, and other ‘goods’ enhance one’s quality of daily life might be debatable among people of different societies and cultures, but M. Germaine Garnier astutely wrote, “The amendment and extension of culture, and consequently the progress of industry and commerce, have no other cause than the extension of artificial wants.” ^{Footnote 49} Increased consumer demand for durable goods determined the progress of industry and commerce because it gave inventors a reason to spend their time and energy inventing—namely, to sell their inventions to buyers. As Joseph Schumpeter noted, “inventing itself” tends to be a function of “the capitalist process.” ^{Footnote 50}

In the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries consumers could be said to have wanted chairs and tables artificially for at least two reasons. First, the furniture made their daily lives more comfortable, and second, persons of higher status were known to have chairs and tables. Thorstein Veblen demonstrated convincingly that personal desire to possess goods that wealthier persons possess has been a highly influential factor in consumer demand throughout history. In his words, “[t]he motive that lies at the root of ownership is emulation” and “the propensity for emulation is probably the strongest and most … persistent of economic motives” other than “the instinct of self-preservation.” ^{Footnote 51} In short, people want not only to survive but to have what the Joneses have. So, when Carrie Meeber arrived in Theodore Dreiser’s Chicago, “the sight of wealth and the merry life of the city had awakened in her a desire to reach something higher and to live better.” The “less expensively dressed” men who patronized Hurstwood’s saloon emulated “the more expensively dressed.” ^{Footnote 52} Such was the economic power of emulation as Veblen understood it.

As technological know-how advanced during the Industrial Revolution, the process of transforming ideas into products became more capital intensive. Production methods became more mechanically complicated, not simpler, and the design, trial, and retrial of advanced mechanisms involved increasing capital outlays. Antoine Louis Claude Destutt de Tracy understood that industrial innovation depended on “enormous advances” and that men with capital were careful about the risks involved in bringing scientific ideas to commercial viability. ^{Footnote 53} Even so, to withhold capital from potentially useful inventions was to impede progress. Such conventional wisdom persists today.

So Destutt de Tracy invited his readers “to think with the man who broke all his furniture, to encourage industry.” ^{Footnote 54} He understood that individuals would prefer to keep their hard-earned furniture intact but his economic logic was simple: the only financial purpose of industry was to produce goods for which there was meaningful consumer demand (enabling a return on investment), yet consumer demand would dwindle as consumers acquired more durable goods. Such reasoning explains why “industry” would want to create ever more (i.e., ‘artificial’) consumer demand from the man with durable furniture. Destutt de Tracy also recognized that, by this same logic or theory, pro-growth governments needed their citizens to consume freely. He explained:

Thus, a man with furniture is encouraged to be wasteful (or is discouraged from being “economical”) for the sake of the broader socio-economic system because he depends upon wider cycles of consumption and production for his own economic security. Destutt de Tracy understood precisely why early 19^th century politicians either urged or should have urged citizens to consume material goods: to stimulate investment in technological innovation, which would enrich everyone’s lives.

Destutt de Tracy was a prototypical utilitarian. He believed that France’s idle elites should parcel out their large capital reserves to entrepreneurs who, by transforming seed capital into manufacturing enterprises, would improve material living conditions for everyone. He wanted “industrious men” to acquire capital for their ventures so as to be able to employ useful labourers. ^{Footnote 56} This redistribution of capital to the “industrious class” would “economise” otherwise wasteful funds. ^{Footnote 57} France’s economic elite could serve their own financial interests by facilitating a healthy national economy, in particular a demand-driven economy.

Both Destutt de Tracy and Arendt understood human consumption as the eternally recurring binary opposite of labour. ^{Footnote 58} Destutt de Tracy regarded it as the natural and necessary “contrary” of production. ^{Footnote 59} More specifically, he saw consumption as “the destruction of utility” and reasoned that, because consumption “continually destroys that which it has produced,” the “motion of riches” remains “perpetual.” ^{Footnote 60} Arendt proposed that, as a psychological matter, an increasing abundance of durable goods leads consumers to treat such goods as non-durable; to turn them over and dispose of them while they are still useful. For her, the ‘good things’ in life tend to be perceived as those that can be consumed immediately—akin to natural produce that spoils if not consumed quickly. She explained, “we must consume, devour, as it were, our houses and furniture and cars as though they were the ‘good things’ of nature which spoil uselessly if they are not drawn swiftly into the never-ending cycle of man’s metabolism with nature.” ^{Footnote 61} But many of the good things of life are understood to be precisely those goods that can be stored or preserved—things that will not spoil over the mid-term. Winter storage and preservation are critical to human subsistence and animal survival in many parts of the world. This plain biological reality is critical to the permaculture paradigm of growth, which emphasizes that growth is most enduring when left to its naturally periodic cycles of growth and dormancy. Galbraith noted of 17^th century America, “In a country that was being carved from the wilderness, thrift and labor were the obligations of everyone, for they conserved and enlarged the supply of goods which sustained life itself.” ^{Footnote 62} Abundance followed by personal thrift meant increased resilience to potential danger and insecurity. Moreover, as a psychological matter, household accumulation of high-quality and durable but unessential possessions has been viewed as a hallmark of socio-economic status and success throughout history. ^{Footnote 63} Valuable fine art and race car collections reflect social superiority. Both Veblen and Galbraith noted that the strictly ornamental features of durable goods are precisely what gives social status to the goods themselves. ^{Footnote 64}

III. The Importance of a Belief in Progress to the Growth Paradigm

The notion of progress is critical to the economist’s growth paradigm. Henri Claude de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon, was a contemporary of Destutt de Tracy, who expressly desired to see the great mass of French citizens lifted from poverty. He believed that technological creativity was the key to their salvation and to social progress. ^{Footnote 65} Saint-Simon, like Destutt de Tracy, was a consummate utilitarian or instrumentalist. Alice MacIver wrote that, for Saint-Simon, a bright future for man depended upon industry and “the only productive work to be done was to increase the nation’s wealth by trade, commerce and industry.” ^{Footnote 66} Saint-Simon believed that “industrial chiefs” should be society’s leaders. ^{Footnote 67} Arguably he got his wish because economic and technological considerations have since strongly influenced Western political management of domestic affairs, which is entirely in keeping with Arendt’s observation that the public sphere has become predominantly utilitarian. Robert Hébert and Albert Link noted that Saint-Simon “believed that social policy should be adopted to the needs of production” and “welcomed the disintegration of feudalism and the advent of its replacement, industrialism.” By ‘industrialisme,’ Saint-Simon meant “the triumph of technology over backwardness, of science and reason over superstition and custom.” ^{Footnote 68} His English contemporary, Mary Shelley, presented a sanguine picture of what that triumph could look like.

Shelley’s Frankenstein was published just a year before Saint-Simon’s Parable was published. Frankenstein delivered a gothic morality tale about the grand expectations man had for science. Having listened to Professor Waldman praise the breakthroughs of 18^th century chemists—how they had acquired “new and almost unlimited powers; [how] they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows”—Victor Frankenstein knew he could achieve more yet, so he created one of the most well-known monsters of Western literature. ^{Footnote 69} And, just as he eventually came to regret his achievement and felt the need to kill it, so today scientists, politicians, and activists desperately try to undo the great destruction that their technologically preoccupied forebearers have wreaked upon nature. Modern concerted efforts to combat acid rain, CO₂ emissions, and global warming or climate change through all manner of regulations, treaties and accords simply reflect a belated recognition that the dangerous beast created by industrialisme and the impetus to human and social perfection need to be restrained.

Shelley had read Humphry Davy’s A Discourse, Introductory to a Course of Lectures on Chemistry, which observed, “science has done much for man but it is capable of doing still more.” ^{Footnote 70} Fifty years earlier Rousseau proposed that the characteristic of humankind that sets it apart from other animals is its “faculty of improvement” or perfectibilité, which, according to translator Lester G. Crocker, “means the capacity to make progress.” ^{Footnote 71} To recall, Malthus also wrote of “the perfectibility of the mass of mankind.” This 250-year-old belief in human perfectibility and progress remains the irrational yet central driving force behind Western governments’ perpetual push for economic growth.

In 1895 Wells parodically depicted one possible state of human perfection. His Time Traveller glimpsed human life in the year 802,701 A.D. and observed “[s]ocial triumphs” such as “mankind housed in splendid shelters” and “gloriously clothed.” No one was engaged in “toil” and there was “neither social nor economic struggle.” Such observations “strengthened” the traveller’s belief “in a perfect conquest of Nature.” ^{Footnote 72} While actually travelling to America in 1906, Wells surmised,

By mid-19^th century Destutt de Tracy’s entrepreneur had become the fulcrum of technological advance and increased social prosperity. Galbraith wrote that “in the early years of the Industrial Revolution … [i]t was the wealth of the new entrepreneurs, not that of their workmen, which was everywhere celebrated.” ^{Footnote 74} By the end of the 19^th century, however, the economies of Britain and America were in dire straits. Another economic winter had set in. Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace observed that “capitalism’s ability to supply goods” had outpaced “the American market’s ability to consume them” and that overproduction was widely considered responsible for the lackluster economic state. ^{Footnote 75}

IV. The Vicious Circle of Overproduction

As was to be expected of a non-stop economic growth paradigm, the professionally prescribed remedy for overproduction was more consumption of durable goods. Destutt de Tracy had articulated this logic when he wrote, “consumption is the measure of production, for wherever sale ceases production stops” and “industrious men produce only because they find consumers for their productions.” ^{Footnote 76} By the end of the 19^th century the systemically increased speed at which goods were being produced had intensified or entrenched some economists’ beliefs that increased consumption was critical to socio-economic growth and prosperity. John Hobson explained,

“Checked” production meant machine owners would slow down their machines’ output and reduce their employment of human bodies and hands. A “large quantity of labour” would be lost. ^{Footnote 78} So unemployment was the real and immediate fear and machines were identified as the preferred means of alleviating that fear because machine production required at least semi-skilled and unskilled workers. The deeper concern was that capitalists who profited little or lost money on their machine investments would be reluctant to re-invest in technological innovation, thereby causing “industrial disease” ^{Footnote 79} or economic stagnation.

With such reasoning the vicious circle of economic growth was fully underway. The ouroboros serpent of overproduction had to consume its own tail in order to remain alive. As Arendt put it, abundance had to be depleted by consumption. Consistent with this view, Hobson and Alfred Mummery wrote, “in the normal state of modern industrial communities, consumption limits production and not production consumption.” ^{Footnote 80} The economic objective was not to temper production to levels consistent with normal human consumption tendencies—to let growth happen as it might—but rather to increase levels of consumption to meet increased levels of machine production.

Hobson, Mummery, and Destutt de Tracy’s views were perfectly consistent with Garnier’s view that “artificial wants” drove technological innovation, but on the cusp of the 20^th century the wants of England’s various social echelons were arguably becoming increasingly artificial. People were not necessarily happier, ^{Footnote 81} but the material comforts of household life and public utilities were increasing, however slightly. Producers were putting more effort into creating consumer desire by employing print advertising and in burgeoning cities consumer emulation did this promotional work for them, just as Dreiser had depicted in Sister Carrie. Henry Ford soon devised assembly-line production of automobiles and increased productive efforts to 24-hour cycles in three consecutive eight-hour manpower shifts. He understood that more goods could be bought if more people could afford them. His pay increase to $5 per day heretically violated the Iron Law of Wages, being that wage earners should earn only enough to subsist. ^{Footnote 82} It gave his auto workers spare income to purchase comparatively more goods. Their reduced eight-hour daily shifts gave them leisure time and therefore the incentive to own motor vehicles.

Edward Filene imagined that Ford’s heightened production techniques and consumer-sensitive approach to business could bring prosperity across the globe. He believed that the bottlenecking problem identified by Hobson and Mummery was a pseudo problem, as competition would lead producers to develop increasingly low-cost methods, which in turn would make their goods affordable to the millions of people “living with almost no buying power as yet.” ^{Footnote 83} Consumers with buying power could purchase goods at a pace that met production or withhold their earnings, so they were in the driver’s seat. The mass-producer was at their behest. If a global economy based on mass-production was to succeed, citizens of all nations had to acquire more buying power. Filene wanted everyone to become “much better customers,” ^{Footnote 84} which is precisely how the global economic world is unfolding. In the 20^th century and in this century meaningful dips in consumer activity were reflexively re-stimulated in one way or another by government fiscal policy. Keynes advised “patriotic housewives” in post-depression 1930 to “sally out to-morrow early into the streets and go to the wonderful sales which are everywhere advertised.” Increased shopping was believed to be “the only possible means of making the wheels of economic progress and of the production of wealth go round again.” ^{Footnote 85} Indeed, Keynes likened the sunken economy at the time to a sick “patient” who needed “exercise,” not “rest.” ^{Footnote 86} Certainly exercise can be a wise prescription for medical depression in some cases, but not always. The economist’s principled aversion to rest may be contrasted with the Toraic concept of shmita and its proscription against the agricultural use of land every seven years. Implicit in this periodic practice was a sense that individuals could readily endure a period of economic fallowness if they had conserved the fruits of a prior harvest. David Krantz wrote of this period, “as farmers [were] prohibited from working the land, the public [was] restricted to eating food from plants that [grew] wildly; food from perennial plants; and food preserved from previous seasons.” ^{Footnote 87} Such a custom is entirely consistent in broad strokes with permaculture thinking. Where agriculture is concerned, permaculturists understand that fallow periods and “minimum human intrusion” can have better regenerative effects than constant cultivation. ^{Footnote 88} Yet, the prevailing political-economic prescription is vigorous exercise in the form of stimulated consumption. Once the patient begins to satisfy ‘artificial’ wants, capitalists can restore their machines to optimal capacity and help entrepreneurs make even better machines. In turn, more individuals will be employed and, as Malthus put it, “the same retrograde and progressive movements with respect to happiness [will be] repeated.” ^{Footnote 89}

As mass production techniques became normalized into the 20^th century, the prevailing growth paradigm required that durable consumer goods become increasingly non-durable. Hard-earned furniture would not have to be broken, just to create a new need, if it was of poor quality or designed for mid-term use. Arendt and Marshall McLuhan understood this. Arendt explained that “the endlessness of production can only be assured if … the rate of use [of products] is so tremendously accelerated that the objective difference between use and consumption, between the relative durability of use objectives and the swift coming and going of consumer goods, dwindles to insignificance.” ^{Footnote 90} Similarly, McLuhan wrote that “[a]ccelerated change and planned obsolescence constitute the basic principle of an industrial-power economy built on applied science …. Whether it’s new books or light bulbs, they must not clutter up the scene for too long.” ^{Footnote 91} McLuhan and Arendt understood that capitalism had come to thrive on the continuous production and consumption of increasingly disposable forms of otherwise durable goods, the disposable razor being a perfect symbol of the system. ^{Footnote 92} The global economic tendency continues in this direction.

The growth-oriented economies of North America and many other countries operate systemically as vicious circles. Destutt de Tracy’s perpetual motion of “riches” was simply a wish. Many Americans who got rich on paper from Wall Street investments before October of 1929 found themselves destitute shortly thereafter. Many Americans who got rich on paper from multiple or large real estate holdings before October of 2007 subsequently found themselves in dire straits. Yet Robert Reich, an eminent economist, believes that the perpetual wheel of production and consumption contemplated by Destutt de Tracy is a “virtuous cycle.” ^{Footnote 93} In his film, Inequality for All, he presented a clockwise movement in which “Wages Increase” rotates to “Workers Buy More,” which rotates to “Companies Hire More,” which rotates to “Tax Revenues Increase,” which rotates to “Government Invests More,” which rotates to “Workers are Better Educated,” which rotates to “Economy Expands,” which rotates to “Productivity Grows,” at which point the cycle repeats itself, presumably without depressions or recessions, and presumably in perpetuity. ^{Footnote 94}

Each complete cycle of Reich’s ‘virtuous’ cycle involves “More” than the previous go-round so the model’s general progression should be much like the upward and outward growth of a tree, but with one critical difference: a tree’s rings are concentric. They are not part of an unbroken spiral, which is how Reich’s economy would grow—ever upward and outward in an unbroken spiral, like an inverted cone getting taller and broader at the top. This top-heavy model of growth is destined to collapse, which it invariably does because its roots are not hardy enough to support it. ^{Footnote 95} In nature an expanding tree trunk is supported by ever-deepening or expanding roots, but these do not necessarily grow constantly. They grow sporadically, depending upon the environmental conditions in which they are situated, a fact that permaculturists take for granted and are reluctant to alter, at least without careful planning. For Reich, however, periodic inactivity or dormancy at any of the points along his growth cycle is a cause for concern. It can turn the virtuous cycle into a vicious cycle, but Reich’s cycle is only artificially virtuous in the first place.

V. Growth as a Mythic Antidote to Unemployment

Unemployment and underemployment have been abiding concerns of governments for centuries. Saint-Simon regarded many human beings as naturally lazy and saw government as having an obligation to create employment for these people. ^{Footnote 96} Idle citizens are not simply their parents’ problem. They can become the state’s and society’s problem, so governments have a deep interest in creating employment opportunities for them. Schumpeter observed, “whether lasting or temporary, getting worse or not, unemployment undoubtedly is and always has been a scourge.” ^{Footnote 97} Galbraith wrote, “the need to provide jobs requires us to face the unhappy choice either of having the economy constantly under inflationary strain or consigning some part of the working force to joblessness and inferior income. Obviously we shall not reap the rewards of affluence until we solve this problem.” ^{Footnote 98} Recently, William H. Davidow and Michael S. Malone proposed that “the greatest challenge facing free market economies” in the 21^st century will be the economic uselessness of millions of citizens, owing to a proliferation of capable robots. ^{Footnote 99}

Historically Western governments have relied upon the private sector to generate employment. In Malthus’ and Destutt de Tracy’s day labourers toiled for private land owners. In the 19^th century individuals apprenticed for master craft persons. Today non-skilled, semi-skilled, and highly skilled workers seek employment with large corporations, chains, franchises, firms, and small businesses. This general employment trajectory is driven by Western governments’ dogmatic belief that private enterprise is the best source of employment for growing populations, just as it is tied directly to an expectation by private enterprise and governments that economic productivity will continually increase.

In 1949 US President Harry Truman told Americans, “Government and business must work together constantly to achieve more and more jobs and more and more production … which will mean more and more prosperity for all the people.” ^{Footnote 100} Later that year his Council of Economic Advisors [CEAs] wrote, “our business system and with it our whole economy can and should continue to grow.” ^{Footnote 101} Robert Herren observed, “Each Council of Economic Advisers has stressed the importance of adopting policies to ensure a high rate of economic growth. CEAs have been advocates within administrations for emphasizing economic growth as a national priority.” ^{Footnote 102} Many Western governments encourage domestic population growth for various reasons, in some case for scriptural reasons, in others because they believe that larger populations undergird stronger economies and stronger national security. However, when populations expand but employment lags, governments are faced with the real prospect of social insecurity and unrest.

Galbraith was concerned that, once employment per se became an overarching economic objective of government, the nature of employment became secondary. Such a prospect is “disturbing” to the conventional wisdom, he contended, because it brings “economic society to the dubious world of make-work and boondoggling.” ^{Footnote 103} This is precisely where the global marketplace is today. It is a utilitarian world in which the murderous city of Cuidad Juarez can appear favourably as “hardworking” with “very little unemployment” to a visitor in Roberto Bolaño’s 2666. ^{Footnote 104} Indeed, the low-paying maquiladoras that line northwestern Mexico are politically praised as international free trade successes. The surrounding and astounding murder rate is secondary.

For Galbraith, the type of economic growth cycle drawn by Reich and others was just a “squirrel wheel” and “[a]mong the many models of the good society, no one has urged the squirrel wheel.” ^{Footnote 105} Aristotle and Plato did not perceive the good life as one spent relentlessly on a productive treadmill, ^{Footnote 106} but many post-Industrial Western governments put a premium on economic productivity over the examined life. Since the Industrial Revolution, the “good society” has been one that economically grows by unceasing squirrel wheels. Neither Galbraith nor Arendt suggested that all or many Americans could hope to avoid Sisyphus’ daily regime, but for this very reason they implicitly questioned what meaningful socio-economic progress had been made, for example, since Malthus’ day. Wasn’t economic growth supposed to lift the masses from a life of distasteful daily drudgery? What was the point of becoming so affluent by mid-20^th century if so many Americans still had to keep a treadmill spinning from Monday to Friday, or even throughout the weekend? As a great many individuals face the prospect of having “zero economic value” this century, just because their utility will be substituted by robots, Davidow and Malone acknowledged that “we need a new, individualized, cultural, approach to the meaning of work and purpose of life.” ^{Footnote 107} Their emphasis on culture is precisely in line with permaculturist thinking.

VI: Growing Unwellness

By the mid-20^th century a qualitative change to the economic mind-body equilibrium in America was self-evident. Rousseau had contemplated that the human inclination to “indulge” in “comforts” could have real degenerative effects and he was not entirely off the mark. ^{Footnote 108} Human life spans have increased with time, partly because of medical advances and lighter workloads, but many indulgent 20^th century Americans and others struggle with heart and respiratory diseases, addictions, and other serious physical ailments of their own making. The time and effort they put into the squirrel wheel in the name of growth and prosperity has not made them physically or mentally healthy. Mr. Propter remarked in Aldous Huxley’s 1939 novel, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, “we’ve made for ourselves … a world of sick bodies.” ^{Footnote 109} Indeed, only two years after President Dwight D. Eisenhower established a Council on Youth Fitness for the children of a swelling middle-class, Galbraith observed, “More die in the United States of too much food than of too little.” ^{Footnote 110} Five years later President John F. Kennedy reinvigorated Eisenhower’s fitness council and expanded its mandate. As a federal government website explains:

So Galbraith wryly imagined a typical post-WWII American family driving to a countryside replete with “commercial art” to picnic on “exquisitely packaged food” near a “polluted stream” and to camp overnight “amid a stench of decaying refuse.” He further imagined the campers reflecting “vaguely on the curious unevenness of their blessings” before going to sleep and he asked his readers, “Is this, indeed, the American genius?” ^{Footnote 112}

The tendentious policy solution to this unflattering reflection of human success, perfectibilité or genius has never been to make daily employment more anaerobic and less materially productive. It is to deviate increasingly from the ambulatory and sensory challenges of hunting and gathering toward routine sedentariness or stillness, coupled with isolated, mechanistic efforts of mind and body. In 2011 Daniele Vitorino and Dennys Cintra discussed the “obesity pandemic” emerging in Western societies and noted that economic “forces” have been at least partly responsible for it. ^{Footnote 113} The number of individuals whose employment involves at least some physical activity or exertion (for example, in some manufacturing and services sectors) is expected to shrink substantially. Millions of robots are expected to replace workers in a “Second Economy” (wherein computers do business only with computers), which is predicted to begin in 2025. ^{Footnote 114} About 40 million Americans of a 146 million person labour force are expected to be made redundant. These citizens will have “no economic value,” as Davidow and Malone put it. ^{Footnote 115}

The socio-economic effects of 20^th century technological innovation have been much different than the basic change that 18^th and 19^th century social reformers had hoped technological advancement would bring, being an uplift from the dire living conditions of society’s poorest and hardest-working members. Technological development continues apace as a matter of psychological unrest and unease, without any coherent guiding vision or obvious improvement in the balance of things. In 1895 Wells’ Time Traveller correctly observed that humankind, guided by “ideals” that are “vague and tentative,” gradually improves upon its “favourite plants and animals.” It produces a “new and better peach” here and a “convenient breed of cattle” there. Yet the Time Traveller surmised further, “Some day this will all be better organized, and still better. That is the drift of the current in spite of the eddies.” ^{Footnote 116} Wells was parodying the restlessness of the 19^th century scientist who believed in human perfectibility. Undoubtedly permaculturists use technology to “better” organize growth, but not “still better.” They do not engineer genetic modification and the durability of natural interrelationships is their goal, ^{Footnote 117} not perpetual change for no apparent reason.

The ever-increasing rate at which robots will replace human workers this century threatens to alter the historic tendency of technological innovation to create “new opportunities for human employment.” Davidow and Malone explained, “This time, things may be very different—especially as the Internet of Things takes the human factor out of so many transactions and decisions.” ^{Footnote 118} Indeed, the touted social benefit of some technological novelties is genuinely suspect, as is the popular claim that new technology generates employment, ^{Footnote 119} so governments tend to rationalize their endorsements of such innovations as enhancing public and personal safety (e.g., roadside cell phone use) or as democratizing access to important social resources and services. Today reasonable people debate whether access to the Internet should be an international human right, akin to food and water.

VII. The Growth Paradigm Encounters Permaculture

In the 1980s the American farming economy was in serious decline. Farm indebtedness had reached $215 billion by 1984 ^{Footnote 120} and two years later the Minnesota Agriculture Department calculated that three “non-farm jobs” were lost with every single farm collapse. ^{Footnote 121} In this Mid-West Farm Crisis some farmers recognized that technologically based overproduction was the problem. Jon Ikerd explained,

Ikerd described how the economic equivalent of an invasive species (the intrusion of larger farms) tends to disrupt the ability of other contributors to an inter-connected system to thrive. Thus, he encouraged “sustainable farm economics” in which self-interest is “enlightened” and “economic objectives” of farm management are “balanced with social and ecological objectives.” ^{Footnote 123} In effect, he advocated a permaculture model of economic productivity, one which is sustainable in the long run only if the surrounding eco-system in which it is ensconced thrives.

The expression “permaculture” was coined by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in the 1970s to describe a food cultivation approach that enabled surrounding vegetation, soil, and water eco-systems to thrive as much as possible according to their own natural rhythms. ^{Footnote 124} Permaculturists and other environmentalists were responding to various troublesome socio-economic, political, and environmental developments of the time, such as “the oil shocks of 1973 and 1975” and “public awareness of the greenhouse effect.” ^{Footnote 125} The “perma” of permaculture reflects the aim of longevity for all ecological contributors to the broader surroundings, not just the durability of the human agricultural achievement. The sustainability of agriculture and culture itself are objectives. ^{Footnote 126} From the outset, permaculture adherents desired to minimize the extent to which non-renewable energy, “high technology,” and “repetitive manual labour” (i.e., assembly lines) were involved in the production of food and provision of other goods and services. ^{Footnote 127} Ethically, permaculturists are guided by a belief that no particular generation should be so careless in its use of land or so intensely consumptive that it needlessly diminishes the earth’s capacity to provide sustenance for future generations. ^{Footnote 128} If, however, resource and energy availability for humankind in the 21^st century is already declining because of generations of heavy industrial usage and an expanded global population, permaculture practice endeavours to slow down the rate of this declining energy availability. ^{Footnote 129} Ideally, permaculturists picture future generations creatively using far less non-renewable energy to produce and consume than their forebearers did.

Permaculture thinking fundamentally accepts natural limits, meaning the “impossibility of continuous growth in anything” and the “ecological realities of decline, which are as natural and creative as those of growth.” ^{Footnote 130} In other words, permaculture accepts the undulating rhythms of growth and decay whereas “our prior culture of growth” has made it difficult to visualize decline “as positive,” as Holmgren puts it. ^{Footnote 131} Certainly economists’ fundamental preoccupation with maintaining constant rates of financial growth for nations have contributed significantly to the prevailing culture of growth.

The working premise of the practice of permaculture is that systems of food production (and the provision of other goods and services) can involve less technological destruction of the natural world if designed thoughtfully. The design need not be complicated. Arguably a clothesline (that dries clothes with wind and solar power) involves a better design than an electrically powered tumble dryer and the process of hanging clothes on a line involves far less human intervention in the natural world than the manufacture of electric dryers. ^{Footnote 132} Many natural growth processes appear to the human eye to be well designed in the sense that they appear to be self-generative and self-sustaining. The Invisible Hand of Smith’s capitalist economy should come to mind, but it is speculative. The micro-biological processes that perennially re-generate plant and animal life in fact need no human intervention, so permaculturists strive to create productive systems that functionally mimic these natural processes. These systems should be able to operate well with relatively little human interference in the surrounding environment. ^{Footnote 133} James Veteto and Joshua Lockyer wrote,

Permaculture does not attempt to ‘correct’ or smooth over natural dormancy or idleness, which is nature’s equivalent of an economic recession. The biologically effective use of stored or preserved energy is what ensures the return of another healthy season for any particular type of species. Again, as Franklin stated, “In any given environment, the growing organism develops at its own rate.” ^{Footnote 135} No reasonable person would ever attempt to wake up a hibernating grizzly bear prematurely, yet mainstream economic growth policy habitually interferes with rest periods in order to spur immediate productivity. It cannot abide rest. But if bears and plants can awaken after a winter’s sleep, so too can human beings and an economy, figuratively speaking. Where there is winter in one part of the world, there is summer elsewhere. Economic growth policy needs to embrace this lateral, undulating type of growth, because it is self-sustaining. It must learn to consume its seasonal harvests wisely before attempting to yield more.

VIII. Governments Portray Corporate Interest in Growth as a Matter of Public Interest

Galbraith wrote that “questions of social balance” (between private and public goods) are “subordinate to those of production” for liberals and conservatives alike because the conventional wisdom stresses “the paramount urgency of increased production of goods.” ^{Footnote 136} Western governments and influential politicians seldom condemn the naked or veiled self-interest of the private-sector that employs their citizens. Ever-pragmatic, they are disinclined to bite that hand that feeds them. There are always exceptions that prove the rule. For example, during his 1991 presidential electoral campaign, Bill Clinton promised to “promote economic growth and the free market” without weakening the economy, but he stressed that he would hold the business class “responsible for being good corporate citizens too.” ^{Footnote 137}

The enduring depth of the political-economic belief that social security depends upon the success of private, corporate enterprise is reflected historically in the dogmatic commitment of many Western, Northern, Asian, and to a lesser extent Southern governments to the development and exploitation of natural resources. Political contenders get elected on promises to bring employment to resource ‘sectors’ such as forestry, mining, and fishing, so they encourage corporate enterprise to develop these sectors. Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, was recently confronted with the prospect that a controversial pipeline project (Keystone XL) would be revived by US President Donald Trump. Trudeau unwaveringly emphasized that he had been on the record “for many years supporting [the pipeline] because it means economic growth and good jobs for Albertans.” ^{Footnote 138} The pipeline project was “paramount” to Trudeau, to use Galbraith’s term, because it promised to rouse Alberta’s economy from its troublesome hibernation. When President Trump decided to repeal environmental regulations in place to protect American streams from coal mining debris, the US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell emphasized that the de-regulation would “bring relief to coal miners and their families.” ^{Footnote 139}

Such is the pro-development and growth policy of many Western politicians, always rooted in a reflexive, paternalistic mantra of needing to provide their citizens with ‘good’ jobs, a euphemism for well-paying jobs. Governments intensify or relax their regulatory control, oversight, or management of resource exploitation according to the level of threat that such exploitation is perceived to present to their societies, directly or indirectly. The danger level is assessed by scientific measures, calculations, and forecasts. The significant environmental regulatory surge in Western countries since the 1970s has been a self-preservationist response to perceived threats of man-made dangers like acid-rain and defective motor vehicles. Canada imposed a moratorium on cod fishing off the Atlantic coast, for example, not for the inherently ethical reason of avoiding man-made species extinction, but in the desperate hope that significantly dwindled stocks might regenerate themselves and eventually restore the fishery, meaning human employment in the fishing industry. ^{Footnote 140}

In 1972 Nordhaus and Tobin addressed the contention that mainstream economics is preoccupied with economic growth at the expense of environmental sustainability. They replied that history had given “little reason to worry about the exhaustion of resources which the market already treats as economic goods.” Apart from being tautologous (economic “goods”), their imputation is that a self-correcting market will maintain, in the sense of leave alone, a valuable natural resource. As this proposition is unrealistic, Nordhaus and Tobin conceded that “both the market and public agencies might be too complacent about the prospects for new and safe substitutes for fossil fuels.” ^{Footnote 141} But to acknowledge corporate and government complacency about resource over-exploitation is simply to acknowledge that production has been primary.

Many governments are becoming concerned about species depletion, at least publicly so, but mainly because they are developing a better understanding of the extent to which their own societies depend upon wider bio-diversity. Permaculturists recognize axiomatically that ecological variety is critical to the sustainability of any particular species, including humankind. Faiza Akhtar and colleagues noted simply, “without a healthy earth, human beings cannot flourish.” ^{Footnote 142} Yet, within the survivalist milieu of the 21^st century, the economic priority of governments remains that of maximizing production. Their challenge becomes how to do this in a way that preserves bio-diversity, for pragmatic reasons—because now they realize that Frankenstein’s monster is still roaming the earth and becoming increasingly dangerous to them. Beginning with the Industrial Revolution, the economically Virtuous Cycle has become environmentally Vicious.

Nordhaus and Tobin contended that “pervasive technological change” would prevent natural resources from becoming an “increasing drag on economic growth,” thereby confirming that economic growth remained a policy priority. They simply disagreed with environmentally mindful critics who claimed that continual economic growth was not sustainable for environmental reasons. On the basis of “simulations,” Nordhaus and Tobin concluded that economic growth “will accelerate rather than slow down even as natural resources become more scarce in the future.” ^{Footnote 143} To some extent this proposition has been borne out, so far, but it implicitly accepts that economic growth damages the environment and is the top priority of mainstream economics.

IX. Is Growth Destined for Dystopia?

At this century’s dawn, Storm Cunningham proposed that the American economy was reaching a “tipping point,” ^{Footnote 144} but he was not concerned. Top-heavy economic growth of the kind that has been outlined in this article was finally toppling, in his view, and naturally so, straight into a restoration-based economy. In his words, a “full-blown Restoration Economy” was on the verge of usurping centuries of “frenetic new development” and “one-way development.” ^{Footnote 145} This was apparently the case even though Cunningham conceded that the scale of “[a]nthropogenic ecological collapses” was unprecedented and that American citizens continued to increase their “ecological footprints” and their demands for real estate. ^{Footnote 146}

The real estate bubble in America expanded so much after Cunningham’s The Restoration Economy was published that it exploded. In 2008 the dead of another economic winter set in, taking its usual social form: massive unemployment. Naturally the governing US administration enacted stimulus legislation to expedite the arrival of spring. The Economic Stimulus Act of 2008, which by one estimate added just under $400 billion to Americans’ collective income by the third quarter of 2008, was meant to “stimulate spending and end or at least mitigate the severity of a US economic slowdown.” ^{Footnote 147}

However, spring was not timely, so many unemployed and underemployed Americans got back on the squirrel wheel and started to rent out their real estate and durable goods at an unprecedented level. By subscribing to apps or by creating accounts on propriety software, they were able to rent out their homes and vehicles to a wide range of individuals seeking affordable inns and transportation. To use Arendt’s words, the “rate of use” of these durable goods became “so tremendously accelerated” that the difference between their “use and consumption” became insignificant. ^{Footnote 148} The motto ‘waste not, want not,’ acquired an economically novel importance. Private property became more or less valuable for its “idling capacity,” being a measure of its inherent capacity for repeated use by strangers. ^{Footnote 149}

This expanding rental economy quickly became dubbed the ‘sharing’ economy, to suggest that it was ideologically different from the prevalent proprietary economy. It is not. Arun Sundararajan might beg to differ but he acknowledged that the meaning of a good verb is in jeopardy. One label given to the sharing economy—the “on-demand” economy ^{Footnote 150} —accurately reflects the fact that the innovation of apps has simply expedited an already impatient service economy. This increasing speed and capacity at which the economy is expected to operate broadly reflects what Arendt observed to be the “irreversibility” of productive processes that human beings have set into motion. ^{Footnote 151}

The sharing economy is an early 21^st century attempt to fill sinkholes caused by the prevailing growth paradigm. Reich refers to it as a “share-the-scraps economy” because the capitalists who fund the entrepreneurial creation of the economy’s apps reap the lion’s share of the profits. ^{Footnote 152} Sundararajan calls Reich’s perspective “dystopian” but Sundararajan fails to see the dystopia in the very economic future about which he is so excited. ^{Footnote 153} He enthusiastically contemplates, for example, that containers for perishable goods such as milk will soon contain “some kind of transducer” that could let a fridge know the milk’s expiry date. Then the fridge will add milk to a “grocery list at an online delivery service.” The emerging “Internet of Things” will make such a possibility feasible. ^{Footnote 154} Recall, however, that this wonderful Internet of Things could well end employment and employability for tens of millions of people within a couple of generations, and permanently so. ^{Footnote 155} Its expansion is not guided by any coherent or long-term social vision.

Arendt recognized that automation naturally presented new socio-economic and cultural challenges, but intercommunicating durable goods was still science fiction in 1958. Fifty years later, however, the Disney and Pixar corporations presented a view of the human condition that is entirely consistent with the world of online delivery, drone delivery, and other forms of robotic services that are rapidly emerging. In the animated film, Wall-E, ^{Footnote 156} physically bloated humans living on a spaceship called Axiom glide about on reclining lounge chairs while computerized service-bots clean their toilets, do their dishes and laundry, and serve their drinks. The planet Earth has become despoiled or too unattractive for them to remain on it so they have become literally extra-terrestrial. They have no agriculture. Thus, they exemplify a darkly hyperbolized nadir of what Galbraith called the American “genius.” They have discovered a way to thrive without needing Nature, which might well be “a perfect conquest of Nature,” as Wells’ Time Traveller put it. ^{Footnote 157} Arendt contemplated that the pace of socio-technological change might increase to the point where human beings could no longer become accustomed to their world, such that they might no longer find themselves “at home in the midst of things” they have produced, which is the hallmark of their humanity. ^{Footnote 158} The well-contented human beings on Wall-E’s Axiom ship would suggest, however, that Fyodor Dostoyevsky got closer to the truth when he wrote, “Man gets used to everything—the beast!” ^{Footnote 159}