Читать книгу Post Growth - Tim Jackson - Страница 13

Almost as curious as the backstory to the Kansas address is its abiding legacy. There was plenty there of immediate topical relevance. There was much that spoke to a deeper, more philosophical engagement with the nature of human progress. But what proved persistent over the ensuing decades was a less philosophical, more technical aspect of the speech. Beyond the rhetoric lay a clearly definable measurement problem. The principal indicator of economic success used by governments is flawed.

Measurement is a gloriously technical issue. Is the measure we’re using fit for purpose or not? Do its limitations matter? Can they be addressed? How could we adjust things to make them work better? Here was something more readily fixable than our fixation on growth itself. Here was a space safe enough to permit even the cautious to flirt with Bobby Kennedy’s insights without necessarily confronting the deeper challenge they posed. It took a little time for them to show up at the party, it has to be admitted. But eventually some unexpected guests arrived.

The European Commission’s Beyond GDP programme in 2007 and the OECD’s High-Level Group on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress in 2014 were testament to our appetite for the technicalities of measurement. Even the World Economic Forum has been able to talk in positive terms about alternatives to the GDP. Along the way, somehow, Kennedy’s words themselves became iconic. They’ve been cited over and over again – not just by ‘lunatics, idealists and revolutionaries’ but even, occasionally, by latter-day Presidential candidates and conservative Prime Ministers.¹⁶

Discussions about measurement constitute a space of genuine policy innovation in a debate still struggling to throw off the ideological mantle of growth. Countries as varied as Bhutan, New Zealand, Finland and Scotland have begun (only recently in most cases) to develop new ways of measuring progress. Some of these initiatives provide what are sometimes called ‘satellite accounts’, never quite challenging the dominion of the GDP. Others make a genuine attempt to integrate the alternatives into economic policy and budgetary decisions.¹⁷

These conversations matter. Measurement matters. ‘If we measure the wrong thing, we will do the wrong thing,’ argued the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who co-chaired the OECD group. ‘If our measures tell us everything is fine when it really isn’t, we will be complacent,’ he said recently. ‘And it should be clear that, in spite of the increases in GDP, in spite of the 2008 crisis being well behind us, everything is not fine.’¹⁸

And yet the critique of growth itself, the genuine postgrowth refrain that runs through the Kennedy speech, is far less well rehearsed. It was virtually ignored for decades by the prevailing politics. With the help of youthful activism, it has achieved more visibility. But even now it’s mainly cast as a curious anomaly, clearly at odds with the mainstream discourse. Kurz’s Davos smile spoke volumes. First, they ignore you. Then they laugh. Until suddenly the need to face reality is thrust upon us.