Economists Chart New Roadmap to Replace Doomed Growth Strategy

One notes, in the press materials released by the coalition of economists and UN agencies, a conspicuous silence regarding the mechanism by which “growth” is to be replaced. The roadmap is presented as a finished structure, a new architecture for global society, yet the blueprints for the foundation are absent. It is not that the plan is secret; it is that the plan assumes a gravity that does not exist in the physical world of resource allocation. The narrative offers a destination - post-growth - but the vehicle to get there is described only in the negative: it is not what we were doing before. One is left to wonder if the engine of this new world is powered by goodwill, or if it runs on the same coal, oil, and data as the old one, merely with a different label on the fuel tank.

The officials involved - Olivier De Schutter, representatives of various UN agencies, and leaders of grassroots movements - present themselves as a unified front. This is the first anomaly. In my experience, groups that claim to represent both the highest levels of international bureaucracy and the most decentralized grassroots impulses are rarely speaking the same language. They are usually speaking in code, or perhaps in silence. The UN agencies speak in the dialect of compliance and metrics; grassroots movements speak in the dialect of survival and immediate need. When these two dialects are merged into a single “roadmap,” one expects friction. Instead, one finds harmony. This is suspicious. A naturalist observing two species that should be competing for the same territory finding themselves in a peaceful symbiosis would check for a third party, a predator, or a shared delusion.

The claim that economic growth is a “doomed strategy” is treated not as a hypothesis, but as a settled fact. Yet, the definition of “doom” shifts depending on who is holding the pen. For the economist, doom is the depletion of capital. For the grassroots organizer, doom is the lack of bread. The roadmap attempts to bridge this gap by suggesting a fundamental shift in how societies are organized. But how? The documents speak of “alternative” metrics and “better” allocations. They do not say how a society that has spent two centuries measuring its health by the size of its pie is suddenly to decide that a smaller pie, shared more evenly, is preferable to a larger one, shared more unequally. The transition requires a leap of faith that the data does not support. It requires the population to voluntarily reduce its consumption while trusting that the “new roadmap” will provide for their needs. This is a high-wire act without a net.

I have catalogued many instances where experts from distant institutions propose solutions to local problems. The pattern is consistent: the problem is defined in abstract terms (inequality, carbon emissions, instability), and the solution is proposed in equally abstract terms (governance reform, sustainable practices, inclusive growth). The concrete details - the price of wheat, the cost of heating a home, the availability of a job - are omitted. This omission is not accidental. It is necessary. If the concrete details were included, the roadmap would collapse under its own weight. The abstraction allows the experts to avoid the messy reality of trade-offs. It allows them to present a vision of a world that is cleaner, fairer, and more stable, without having to explain how the lights will stay on during the transition.

The stakes, as stated, are high. Political leaders and global populations are asked to accept this shift. But what is the alternative? The “doomed strategy” of growth is the only system that has, however imperfectly, lifted billions out of poverty. To discard it requires a new system that is not only theoretically sound but practically viable. The roadmap offers no such system. It offers a critique of the old system and a vague promise of a new one. In the interim, the old system continues to function, driven by the very growth it claims to despise. The UN agencies do not stop growing; they merely grow differently. The grassroots movements do not stop demanding; they merely demand differently. The economists do not stop calculating; they merely calculate differently.

The anomaly here is not the failure of growth, but the success of the narrative that growth is failing. The narrative is self-sustaining. It feeds on the anxiety of the present and the hope of the future, leaving the present untouched. Olivier De Schutter and his colleagues are not proposing a revolution; they are proposing a rebranding. The resources are the same; the allocation methods are the same; the power structures are the same. The only thing that changes is the vocabulary. One notes that the word “growth” is replaced by “development,” or “well-being,” or “sustainability,” but the underlying mechanics remain identical. The engine hums on, louder than before, because the noise of the old narrative is gone.

This is not a conspiracy in the dramatic sense. There is no secret meeting, no smoking gun. There is only the quiet, persistent accumulation of small omissions. The omission of the transition plan. The omission of the conflict between bureaucracy and grassroots. The omission of the concrete costs. These omissions are not errors; they are features. They allow the roadmap to exist ideas, where it is perfect, rather than reality, where it would fail. The naturalist observes this not with outrage, but with interest. It is a fascinating specimen: a plan that works only as long as it is not implemented. The question remains: why do political leaders and global populations continue to look at this empty map, expecting it to lead them somewhere? Perhaps the destination is not a place, but a state of mind. A state of mind in which the absence of growth is accepted as a virtue, rather than a void. The record contains no answer to this question. It contains only the silence where the engine should be.