Economic growth and human dignity

Human dignity demands that people have freedom to pursue their individual goals in life. In our world we move towards our goals mostly by collaborating ever more closely and efficiently with other people. Individual efforts count mainly as long as they promote better coordination with other people.

We have created the institution of money to improve coordination among individual people. The quantity of monetary transactions - the size of an economy - is a measure of human coordination and thus of human accomplishment.

Even the most progressive governments continue to put the issue of climate change on the back seat behind their fundamental commitment to strong economic growth, which is needed to ensure political survival (in developed countries) and to enable human dignity (in developing countries).

This is from an editorial in Nature. It is wrong. No government in the world has a fundamental commitment to economic growth; every government has a commitment to remain in power and to do so it cripples human freedom and economic growth. Economic growth, climate issues, human freedom and human dignity will always be in the back seat behind that fundamental commitment.