Er is leven na de groei

Overview

“Er is leven na de groei” by Paul Schenderling argues for a post-growth society in The Netherlands, challenging the relentless pursuit of economic expansion as the sole measure of progress and well-being.

Key Concepts

The Growth Problem

• GDP as a flawed compass: Schenderling argues that Gross Domestic Product measures economic throughput, not welfare; it counts pollution clean-up, healthcare spending from lifestyle diseases, and planned obsolescence as “growth” while ignoring unpaid care work, ecosystem services, and social cohesion
  • Easterlin paradox: Beyond a certain income threshold (~$75k in the original US data), additional GDP growth produces negligible gains in reported life satisfaction — yet policy remains fixated on maximising this metric
• Biophysical limits: Continuous material and energy throughput growth on a finite planet inevitably collides with planetary boundaries — climate change, biodiversity loss, nitrogen/phosphorus cycle disruption, freshwater depletion, and land-use change are already crossing or approaching safe thresholds
  • Decoupling myth: While relative decoupling (less resource use per unit of GDP) occurs, absolute decoupling (total resource use falling while GDP rises) has not been achieved at the global level and is unlikely at the rates needed, given the scale of growth targets

Mechanisms That Lock In Overconsumption

• Planned obsolescence and marketing: Products are deliberately designed with limited lifespans or made unfashionable through marketing cycles; the advertising industry manufactures demand for goods that do not improve well-being — Schenderling traces how this mechanism drives material throughput independently of genuine need
• Jevons paradox / rebound effects: When efficiency improvements reduce the cost of using a resource, total consumption often increases rather than decreases (e.g., more fuel-efficient cars encourage more driving, or savings are spent on new consumption); without systemic demand-side constraints, efficiency gains are absorbed by growth
• Institutional lock-in: Tax systems, pension schemes, government debt management, and corporate governance structures all assume and depend on continuous growth; this creates powerful institutional inertia against post-growth transition, even when the ecological and social evidence supports it

Post-Growth Policy Alternatives

• Shifting the tax base: Moving taxation from labour (which discourages employment) to resource extraction and pollution (which discourages environmental damage) — a revenue-neutral tax shift that aligns economic incentives with ecological limits
• Working-time reduction: Redistributing productivity gains as leisure rather than income growth; shorter working weeks reduce material consumption, lower carbon emissions, improve health, and distribute employment more equitably
• Circular economy and sufficiency: Policies that promote repair, reuse, sharing, and modular design over linear extract-produce-dispose models; combined with sufficiency standards (enough, not maximum) to cap resource throughput
  • Public services over private consumption: Expanding universal basic services (healthcare, education, housing, public transport) reduces the need for individual income growth while improving quality of life — a “social floor” approach compatible with ecological ceilings (cf. Raworth’s Doughnut Economics)

The Dutch Context

• Netherlands-specific analysis: Schenderling grounds his argument in Dutch data — one of the most densely populated and trade-dependent countries in the world, with high per-capita resource footprints, intensive agriculture (especially nitrogen), and a housing crisis partly driven by speculative growth dynamics
• Political feasibility: He addresses the political economy of transition — how vested interests, electoral cycles, and public perception of “growth = prosperity” make post-growth policies difficult to implement, and proposes coalition-building strategies across environmental, labour, and social-justice movements

Personal Reflection

[To be added]

Related Books

• The Future of Energy - Black’s energy roadmap is the operational complement to Schenderling’s post-growth vision
• Clearing the Air - Smedley’s pollution crisis provides environmental evidence for the growth-limits Schenderling argues
• Ultra-Processed People - Both critique industrial systems optimised for growth at the expense of health

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Parent: Books