The best job growth is sustainable job growth

I've been known to say that the best job growth will be found where there is sustainable development. This sounds like nonsense to some people who grew up with an understanding that there is always a contradiction between economic growth and taking care of the environment.

I'd like to define my terms and clarify my statement such that my claim that the best job growth will be found in a sustainable economy is a logically sound and self-proving statement that does not need any empirical verification.

In general, the scientific process does not really allow for what is called a priori knowledge, so I understand that the following argument may not appeal to materialists or empiricists. As such, the following argument must be considered as a philosophical argument. Here goes...

The statement is as follows ... The best prospects for job growth and economic development can be found where there are incentives which encourage entrepreneurship in sustainable development for new and existing businesses in all shapes and sizes.

The first part of my argument is very short. The statement could be seen as a value judgment, and therefore cannot be logically disagreed with. The way that I am using the word "best" here is a subjective valuation according to my ethical values. This is a highly ineffective defence of my argument though, since someone else could just disagree. In this line of thinking, it would be equally valid for them to say that the best prospects for job growth would be found where every natural environment was economically developed to the max. Given a difference in values, empirical verification becomes meaningless, and recourse to political discourse and economic games would be required.

I don't generally like to make values-based arguments since they are necessarily subjective, and are formed by one's education, upbringing and experience of the world. Values-based arguments are highly effective when preaching to the converted, but are otherwise a waste of breath.

Since incentives can mean anything (although generally refer to tax incentives or regulatory frameworks that influence production decisions), and business can be defined in any way you like (but generally refer to private businesses operating within a regulatory framework), the rest of the statement is not particularly amenable to a logical contradiction, and can be interpreted in any way desired.

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As such, I move to defend my statement in another way. The focus here is on the concept of sustainable job growth. The argument is straightforward in my mind. The first thing I do is to create a dichotomy between unsustainable job growth and sustainable job growth.

By definition, unsustainable job growth eventually crashes, or goes into decline. By definition, sustainable job growth is that which never exploits our natural resources, under available combinations of technology, physical capital and human capital, at a level that would bring on a future crash in job growth.

In principal, job growth can be positive or negative in both cases. In terms of human development, this can be more effectively considered in per capita terms, but the realpolitik of international relations requires genuine consideration of absolute gains, and the consequential effects on the relative distribution of power in the international system.

In principal, this argument does not necessarily set aside any portion of nature for the purposes of protecting nature. It could be interpreted as setting aside only a sufficient portion of nature such that natural capital would provide returns through environmental services such as cleaning water, maintaining soil or air quality, processing toxins, tourism.... etc. I don't really like such an extreme commoditization of nature, but it is a useful approach when faced with arguments that God gave us the earth to exploit in every way possible, or some such thing. (In a more literal interpretation of the passage, I think we are actually instructed to take care of nature, not to destroy it.)

Having created a dichotomy where there is either unsustainable or sustainable job growth, all I really need to do is point out that if it's unsustainable then it'll crash. As we eat into natural capital, the net economic potential for any given set of technical combinations falls below the scenario of sustainable job growth.


There you have it. The best prospects for job growth and economic development can be found where there are incentives which encourage entrepreneurship in sustainable development for new and existing businesses in all shapes and sizes.

You can argue this from a values perspective, focusing on "best", but someone can equally make the opposite argument. Or, you define unsustainable as anything that leads to a crash in economic output resulting from reduced natural capital. Anything else is, in principal sustainable.

While there is no possible untruth in this argument, the unfortunate limitation is that it's practical applications can only be pursued by venturing back into the domain of values.

It is important for the politically oriented to acknowledge that economics always influences politics, as dictated by our material nature and the reality that relative gains are the primary currency of hard power in the international arena. It is also important for the economically oriented to acknowledge that economic efficiency is never, on its own, a sufficient argument for anything. That is to say that desirable solutions always involve value judgments, which involves political processes, whether at the level of families, communities or nations.

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The problem though, lies in what can be called time preferences, or something called a 'social discount rate'. I'm not going discuss the term. Instead, I'm going to draw attention to what is typically considered the 'long term' for purposes of economic analysis.

Economics considers the long term to be any period of time where all production factors, including the size of the factory or work force, can be changed. This is a useful way to engage in analysis of optimization of production factors.

When the long term is defined by the amount of time it takes to build or vacate a factory, it becomes exceedingly difficult to discuss the REAL meaning of the long term with economists.

To express how differently I see the long term, consider this. Some people find security in a 200 year supply of coal. I think 200 years is a very short period of time compared to the 10-14000 since we started farming, and is barely a blink of the eye compared to the millions of years it took to build up those energy deposits.

I suppose the psychological impact of regarding ones life as a blink of an eye in the history of the world may be daunting for people who are obsessively focused on their own self-importance and the material present. I personally find it quite comforting. That's another story altogether, and one that, to my knowledge, has not been taken up very effectively in the context of the environment, the economy, and our status as questioning beings. The conclusion that comes from such reflection is the following - nature is ultimately resilient and recovers over the space of thousands or millions of years. It is us, the human species, who are ultimately threatened, economically and spiritually, by an excessive focus on our present economic development.


The statement that I am defending may well appear untrue when looking at a 5 or 20 year time frame.

Let me state again, that I believe that the best prospects for long term growth job will be found where there is sustainable economic development. The statement is, in and of itself, an inherently true statement, when considering a truly long term outlook.