System Error – Wie endet der Kapitalismus

We view growth as something positive.

It's great watching our kids grow up or seeing a tree grow.

Yet we are always aware that all growth must come to an end.

There's a limit.

Nature knows no such thing as infinite growth.

This rule seems to apply to every kind of growth but one.

Economic growth is somehow

supposed to continue indefinitely.

We believed then and now there are no limits

to growth and human progress when men

and women are free to follow their dreams.

And we were right.

If that growth fails to materialize, we panic.

But why?

As one person recognized 150 years ago, growth is

the fundamental principle of our economic system.

Capitalism only works when the economy grows.

But Karl Marx recognized something else as well.

It is this growth that will eventually

destroy the system itself.

And today, have we reached that point?

Is the system about to collapse?

Or might infinite growth actually be possible?

The governments don't want us to even question the G word,

they don't even want to put a discussion around growth.

If you were looking at this from the outside,

an alien arriving from outer space and you're looking

at this society, you would really wonder what was going on.

What are they doing?

What is this growth that has to appear in political

sentence and is the basis of every economics textbook?

What is it all about?

Is it a religion that they have?

Is it a god that they're chasing?

Is it a virus that's taken over them?

And what is this visceral fear that emerges

as soon as growth starts to go away?

The Federation of German Industries

is Germany's most influential lobby.

No German government can afford to ignore its voice.

Where does this unshakable

belief in economic growth come from?

Has it always been there?

Is it really part of human nature?

It was through audacious and imaginative

use of mass production methods that US industry

was able to perform its war time miracles.

To build more planes than all the united nations

put together, to turn out ships at the rate

of 200 a month, ships which carried overseas the armed

might of the United States to decide the outcome of the war.

The success story of economic

growth began during World War II.

Mass production of tanks and aircraft led

the American economy out of crisis.

The output of military equipment was now calculated by

a new statistical measure, gross domestic product, or GDP.

If production, i.e. GDP, grew, then so did prosperity.

Americans believed so firmly in this new formula

that they compelled their allies to bring their

economic policies in line with it.

From then on, it wasn't people's incomes

that counted, it was only growth.

And it turned out to be such a useful measure

actually for the war effort and for understanding

the war effort, that afterwards there was a lot of effort

put into building this system of national accounts, having

this number, the GDP, correctly measured through

the economy, and it became almost incrementally, it became

the single most important policy number across the world.

It kind of symbolizes progress to us.

It sort of says, wow, things are getting

bigger so they must be getting better.

That was the birth of the GDP.

In the three decades after the war,

the Western economies grew up to eight percent annually.

In the US, they called it the golden age of capitalism.

In France, they were the 30 glorious years.

In Germany, it was the economic miracle.

An entire generation enjoyed material

prosperity and full employment and this

became engraved in the collective consciousness.

Even though these high growth rates were only

made possible by massive war time destruction,

the belief in growth was now unstoppable.

GDP became the most important benchmark in history.

And the economy and the grace of the economy was doing

a good job for us when we were young, if you like,

when as an economy, as a society, we were young.

And one of the really important things to say

is that there are some societies where that is still

necessary, where you still need that growth, where you

still need food, clothing, and shelter, where there are

very, very poor undernourished people living on less than

the price of a skinny latte from the cafe downstairs.

That's a situation where growth makes some sense.

But the idea that as human beings all we want ever is more

and more stuff doesn't really stack up so after a certain

point you have to ask yourself, well, how much is enough?

How much more do I need to grow the economy

to satisfy human appetites?

The GDP counts everything that's produced really.

Yeah, sure, it counts some of the good things

that we need but it also counts ambulances

to clear up carnage on the streets or the rescue

efforts when an oil tanker pollutes the ocean.

To some extent all of this is a measure of

the busy-ness of economic activity.

But many of these things, even though they're getting

bigger, are not really economic growth, they're more

uneconomic growth because they're not delivering welfare.

Sometimes they're just clearing up after the mess we made.

Sometimes they're really creating mess,

really destructive production if you like of,

you know, things that actually just destroy stuff.

The 1970s saw growth rates sink for

the first time due to the oil crisis and other factors.

The boom was over, the markets saturated.

Western economies stagnated.

Millions suddenly found themselves unemployed.

It was uncharted territory.

For the first time, the limits of growth became visible,

economically, socially, and ecologically.

We do have some understanding about growth.

In 1972, a group of scholars,

commissioned by the Club of Rome, presented a report

in Washington entitled "The Limits to Growth."

Using a computer simulation, researchers

at MIT had calculated for the first time what

continuous economic growth would do to the planet.

Their findings set off alarm bells around the world.

When resource consumption is doubling every 20 years.

For the first time people were

confronted with the fact that economic growth

could also have negative consequences.

And that the planet's natural limits would soon be reached.

The success story of growth was in crisis.

Most important lesson is that we're near

the end of our development of society.

We've been going on for about 2,000 years and we've

reached levels of prosperity which carry the seeds

of disruption and necessitate a complete re-look at the

whole world's social, political, and other situations.

The Club of Rome report sold

30 million copies and became a global sensation.

The realization that exponential growth was

destroying the foundation of human life on this

planet was entirely new and shocking to many people.

And yet, soon, the scholars themselves came under attack.

Their calculations were decried as irresponsible fear

mongering because it's impossible to admit the unacceptable.

The success story of growth must continue.

Unfortunately many of the scholars predictions

turned out to be right and in many cases reality

even surpassed their bleak predictions.

As the Club of Rome report was causing

an international uproar, the Brazilian rainforest

in the Amazon basin was still nearly untouched.

The huge Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, largely populated

by indigenous people, consisted of forest and savanna.

Today, not much of that is left.

Since the mid '80s, progress, aided by international

investors, has been eating away at the rainforest.

35 football fields of forest disappear every minute.

It's been the same story over and over again.

Lumberjacks move in first, then cattle breeders,

and finally, the soybean barons.

The tropical climate delivers three to four

harvests per year and with it massive profits.

Soy and corn for export and animal feed.

Highway 163 is the gateway to the Amazon basin.

It brought lumberjacks, money,

and destruction into the forest.

Today countless trucks line the agribusiness

highway transporting their valuable cargo

to the international ports.

They pass an endless sea of soybean fields,

enormous silos, and slaughterhouses to one of

the largest boom regions in the world.

Growth rates of up to 20%.

Big business.

In the '70s, this region, it was just populized

by Indians, it was just amazing forests.

34 years just of colonization and it's the most

important region in agribusiness of the country.

It's the right place to make new investments, to make money.

Here is the most important, biggest,

food lots in the state of Mato Grosso.

The cattle, a good part are exported

to Russia, China, and other countries.

Here we work.

It's just classify the animals.

Cattle goes to the JBS,

the most biggest meat industry in the world.

He's from Brazil and they have another

12 countries around the world.

Do you see any limits?

No.

Next 10 years with the technologies, what can I say?

There is no limits.