Dr. Seuss and Philosophy - Jacob M. Held [133]
Must Business Grow?
Like many business owners before him the Once-ler quickly begins to focus on “biggering” his business. Unfortunately, as it grows the Once-ler’s business requires more and more Truffula Trees.
Now, chopping one tree
at a time
was too slow.
So I quickly invented my Super-Axe-Hacker
which whacked off four Truffula Trees at one smacker.
We were making Thneeds
four times as fast as before! (Lorax)
In cutting down so many Truffula Trees, the Once-ler has incurred the wrath of the Lorax. The Lorax goes on to state the plight of the Brown Bar-ba-loots, who are running low on their native food source, Truffula Fruits. This could be a good first sign to the Once-ler: if there’s a Truffula Fruit shortage, and the Bar-ba-loots have to find somewhere else to live, then there are probably not enough Truffula Trees for the Once-ler to continue production at his present pace. So why does he continue? Does he simply not care?
In fact, we think that this is one of the first questions to occur to a child when reading The Lorax: Why did the Once-ler mess up the place he admired?8 Before the Once-ler begins making Thneeds, there is no doubt that he does admire the Truffula Tree grove. So why does he allow his drive to make his business bigger overwhelm his concern for his local environment? The answer seems to be, simply put, money. The Once-ler isn’t particularly concerned by the plight of the Bar-ba-loots: although he says he feels badly that they must leave, he is able to ignore the Lorax for the time being. Instead, his exclusive focus turns to his business:
I meant no harm. I most truly did not.
But I had to grow bigger. So bigger I got.
I biggered my factory. I biggered my roads.
I biggered my wagons. I biggered the loads
of the Thneeds I shipped out. I was shipping them forth
to the South! To the East! To the West! To the North! . . .
I went right on biggering . . . selling more Thneeds.
And I biggered my money, which everyone needs. (Lorax)
The sudden popularity of Thneeds may have surprised the Once-ler at first, but it seems that he was ready to take advantage of it by rapidly increasing production—and to increase it with unsubtle marketing, since on the side of the wagons, as they depart the factory, we can see the Once-ler’s unsubtle message: “You Need a Thneed!”
As we discussed with consumption, economic growth is not, in itself, morally problematic. In large parts of the world, people are struggling to survive, and economic development would clearly improve their lot. But these last two sentences illustrate a common conceptual confusion, which we think is very important to keep clear: “economic growth” and “economic development” are not the same. Herman Daly has long urged that we make a sharp distinction: “We can simply distinguish growth (quantitative expansion) from development (qualitative improvement), and urge ourselves to develop as much as possible, while ceasing to grow.”9 But what could it mean to have an economy that doesn’t grow?
Economic orthodoxy would have us believe that a company or an economy that does not continually move forward, growing at every moment, will starve and die. To intentionally limit growth, particularly by imposing strict environmental regulation, would on such a view mean a sort of retreat from economic activity—which would itself mean a worldwide and permanent contraction of the sort that would wreck everyone’s standard of living. But this line of thinking has faded in recent years, as mainstream economists looked closely at the actual result of environmental regulation