Yes, the driver is, as you say, "the growth of capital, arising out of interest on debt". And the physical means by which this growth comes about is industrialism, whose "development" is the nothing other than the development of capital. If interest on debt is the (semi-)hidden way in which capital expands, industrialism is its very visible and concrete face.
Yes, the driver is, as you say, "the growth of capital, arising out of interest on debt". And the physical means by which this growth comes about is industrialism, whose "development" is the nothing other than the development of capital. If interest on debt is the (semi-)hidden way in which capital expands, industrialism is its very visible and concrete face.
Or, to put it another way, if capital is the murderer, then industrialism is the act of murder itself. Identifying the culprit is one thing, stopping the crime is another, even more urgent, necessity!
And the act of seeking to increase return on capital, i.e. profit, in order to not go into default on debt - which provides the basis for industrialism - is the motive for the crime, the driving force. Go into default on your bonds and your interest rate goes up, skip a dividend or cancel it altogether, and stock value rapidly decreases... so you have to always increase earnings per share because a quarterly earnings report which shows flat growth - or even worse, negative growth, has bad effects on stock values and the longevity of corporate CEOs... And recessions - periods of decreased or negative growth in GDP - have bad effects on the career longevity of politicians. And all of this growth is both dependent on energy and is an exponential process, so growth requires exponential increase in the amount of energy converted from a useful form into a non-useful form - and with finite and non-renewable energetically-dense resources, this cannot be continued - there are hard limits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZA9Hnp3aV4
Yes, the driver is, as you say, "the growth of capital, arising out of interest on debt". And the physical means by which this growth comes about is industrialism, whose "development" is the nothing other than the development of capital. If interest on debt is the (semi-)hidden way in which capital expands, industrialism is its very visible and concrete face.
Or, to put it another way, if capital is the murderer, then industrialism is the act of murder itself. Identifying the culprit is one thing, stopping the crime is another, even more urgent, necessity!
And the act of seeking to increase return on capital, i.e. profit, in order to not go into default on debt - which provides the basis for industrialism - is the motive for the crime, the driving force. Go into default on your bonds and your interest rate goes up, skip a dividend or cancel it altogether, and stock value rapidly decreases... so you have to always increase earnings per share because a quarterly earnings report which shows flat growth - or even worse, negative growth, has bad effects on stock values and the longevity of corporate CEOs... And recessions - periods of decreased or negative growth in GDP - have bad effects on the career longevity of politicians. And all of this growth is both dependent on energy and is an exponential process, so growth requires exponential increase in the amount of energy converted from a useful form into a non-useful form - and with finite and non-renewable energetically-dense resources, this cannot be continued - there are hard limits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZA9Hnp3aV4