Can we think differently

As an ISB classmate put it, what I gained after ISB is perspective about life. I am reproducing a small reading from ET for you, which I found different and interesting. Do read it and leave your comments, if any

THE MORAL CONSEQUENCES OF ECONOMIC GROWTH
Benjamin Friedman


OUR conventional thinking about economic growth fails to reflect the breadth of what growth, or its absence, means for a society. We recognise, of course, the advantages of a higher material standard of living, and we appreciate them. But moral thinking, in practically every known culture, enjoins us not to place undue emphasis on our material concerns. We are also increasingly aware that economic development — industrialisation in particular, and more recently globalisation — often brings undesirable side effects, like damage to the environment or the homogenisation of what used to be distinctive cultures, and we have come to regard these matters too in moral terms. On both counts, we think of economic growth in terms of material considerations versus moral ones: we weigh material positives against moral negatives.
I believe this thinking is seriously, in some circumstances dangerously, incomplete. The value of a rising standard of living lies not just in the concrete improvements it brings to how individuals live but in how it shapes the social, political, and ultimately the moral character of a people.
Economic growth, a rising standard of living for the clear majority of citizens, more often than not fosters greater opportunity, tolerance of diversity, social mobility, commitment to fairness, and dedication to democracy... when living standards decline, most societies make little if any progress toward any of these goals, and in all too many instances they plainly retrogress.

My Comments: From a micro perspective, economic growth is relevant only till the survival goals os a human being are met post which over focus on economic growth slowly grows into an excess. However corporations/firms are created mainly to drive economic growth, expecting anything else creates distortions but then we need to know what level of importance we need to give them in the modern society. Do we want our civilization to be known as the one that printed money and got lost in that mirage?