So we’ve inherited our ancestors’ preference for adding. But there’s also a very modern reason why we prefer to add rather than subtract: our economies demand it. And not only do modern capitalist economies encourage us to add – we’re also urged to think of constant adding as a good thing.
But what do economics, addition, and morality have to do with one another?
To discover the answer, we have to travel back to 1949, when President Harry Truman addressed a nation of fed-up, war-weary Americans. In his seminal speech, Truman declared that the way to prevent future world wars was to assist people around the world in bettering themselves. America, he said, would ensure that people in every country had more food, more clothing, and more access to the good things in life.
The key to world peace, Truman believed, was economic growth. Based on the recommendations of economist John Maynard Keynes, the citizens of the free world would be encouraged to add like they’d never added before. The reasoning was this: If people bought more products, then manufacturing companies would grow and be able to provide more jobs for people. All these new jobs would mean that more people would be able to spend more on even more products – and so on, until the economy and everyone in it was booming.
Truman’s speech marked the birth of modern consumer capitalism, and we haven’t stopped adding to our lives ever since. After all, we’re not just shopping – we’re shopping for world peace.
This post-war recipe of consumerism and growth has worked pretty well. Global per capita income was $14,500 in 2016, up from $3,000 in 1950. And we’re not just richer; we live longer, too. The global average life expectancy has risen from 48 years to 70 in the same length of time. As a result of gains like these, most of us now take it for granted that constant economic growth is good.
But is it? Arguably, in our race to gain prosperity, we’ve sacrificed a commodity that we’ll never be able to make more of: time. Just think about how often your friends and coworkers tell you how busy they are, or vice versa. We live in a culture of busyness; some of us even wear it as a badge of honor. But it also leads to anxiety and stress. The fact is, for all our peace and prosperity, a person living in the Middle Ages probably had more leisure time than you do.
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