EmpiricalRequires evidence

The strongest counter-fact to growth as a goal is a gradient that runs the wrong way, and Part I quotes Harari at length for it. In Peru, Haiti, the Philippines and Ghana, developing countries suffering poverty and political instability, fewer than five people per 100,000 take their own lives each year, while in rich and peaceful Switzerland, France, Japan and New Zealand it is more than ten. South Korea is the within-country case: in 1985 it was relatively poor, tradition-bound and authoritarian with about nine suicides per 100,000, and having become a leading economic power with among the best educated citizens in the world and a stable liberal democracy, its rate is thirty-six per 100,000. Alongside this, depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide, more than one in ten Americans take antidepressants and one in four women in their forties and fifties, and prescriptions rose nearly 400 percent in ten years while the drugs lose effectiveness and are hard to stop. Part I's conclusion is the one that matters: economic growth is not a goal in and of itself.

Risk landscape