What is it like to live in a steady state economy? Miss Hokusai in Edo Japan
We owe to Kennet Boulding the concept that “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.” And we call the end of this impossible growth a condition of “no growth”, “zero growth” or “stable state.” Many people argue that such a condition is not only necessary because of physical reasons, but it is also a good condition to be in.
In practice, we don’t know what a true “zero-growth” society could be, simply because it has never existed in the modern Western World. The only hint we can find on how such a society could be is from history. Probably the best example of such a society, close in time and very well known, is Japan during the Edo Period, that historians place between 1603 and 1868.
We have no data about Edo Japan that we could compare to our modern concept of “Gross Domestic Product,” which is at the basis of our idea of “economic growth”. However, we have good data about the population of that time and there is no doubt that it remained nearly stable during the whole period. We also know that the extent of cultivated land in Japan didn’t vary over almost one century and a half, from 1720 to 1874 (source).
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