Progress is one of those words nobody ever argues with. Who doesn’t want progress? If a politician promises progress, we applaud. If the economy is progressing, the headlines are positive. If technology is progressing, we’re told life is getting better.
But every now and then, it’s worth stopping to ask an awkward question.
Progress towards what?
Because somewhere along the way, we’ve quietly decided that progress means one thing above everything else: more. More growth, production… more consumption. More houses. More roads. More shopping centres. More mining. More energy. More stuff.
If next year’s economy is bigger than this year’s, we’ve made progress. If people are buying more than they did last year, that’s progress too. And if a company digs up more resources and sells more products than ever before, that’s held up as success.
We’ve become so used to this way of thinking that it feels almost natural. Nature has a funny way of reminding us that “more” isn’t always better.
The planet never got the memo
The economy seems to work on the assumption that growth can continue forever. The planet, unfortunately, didn’t get that memo. Everything around us has limits. A dam only holds so much water. A paddock only grows so much grass.
A fishery can only support so many boats before the fish start disappearing. Even your pantry eventually runs out if you keep taking things out without putting anything back. Yet somehow, we’ve convinced ourselves that an economy built on extracting physical resources can keep expanding indefinitely on a planet that isn’t getting any bigger. It’s an odd idea when you stop and think about it. Imagine telling your bank manager that your retirement plan relies on spending more money every year forever, regardless of what’s in your account. They’d probably suggest another strategy.
Yet that’s remarkably close to how we’ve organised much of the global economy.
Bigger doesn’t always mean better
Don’t get me wrong – economic growth has done incredible things. People today generally live longer, healthier lives than previous generations. Medical advances have been astonishing. Technology has connected the world in ways our grandparents could never have imagined. None of that should be dismissed. But growth has gradually shifted from being a tool to becoming the goal itself.
We rarely stop to ask whether the extra growth is actually making life better. Instead, we assume that because something is bigger, it must be better. Anyone who’s tried cleaning a larger house, maintaining a bigger boat or mowing a larger block knows that’s not necessarily true. Sometimes bigger just means more work. The same principle might apply to economies.
The curious case of GDP
There’s a number that gets quoted endlessly whenever politicians talk about the economy. GDP. Gross Domestic Product. It sounds terribly scientific, which probably explains why nobody questions it very often. GDP measures economic activity. That’s useful, as far as it goes.
But here’s the catch.
It doesn’t distinguish between activity that genuinely improves life and activity that simply cleans up yesterday’s mess. A cyclone tears through a town? Rebuilding boosts GDP. A major oil spill? The clean-up contributes to GDP. Are more people becoming sick and needing expensive medical treatment? GDP rises again. It’s a bit like measuring your household’s success by counting how many times you’ve had to call the plumber. Lots of activity doesn’t necessarily mean things are going well. Meanwhile, some of life’s most valuable contributions barely register at all.
Looking after ageing parents. Volunteering. Helping your neighbour. Raising children. Protecting bushland. Building stronger communities. Apparently, none of those are particularly impressive if you’re only watching the numbers.
The endless shopping list
Modern life has become remarkably good at convincing us that happiness is just one purchase away. There’s always a newer phone. A smarter television. A faster car. A kitchen renovation. A bigger barbecue. And just when you’ve finally bought the thing you thought would make everything complete, another advertisement pops up explaining why you now need the upgraded version. It’s exhausting.
Of course, buying nice things isn’t the problem. We all enjoy a few comforts. The problem comes when consumption quietly becomes our definition of success. When having more replaces enjoying enough. That’s a difficult treadmill to get off because there’s no finish line. There will always be something newer, shinier or slightly larger. The manufacturers are counting on it.
Every product starts somewhere
One thing we rarely think about is where all this stuff actually comes from. A smartphone doesn’t magically appear on a shelf. Its story begins in a mine.
Steel begins as iron ore. Plastic begins as a fossil fuel. Concrete begins with quarrying. Even renewable energy technologies rely on enormous quantities of minerals being extracted from the ground. The further removed we become from extraction, the easier it is to forget that every physical product starts with removing something from somewhere else.
For decades, cheap fossil fuels made this process incredibly efficient. Energy was abundant. Transport was affordable. Global supply chains flourished. Consumption exploded. The system worked so well that we stopped noticing how dependent it had become on resources that were never infinite in the first place.
Technology will save us… Won’t it?
Whenever concerns about resource limits come up, someone usually says, “Technology will solve it.”
Maybe.
Technology has solved countless problems throughout history. It has also created a few. The truth is that technology is a tool. Whether it helps depends on how we use it. More efficient cars are wonderful. But if everyone drives further because fuel is cheaper, total fuel use doesn’t necessarily fall. More efficient appliances help. But if every household fills up with twice as many appliances, the gains quickly disappear. Efficiency is important, but it isn’t magic. You can’t solve every problem simply by becoming more efficient at creating it.
Maybe we’ve been measuring the wrong things
Here’s a thought: what if success has less to do with how much we consume and more to do with how well we live? Would you rather live in a neighbourhood where people know each other? Or one with slightly higher retail spending? Would you prefer cleaner rivers? More birds in the morning?
Safer streets? Affordable housing? More time with family? Reliable healthcare? Most people already know their answers.
The interesting thing is that very few of them involve buying another shopping trolley full of stuff. That’s not because material comfort doesn’t matter. It certainly does. But after our basic needs are met, the things that make life rich often aren’t things at all.
Progress needs a better definition
Perhaps that’s where we’ve lost our way- we’ve confused economic growth with human progress. They’re related, but they’re not identical. One measures activity. The other measures whether life is genuinely improving. They’re not always the same thing.
History gives us plenty of examples. Expanding education was progress. Reducing child mortality was progress. Cleaner drinking water was progress. Greater equality was progress. Those achievements improved lives. Not simply because more money changed hands, but because society became healthier, fairer and more resilient.
Surely that’s the sort of progress worth aiming for.
So, where do we go from here?
None of this means we should stop innovating.
Far from it.
Human creativity is one of our greatest strengths. We’ll need plenty of it in the decades ahead. But perhaps the challenge isn’t simply producing more. Perhaps it’s learning to produce better. To build things that last. To waste less.
To repair instead of replacing. To design systems that work with nature rather than assuming it will endlessly adapt to us. Most importantly, perhaps it’s time we stopped treating economic growth as the destination. Growth is useful. Sometimes it’s necessary. But it should be the servant, not the master, because on a finite planet, endless expansion isn’t really a strategy.
It’s a hope. And hope, by itself, has never balanced a budget, replenished a fishery or refilled an oil well. Maybe real progress isn’t about squeezing a little more out of the planet each year. Maybe it’s about becoming clever enough to thrive without needing to. That strikes me as a definition of progress worth pursuing.
