| | "They [Robert and Edward Skidelsky] urge us to re-examine economic growth 'as an end in itself,' without any connection to 'what a good life might look like'.”
But under capitalism, economic growth is not an end in itself; each individual is an end in himself. Economic growth is simply a byproduct of individual choice.
Under such a system, everyone is free to choose the life that he or she regards as good, instead of having it chosen by the government. There is no such thing as "a good life" under a system in which individual choice is systematically negated. In a free market, each party to an exchange necessarily views it as beneficial, otherwise neither would have consented to it.
Would Messrs. Skidelsky interfere with that economic benefit, on the grounds that it doesn't fit their view of the good life? Would they prefer compulsory poverty to voluntary prosperity?
Evidently.
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