Cargo cults closely resemble the cult of economic growth that has gripped our supposedly advanced democracies, and which our economists and ‘development’ experts hold out as a model for the world. ‘Growth’ has become the alpha and omega of political discourse, the place where ‘right’ and ‘left’ converge, the goal for which activists of both camps become cheerleaders. As a substitute for religious faith, its theology is uncomplicated. Like the cargo cultists, the disciples of growth believe that resources are limitless rather than finite. Because they are fundamentalists, all evidence to the contrary merely strengthens their dogma.

The growth cult equates consumption with progress and expects us to live suspended in the present, because nothing is permanent except ‘modernisation’ and change, nothing has lasting value and everything is in a constant anticipatory flux. Partisans of growth do not believe in miraculous craft — except for those provided by cut-price airlines — but they have their own superstitions. It is revealing to hear economists who pride themselves on their rigorous secular rationalism speak mystically of a ‘hidden hand’ directing our fortunes, as if economic policies and structures were of divine rather than human origin. ~Aidan Rankin, The Spectator