At the same time, a lot of people on this here blog, and everyone at BVEP, seem to think the government needs to run a recruitment program to lure, entice, to educate, bamboozle, you name it, far away businesses to move to our little chunk of paradise.

My conundrum is this: If businesses are so smart, what is our marketing program going to tell them that they don’t already know? And, if they are too stupid to know about us, why on earth would we want them to move here? Either way, the marketing money looks like a waste.

I say, save the money for something better.

Infinite growth on a finite planet is going in history’s dustbin of stupid ideas.

The Inflection Is Near?

By Thomas L. Friedman
March 7, 2009

… Let’s today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our economic crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.”

We have created a system for growth that depended on our building more and more stores to sell more and more stuff made in more and more factories in China, powered by more and more coal that would cause more and more climate change but earn China more and more dollars to buy more and more U.S. T-bills so America would have more and more money to build more and more stores and sell more and more stuff that would employ more and more Chinese …

We can’t do this anymore.

“We created a way of raising standards of living that we can’t possibly pass on to our children,” said Joe Romm, a physicist and climate expert who writes the indispensable blog climateprogress.org. We have been getting rich by depleting all our natural stocks — water, hydrocarbons, forests, rivers, fish and arable land — and not by generating renewable flows.

“You can get this burst of wealth that we have created from this rapacious behavior,” added Romm. “But it has to collapse, unless adults stand up and say, ‘This is a Ponzi scheme. We have not generated real wealth, and we are destroying a livable climate …’ Real wealth is something you can pass on in a way that others can enjoy.”

“Progrowth should move to New York City or Los Angeles if he/she/it wants to live shoulder to shoulder with the unwashed masses and choke on industrial fumes and automobile exhaust.”

New York CITY has more people than Alaska, New Mexico, Idaho, Hawaii, Montana, Wyoming and Nevada COMBINED. There are more people living on Manhattan Island than in the entire State of Idaho. Yet 3/4 of New York STATE is State Forests, and per capita New York CITY is very often safer and cleaner than Boise.

Now, L.A. is another story…

As far as the $70,000?

Somehow I suspect some of the stimulus money Boise’s getting [ http://www.cityofboise.org/Departments/Mayor/Stimulus/index.aspx ] that is earmarked for “Community Development” will find it’s way to he Chamber of Commerce’s “Treasure Valley Partnership”.

The only thing more ‘growth’ would do is to allow those who were foolish enough to buy land recently to not lose their shirt and end up living in a van down by the river.

Progrowth people are just passin’ through on their way to destroy another formerly great place to live.