How does the innovation economy mesh with the postmodern mindset?

The postmodern mindset seems to be at odds with the innovation economy. Why? Because, in my humble opinion, economic growth can be broken into at least four roots.

Growth 1: more goods and services

Growth 2: more people

Growth 3: greater productivity

Growth 4: creative destruction (the disruptive process of transformation that accompanies radical innovation)

It is this last, Growth 4, that I find particularly interesting.

"This new global economy is more than just another layer of economic activity on top of the existing production process. Rather, it restructures all economic activities based on goals and values introduced by the aggressive exploitation of new productivity potentials of advanced information technology."
[source http://www.indiana.edu/~tisj/readers/full-text/14-4%20Stalder.html]

Postmodernism is a cultural value change in comfortable economic circles (such as Northern Europe, most of the US and Canada) away from Survival and Traditional values toward Democratic and Secular values. These people value immaterial life goals such as the pursuit of self-realization, meaning in life, justice in society, and harmony with the natural world above material security.

How does the Innovation Economy mesh with this Postmodern mindset?

Won't there be a crash between the constant retraining and entrepreneurship (needed in the first world, innovation economy) and the laid-back, lackadaisical postmodern culture (values created by the first world economy)?

Is a Physical Dollar Worth More than a Digital Dollar?

In one year a dollar may be spent multiple times. A physical dollar spent 20 times generates more economic activity than a dollar spent once and is therefore worth more. A digital dollar can be spent millions of times per year. Since digital money can be spent more frequently than physical money, digital money is worth more. But too much economic activity leads to inflation. A physical dollar can be spent less frequently but is less inflationary. Which effect dominates?

Poverty

As I bounce around through thoughts on a sustainable economy, poverty, negative economic growth, etc, I become convinced of two things. One, it is a heavy, complex subject with no simple answers. Two, negative economic growth may not only be the wrong thing to do (due to the effect it has on the worlds' poor), it may already be happening. The apparent growth in the developed world may primarily be a redistribution of resources in a slightly less than zero sum game.

From http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats
For economic growth and almost all of the other indicators, the last 20 years [of the current form of globalization, from 1980 - 2000] have shown a very clear decline in progress as compared with the previous two decades [1960 - 1980]. For each indicator, countries were divided into five roughly equal groups, according to what level the countries had achieved by the start of the period (1960 or 1980). Among the findings:

Growth: The fall in economic growth rates was most pronounced and across the board for all groups or countries.
Life Expectancy: Progress in life expectancy was also reduced for 4 out of the 5 groups of countries, with the exception of the highest group (life expectancy 69-76 years).
Infant and Child Mortality: Progress in reducing infant mortality was also considerably slower during the period of globalization (1980-1998) than over the previous two decades.
Education and literacy: Progress in education also slowed during the period of globalization.Source 29

image source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/opinion/15kristof.html?em

Blad and bladder

Starting with the assumption that a mature, diverse economy works efficiently with around 2% annual growth, a shift to a green economy would increase the volatility of the overall economy and require a higher overall rate of growth.

A true green shift would be toward reduced consumption, which is equivalent to an economic contraction. To compensate, sectors of the economy that are not affected by the green shift would need to grow at a faster than 2% rate to keep the overall rate around 2%. This would increase the volatility of the overall economy.

But when the growth is not diversified and there is more market volatility, the business cycles have more effect and a 2% overall growth rate may not be sufficient for efficient markets. A higher growth rate may be required.

In other words, not only would the growth rate need to increase, but the efficiency with which resources are consumed would also decrease.

A similar (other side of the coin) idea is explained here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uneconomic_growth):

"...innovation- or knowledge-driven growth still may not entirely resolve the problem of scale, or increasing resource consumption (see Jevons paradox).[9][10] For example, given that expenditure on necessities and taxes remain the same, (i) the availability of energy-saving lightbulbs may mean lower electricity usage and fees for a household but this frees up more discretionary, disposable income for additional consumption elsewhere (an example of the "rebound effect")[11][12] and (ii) technology (or globalisation) that leads to the availability of cheaper goods for consumers also frees up discretionary income for increased consumptive spending."

"In economics, the Jevons Paradox (sometimes called the Jevons effect) is the proposition that technological progress that increases the efficiency with which a resource is used, tends to increase (rather than decrease) the rate of consumption of that resource. It is historically called the Jevons Paradox as it ran counter to popular intuition. However, the situation is well understood in modern economics. In addition to reducing the amount needed for a given output, improved efficiency lowers the relative cost of using a resource – which increases demand. Overall resource use increases or decreases depending on which effect predominates."

Organic economics

I have an inkling of dissatisfying conclusions that I would like to work around. (please point out logic errors)

The premise is that economic growth causes increased consumption of energy and resources. (Even the service economy uses energy.)
The (un)conventional wisdom is to shift to a green, organic economy.
My fear is that while the green elements of the economy are good (organic farms, green energy, etc) for the local environment and health of everyone involved, the total global resource consumption stays the same.

The reasons for this are a) governments strive to keep the economy growing at 2%/year (higher for developing countries); b) any cost greater than the market price for conventional goods is either b1) inefficient and slows economic growth (which is then compensated for by pro-growth government policies); or b2) extra money that the farmer/producer uses to increase production or standard of living (consumption - even green consumption is still consumption).

My (sub)conclusions are:
1) green growth is an oxymoron, net greening only occurs when growth is zero or negative
2) real green spending will have a negative effect on the economy

Image that all the goods and service in the world were "green", ie zero carbon footprint, fully sustainable. This would mean that this "green" economy could expand indefinitely. Even hypothetically this wouldn't work, eg. indefinite increases in organic food production would still require increases in land use.

One problem with negative or zero growth is that it disproportionately affects the poor and unestablished.
a) more people are pushed below the poverty level (for neg growth, ie less money)
b) no new jobs are created
c) no wages are increased
d) innovative ideas which lead to better (more efficient) ways of doing things cause people to lose jobs
e) developing countries stagnate
etc, etc.

So, it seems that green is anti-growth and anti-growth is anti-poor, so green is effectively anti-poor.