[...] growth is not the result of a misguided cultural notion. Daly has missed the crucial insight that capitalism is a novel system, emerging only in the early modern era and pitting rival capitals against each other, such that profit-making is a structural imperative, not merely an option. Capital must complete its circuit through the commodity form greater than when it started or there will be a crisis. Profitability, not abstract measurements like GDP, is what matters. The latter’s late arrival in the history of capitalism hints that it is mere foam, while the struggle to maintain profitability goes on in the churning depths. Daly underestimates the difficulties of shackling capitalism so as to slow it down.