Degrowth is such a stupid idea. All the things that make your life better - housing, healthcare, education, food, iphones, air conditioning, cars, and more - are forms of wealth.
You cannot have more of them without economic growth, because these things are economic growth.
Degrowth is simply a refusal to engage in magical thinking. You cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet: growth must therefore have an end. Would we prefer to choose a gentle mode of deceleration which keeps us comfortable along the way, or would we prefer to wait and do all the decelerating at once, when we hit the wall?
No one says literally infinite growth. That's a stupid strawman and if you are arguing at that level you are not engaging, you are just playing tribal in-group signaling. And we don't need to think about growth 10,000 years from now, we have no idea, not the slightest clue, what the technological, cultural, and human landscape looks like in the timeline long enough to actually start having to think about the edge of growth
There is absolutely no reason, whatsoever, to think we are nearing the end of genuinely useful growth. We still die early of cancer, spend too much time working, live in too small domiciles, don't enjoy enough hobbies, eat worse food than we'd like, etc. We are nearing catastrophe because of our carbon-producing energy sources, but that's not "growth" generally, that's a specific problem.
It sounds like you agree with the premise, then, that there are planetary limits, and that growth must ultimately end: you are simply looking at different limits, and you see a lot of runway left. People who are looking at ecological limits tend to have a less optimistic view.
The extreme degrowth almost seem like a climate-disinformation psyops because it's so stupid. Like I'm more convinced they're propaganda to discredit climate action than actually trying to fight for it.
I have to remind myself that more likely, people have just no idea what "economic growth" means and develop some strawman definition based on basically no background understanding.
And forest fires burning down whole towns, pandemics, drought, crop failures, social unrest due to hungry people trying to move to more livable areas are externalities that economic growth can also solve, right?
But economic growth fails to model externalities. All that stuff is good, unless we cook the earth using it and kill everyone. iPhones are great for us but what about the kids dying the lithium mine? …
Probably not popular ideas on this forum, but they also can’t just be dismissed (but they will get downvoted lol).
A single carbon tax would be a market-oriented solution that captures the externality of CO2 emission - and would likely still permit economic growth! You don't need to revolutionize the entire basis on which human civilization has acted for millennia in order to solve the problem. And if you did have to, one could reasonably expect that effort to fail.
That’s one single variable out of near infinite externalities. Other examples: collapsing the food chain by wiping out critical pieces through urbanization, microplastics poisoning all animal life (potentially), global warming due to heat capture of asphalt… Some of these may have solutions, some might not be problems but what’s definitely true is that “growth = good” is way too simplistic a model.
I think there's a middle ground between laissez-faire capitalism and degrowth. As far as I can tell no one in this thread has been arguing that laissez-faire always produces great outcomes, simply (and rightly) that degrowth is a horrible idea.
Well, it makes sense for them. If everyone is to get a better life, the planet will burn, and they won't be able to enjoy it. And they're already wealthy, so as long as everyone else stays where they, are, things won't have to change for them.
Another story are developed societies where there's enough resources and infrastructure for everyone to live a decent life already. They can genuinely focus on sustainability, not on growth.
Brian Chau, the creator of Effort News, is a "Founding Faculty" member (https://www.fromthenew.world/about) of Balaji Srinivasan’s Network School, and has lived in its Singapore-based compound.
>“What I’m really calling for is something like tech Zionism,” he said, after comparing his movement to those started by the biblical Abraham, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism), Theodor Herzl (“spiritual father” of the state of Israel), and Lee Kuan Yew (former authoritarian ruler of Singapore). Balaji then revealed his shocking ideas for a tech-governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe clad in gray t-shirts. “And if you see another Gray on the street … you do the nod,” he said, during a four-hour talk on the Moment of Zen podcast. “You’re a fellow Gray.”
You cannot have more of them without economic growth, because these things are economic growth.
Per capita (real) income has over doubled in California since 1975, and yet the per capita energy use has stayed the same (see "Art Rosenfeld"):
* https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2017/01/27/art-rosenfeld-californ...
Economic growth does not (just) entail making more stuff, especially in the US, when so much is "services".
There is absolutely no reason, whatsoever, to think we are nearing the end of genuinely useful growth. We still die early of cancer, spend too much time working, live in too small domiciles, don't enjoy enough hobbies, eat worse food than we'd like, etc. We are nearing catastrophe because of our carbon-producing energy sources, but that's not "growth" generally, that's a specific problem.
We aren't even using 0.01% of the solar energy that hits the Earth's surface, let alone what we could capture with possible future technologies.
There are challenges to growth, like climate change, but we can engineer solutions instead of throwing our hands up and going home.
I have to remind myself that more likely, people have just no idea what "economic growth" means and develop some strawman definition based on basically no background understanding.
Probably not popular ideas on this forum, but they also can’t just be dismissed (but they will get downvoted lol).
> simply (and rightly) that degrowth is a horrible idea.
I don’t agree that it’s this clear. If growth is happening mainly for the rich (which it currently is), then I fully support de-growing them.
Another story are developed societies where there's enough resources and infrastructure for everyone to live a decent life already. They can genuinely focus on sustainability, not on growth.
Srinivasan's Network School is part of his long-term goal of creating "Network States" -- essentially an aspiration of corporate feudalism (https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/the-tech-barons-have-a-blue...)
See: https://newrepublic.com/article/180487/balaji-srinivasan-net...
>“What I’m really calling for is something like tech Zionism,” he said, after comparing his movement to those started by the biblical Abraham, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism), Theodor Herzl (“spiritual father” of the state of Israel), and Lee Kuan Yew (former authoritarian ruler of Singapore). Balaji then revealed his shocking ideas for a tech-governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe clad in gray t-shirts. “And if you see another Gray on the street … you do the nod,” he said, during a four-hour talk on the Moment of Zen podcast. “You’re a fellow Gray.”