Coming up with novel indicators is not enough. “GDP” isn’t simply about measuring economic growth, it’s about labeling the desirable feature for the economic elites. The obsession with growth predates GDP, it even predates Capitalism as it’s based on the much older “tradition” of imperialistic expansionism.
One of the reasons “degrowth” is useful is because it’s antithetical to capitalism and capitalism’s growth imperative, so it can’t be co-opted by capitalism. When you promote “regenerative”, you promote a term that has already been co-opted, most infamously now with the “regenerative grazing” pseudoscience.
heel our planet
heal*
Coming up with new indicators is actively having the discussion on what our societies should value in the economy. The idea of growth is to improve the life of everybody. No society last with only negative ideals. The idea of less and less for the sake of less is a call for universal suffering.
That is why degrowth as a term has so many problems. Any idea trying to make life worse for everybody is never going to be popular. That is why capitalism has no need of capturing the term and in fact is using it to make green groups look like a problem. Instead pushing for life improvements outside GDP is a good idea. For example reducing the maximum allowed work week means unemployment goes down, which improves workers negotiating position giving them a larger share of the profits. That means less money for the rich and fewer private jets and super yachts. If you do it hard enough it can also lower production, but still improve quality of life, due to more free time. So drop in GDP, raise in more useful indicators and even more importantly something positive to sell. It is not you have less stuff, but it is you have more free time.
You’re both right. Degrowth has poor optics. But that’s mainly because growth has been the subject of centuries of positive branding. By contrast, in a medical context the term is anything but positive.
One interesting anecdote that I learned from Tim Jackson’s book: Keynes himself saw growth as a vehicle to a destination. In other words, time-limited, and to be replaced by another goal once it had done its job.
