It’s not that radical, we lived with less than this for tens of thousands of years before the industrial revolution.
This sounds nice for someone in a developed country who has all they need, and is only satisfying their wants. But for most of the world, economic development is a necessity and a lifesaver. Child mortality is reduced, life expectancy and education level increased, child labor decreased, as a country’s economy grows. This is not a fringe right-wing idea. This is the very real effect of economic growth in developing countries, i.e. most of the world.
Degrowthers often seem to forget that applying their ideas will literally kill millions in developing countries, by preventing the economic developments that would have saved them.
FWIW, I am not a fan of unbridled capitalism either but think that it is important to consider science in important matters like this and not just go with gut feeling. That applies to both fascism and degrowth.
I think a more fair take is that we need growth in underdeveloped places and degrowth in highly developed places. It’s less about changing the total economic output and more about changing how that output is distributed.
No, it’s about how much carbon we are putting I to the atmosphere. Pretty simple issue actually.
Which is a direct function of development. All of Africa produces less CO2 than Alabama, and Alabama is the least developed state in the developed world.
Degrowth addresses that, contrary to your opinion. Degrowth in the global north provides the space for the global south to properly develop, something that has been systematically denied to them in many places by western powers through unequal exchange and neocolonialism.
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Lmao no but that’s a great mental image. Global north and south don’t exclusively refer to northern and southern hemisphere. Though, rewilding is a component of most degrowth strategies I’ve encountered. Obviously it’s much more complicated than just planting trees, entire ecosystems would need to be developed, but I guess sort of in a way it would be like moving the Amazon to the northern hemisphere, only that degrowth would advocate for redeveloping underdeveloped areas in the global south rather than further damaging wild ecosystems to develop more sprawl.
Edit: by space I meant in terms of emissions, development costs to land, etc. currently we’re already exploiting most of these countries resources, and destroying their ecosystems, through the aforementioned unequal exchange and neocolonialism, but under de growth, these regions would instead be able to exploit their own resources for their development, instead of being harangued into exporting raw goods by the global north for our oversized consumption habits.
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Sure, so I imagine you’re also of the opinion that Texas should not be allowed to develop any more, that they must refuse any new immigrants from other states, and all Texans must move to other states, right?
Given what we know about climate change, I imagine you must feel the same way about the majority of the southern US, which indeed will itself become uninhabitable.
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I feel that, it will be interesting to see how the global climate refugee crisis will go when western countries like the US start having millions of migrants internally as well as externally. I think it’s going to be crazy, so much of the west is already bigoted against refugees overall, will they turn that inward and create a class of undesirables who live in shanty towns? Will the state step up and spend the billions of dollars it requires to properly create places for all these people? It’s gonna be a crazy few decades.
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It seems like the choice is to die from the environmental issues or die from poor health care? There is no way anyone survives with the current state of things.
Its often includes with a more holistic approach to restructuring society. Degrowth is only a part of the puzzle a lot of radicals are advocating for in order to combat climate change. A lot of proponents of degrowth also call for a solarpunk style of city planning, decentralized/libertarian (real libertarian) politics and plenty more
The article is, in my opinion, purposely mischaracterizing the degrowth movement. I would say degrowth is more a natural reaction to the excesses of capitalism than movement about addressing climate change.
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Isn’t the former very naturally part of the latter though ? And doesn’t the article also raise that point as well? Fundamentally it’s an idea that often gets interpreted through both those lenses because it could help with both conflicts, which is also what by definition is it’s purposely trying to accomplish, the first explicitly and the second is implicit in
… within planetary boundaries.
This connection I think should be embraced because climate change is more attractive as a topic to most people than critiques of capitalism but obviously one leads naturally into the other. Saying that degrowth aims to address climate change is more just a description of partial content rather than a mischaracterization and the body of the article tries reasonably to explain other parts as well, less work and better well being are right there in the title, both not a dishonest description of other parts of the philosophy.
After all no one that accepts degrowth as a concept would answer the question “Should we degrow to combat climate change ?” with a “No” All answers would be “yes and …” or “yes but …”
At the end of the day Vice writing will never be perfect but nowadays for genpop media outlets it tries much harder than most to paint an honest picture of the world, and calling this article a mischaracterization seems to me a little harsh, if you’ve never heard of it the article certainly could honestly teach and spark interest for a this “new” way of thinking, and you need just one word to google to get more rigorous explanation if you wanted it.
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Hell yes it’s a great way to live.
If we implement government policies that incentivize simple living, and tax wasteful living exponentially, it’s going to benefit individuals.
Wealthy people will be better off from having most of their wealth taxed because they’ll have a more enjoyable simple lifestyle.
For real. It’s the same with food.
Not that I eat healthy… Because I’m practically underweight so I’ll generally eat anything. But after eating organic for awhile in the past I definitely favor fresh healthy over junk food. Regular Americanized food just tastes fake to me.
Same with my room/home… It’s so much easier when you only have less to take care of.
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Protip: if you want your movement to gain any political traction, don’t call it the degrowth movement
What would you call it? Its kinda like the “defund police” thing. If they called it “reallocate police resources” opposition to the movement would just use the stronger “defund police” language as a cudgel to smear it. It’s best to own it and educate
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why? it’s exactly what it is.
Because the average person is too dumb
Do tells us what smooth PR term to use.
Economic resilience
I always used ‘durable economy’
For political reasons.
In order to slow the economy down and not wreak havoc, he said, we have to reconfigure our ideas about the entire economic system.
This is how degrowthers envision the process: After a reduction in material and energy consumption, which will constrict the economy, there should also be a redistribution of existing wealth, and a transition from a materialistic society to one in which the values are based on simpler lifestyles and unpaid work and activities.
Sounds good to me. It is a fair point that the basic operation of our society depends on continual growth, but redistribution seems like it would be an effective way of mitigating those problems degrowth might cause. We have more than enough resources to keep everyone alive, we just have to use them.
I’d rather just do the full communism now path, where once every man, woman and child has all their needs and many of their wants met, there isn’t a desire to chase the next fashion craze, or buy the next iphone or “keep up with the jones’” as it were because the Jones’ have the same stuff you do, but maybe they spend their ample leisure time exercising, you spend your time gardening.
The only way that will work is if you have a violent dictatorship. Welcome Stalin back basically.
I see more future in putting laws in place that severely limits what companies can do. Companies cannot grow beyond 1000 people. Tax any wealth thing heavily. Tax negatively for the poor, tax a little for those with a little and more for those that are better off. Taxes go up and up once you are richer and Once your income and or networth reaches a certain level, tax 100%.
Institute 3-4 work day weeks
Institute universal income
Out extreme limits on advertising and marketing. Those two are the real evils of mankind.
Require news outlets be paid for by the government and be required to be neutral and factual
With changes like that we can remain a (serverely limited) capitalist system that pays for the very nice social system below that doesn’t focus in money anymore
Laws will be written with loopholes. Just nationalize industry run them for the public rather the for profit and fire the CEOs/Lobbyists and PMC’s that keep Capitalism operating.
Also I’ll take a Stalin for the initial break from Capitalism. After 10ish years, we can go to a more democratic government.
there should also be a redistribution of existing wealth
there should also be unicorns farting rainbows.
Yeah, good luck with that. Won’t happen. Do you really believe that the 1% will give up it’s riches? Do you really believe that the politicians, you know, the guys with money, will decide on redistribution?
Good luck.
the politicians, you know, the guys with money
There is overlap, but ultimately it’s not a monolith. Anyone can be a politician and politicians succeed or fail on people voting for them. What are the rich gonna do with ownership of all the land and all the companies and all the resources anyway? Effectively enslave everybody? Wait for us to starve so they can keep playing number-go-up in secure enclaves while the world burns around them?
You mention universal income in another comment. If you do it right, that’s redistribution. You give people the means to keep living, every other problem gets less intense. I think there’s a good chance that when things get bad enough, even hardcore capitalists will go for it because it’s a way for capitalism to continue existing in a form that isn’t a dead useless husk. IMO a much better option than pulling for a civil war hoping the result will be a socialist utopia and not just evil warlords doing evil warlord stuff.
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“Turn on, tune in, drop out” 2.0
I’m doing my part.
Yes, we’ll save ourselves by resetting the clock and never undoing the conditions that led to where we are
B-B-B-But then multi-billionaires might have to settle for a few billion less!!! How will they survive?
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Degrowth is such a fucking stupid idea. What we need is socialism. The demonic oligarchs that run the world are never going to prioritize reducing climate change. They’ve made that clear over the last century. There’s too much profit to be made.
Worker owned means of production is the only solution. Only then can we direct the productive forces toward solving the most immediate problems that humanity faces. We’ve created so much productivity, but we need to guide it in the direction of sustainability instead of the profit motive.
You’re conflating two very different things. You can have an equitable system of worker owned coops that still has a growth mindset and destroys the ecosystem. You don’t magically become sustainable when socialism becomes a thing. Growth itself when we’re bound by the resources of a single planet a problem, period.
China seems to be achieving this just fine and without the worker coop part even.
That also means massive unemployment
Look around you. Are there things to be done? Parks to be cleaned? Old houses to be renovated? Run down areas of town? Are there any hungry children in nearby schools? If you answered yes to any of those, then there is work to be done.
Why, if there is work to be done, is it not getting done? What type of society undervalues such critical work such that you would look at the state of the work and think that there is not enough work for everyone to contribute.
There are plenty of jobs, there is infinite work, but the current value system doesn’t incentivise this work that would improve everyone’s life.
So two questions.
- Why doesn’t the current system value this work?
- What would the world look like of that type of work was valued?
That in mind, given that you assume mass unemployment, which is questionable at best, reconsider why that would be. Who, or what, would be the cause?
There are a lot of BS jobs that don’t create any value (real estate agents, advertising, …) and a lot of work that is not getting done because nobody would pay for it, for example cleaning up the environment, worker shortage in hospitals and elder care.
That’s actually a good thing, assuming that employment wasn’t tied to surviving nor thriving.
Good idea! Let’s just replace workers with robots straight away and they can live work free!
I’m all about it. I’ve got my Corvette and just had the clutch replaced so I’m all about *downsizing for others now!
I’ll downsize as well once I get my Bugatti and a private race track. Or two.
