By Gareth Vaughan
With economic growth no longer producing benefits seen in the past such as raising living standards for the middle class, and human activity having exceeded some planetary boundaries, it's time to embrace degrowth, argues Jennifer Wilkins.
Wilkins is a researcher and advocate on sustainability in business with a focus on degrowth. In a new episode of interest.co.nz's Of Interest podcast, she discusses the degrowth movement.
"Degrowth is normally described or defined as an equitable downscaling of production and consumption. Other people add in other parts of that definition, which is about reorganising the market for a new role in provisioning. So I think about degrowth as being a transition. Starting from the economy that we have now, which is very much about trickle down wealth and extracting from nature, to a future economy which is more about universal wellbeing in an economy within ecology and nature. And degrowth is really the transition from one to the other," Wilkins says.
"So I don't think about it as being a very rapid change or a very smooth change. I think about it as being a hybrid of emergence and receding ideas, quite a lot of tension and a lot of mutation in the economy. So it's quite a complex thing, degrowth."
She traces degrowth's origins to the 1970s, and Romanian mathematician, statistician, economist and author of The Entropy Law, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, "the father of ecological economics."
The push for net zero greenhouse gas emissions is needed but not enough, Wilkins says. With a degrowth economy requiring more of a collective than individual approach, Wilkins says "the jury's out on the role of capitalism." And does advocating for a reduction in production and consumption mean people would be expected to accept a lower standard of living?
"I think degrowth is definitely looking to raise standards of living for the majority of people around the world. I think standards of living are actually decreasing at the moment. I think around the world, middle class lifestyles are decreasing in quality. And so there's this myth, if you like, that raising growth improves wellbeing. But the evidence shows that there's actually a bliss point. Economic growth improves wellbeing up to a certain GDP per capita, and beyond that, it either doesn't make a difference and/or eventually it begins to reduce wellbeing," says Wilkins.
"The bliss point is actually quite a lot lower than New Zealand's GDP per capita. So we have theoretically enough wealth already. We just need to redistribute it. I think people who are very well off will not see a reduction in their wellbeing or their living standards through a redistribution, but I think people who are less well off will see a great improvement in their wellbeing through a redistribution."
Wilkins believes degrowth will become public policy, saying politicians who want to run on a degrowth platform have lots of positive things they can say.
"It's about redefining what we see as value. I mean, at the moment we think about wealth as value and prosperity, but prosperity is really about things like having more leisure time, having a healthier natural environment around us, having more community health and more community cohesion, having more access to services and assets, and having an increase in our democratic participation. And those are all things that degrowth wishes to grow," Wilkins says.
"I think it [degrowth] will become public policy. I think parties will run on it as a platform. It's hard to say when that would happen, but I think in the not too distant future. And I think the thing is that growth as an idea is so embedded as a common sense that it never has to explain itself. And so there's a bit of an unfair playing field in terms of degrowth will have to explain itself to become credible. Whereas growth gets a free pass."
"Growth is not producing the effects that we have experienced in the past, like the raising the living standards of the middle class. That ship has sailed. We're in a different world now. There isn't room for growth to create those kinds of benefits anymore. We need to create benefits in a different way. So growth will fail to evidence itself as a wellbeing, a process for wellbeing in future. And there'll be a confluence of factors. There'll be, you know, this failure of neoliberalism, which I think we're already experiencing," says Wilkins.
There's more from Wilkins in the podcast itself, including what degrowth would mean for individuals, businesses and communities, what it would mean for agriculture, manufacturing and tourism, and her thoughts on fiscal and monetary policy.
*You can find all episodes of the Of Interest podcast here.
134 Comments
Made sense until - So we have theoretically enough wealth already. We just need to redistribute it. (Do we redistribute the debt that often goes with wealth?)
So just like a game of monopoly we all start again with $200 and at "go".
This may be a hard sell.... maybe we just need to de-debt.
And giving that redistributed wealth to the masses "so their standard of living is raised" will somehow lead to less consumption? I don't see how that works.
If Thelma and Louise took their foot off the throttle their world would come crashing down. So they chose full throttle all the way over the edge. Humanity will copy them.
That was a good movie, saw it free on tvnz+.
The analogy with the environment is not apparent, there are in between moderate measures that people can take.
I get annoyed with the incredible hypocrisy displayed by gen z-ers. Example, the leader of the school strike was boasting how she flew to fiji for her R and R. What a joke
That last sentence looks like rewriting of history, if you are talking of the leader whose parents made her go along on the family holiday to Fiji against her own preference.
If you're having to rewrite history to support your idea that Gen Z as a whole is hypocritical it might be emotionally driven on your side...perhaps to justify the status quo and avoid any need for greater sustainability?
So the young energetic leader of a group of protesting school wagging conspiracists becomes meek and obedient under parental authority. What have you been smoking
If you want to be generous at least say she didnt think through her actions of going off for a little me-time in the pacific islands. She didnt go with megaphone in hand, she was totally complicit
Ah, so it's a yes then - rewrite a 16-year old obeying her parents and being not allowed to stay at home by herself, and extrapolate that rewriting out to an entire generation, ultimately to provide an emotional comfort blanket that one need not be inconvenienced by any lifestyle changes and need not cease living at the expense of following generations.
However, let us suppose that your assumption regarding this individual were 100% correct. Does that extrapolate to all of Gen Z, as you claim?
And in that case, should we statements from our older generations today regarding redistribution being "Communist" because they are all hypocritical recipients of the benefit of much redistribution from younger generations? As we have in this thread, a bunch of Communists wagging their finger and yelling "Communism!" at others...
Debt.....has a great deal to answer for in my simplistic opinion.
Now in the privileged position of being debt free, I recognise (with hindsight of course) that the notion of work and remuneration to achieve a better life is a heck of a lot about working to service debt. I vividly recall the relief of making the final mortgage repayment and the expansion of life choices that enabled.
Banks a sucking on the back tit (or maybe 2 or 3 of the 4 -thinking cows here), while encouraging growth in debt to make that back tit deliver more benefit to their, coffers.
I reckon a major driver of cost of living increases is debt servicing. Usury comes to mind.
We are in a catch 22 situation. To rein in banks requires reducing debt and reducing borrowing caps. Reducing borrowing caps, means that asset values will fall, severely biting those who have taken on high debt in the last, say 10 years.
In the 1930s there was the mortgage relief court. From accounts I have heard, an often painful and humiliating process to proceed through. But it did reset the NZ economy. Perhaps there are lessons from that to inform ways in which debt can be reined in.
Jennifer needs to examine current demographic data. The latest fashionable term - "Degrowth" is locked in hard. Bullshit policies like net zero are eye wateringly expensive irrelevances when they come up against plunging support ratios.
"Assuming the continuation of the current trajectory of our fertility and mortality (and even with some variation), the exponential population growth of the mid-20th century (doubling time of 37 years) is about to flip to an asymptotic decline, with the population halving every about 40 years."
https://insightplus.mja.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Picture4-1.png
Communism is a race towards the lowest common denominator of humanity & never worked. The handful of murderous fascist overlords & state apparatchiks crushing the people under their boots will be the only ones benefiting.
The irony of this article on Anzac day does not escape me.
True, and to have robust discussion we need to stop calling everything communism. It's immature.
The present model is one of heavy redistribution upwards and old-wards, and not working particularly well for anyone else or natural resources/environment. If we brand any changes in who receives to be "communism", we may as well equally meaningfully call the status quo of money to business, property, elderly communism.
Point being, neither is communism (nor is the current upwards redistribution model good) and we need to have more in depth discussion of how to do stuff without destroying environment, society and resources.
It's interesting we see much resistance to user-pays pollution costs these days too, even as we transfer money upwards and old-wards while calling anything else communism.
It's interesting we see much resistance to user-pays pollution costs these days too, even as we transfer money upwards and old-wards while calling anything else communism.
From my experience those that scream communism the most are those that voted their way to minimising their necessary input to the user-pays model, and now reap the long term benefits of having the resulting spare cash. Hypocritical at it's best.
kiwikisanz,
It's not binary, as you appear to suggest. I have done well in a democratic, largely capitalist society, but if I and many others raise concerns about the current state of capitalism, that doesn't mean we want communism or anything like it.
To suggest otherwise is, in my view, just lazy thinking. I think there are very serious issues to confront, one of which is our tax system, relying as it does almost totally on income tax-corporate and personal-and GST. I doubt if you could accuse, Australia, the US and the UK of being communist, they they all have capital taxes which we don't have.
And yet… if this ‘idea’ of degrowth were to sprout wings… what would need to occur for that to happen…
Unlikely the existing power brokers of today’s world would hand over control and ….’all that money’.
The other options? It would require a intifada, jihad, revolution and authoritarian, central control.
This was bad enough : "I THINK standards of living are actually decreasing at the moment. I think......". Excellent, that's a super start to a fact based conversation.
And then, even worse, the nub. "We just need to redistribute it". So says every socialist ever. Undermine property rights and go socialist.
Safely tucked in the bin.
And then, even worse, the nub. "We just need to redistribute it". So says every socialist ever. Undermine property rights and go socialist.
And the salaries for Robbo and his golden parachute mates at Otago University need not be redistributed in any way. Because these people are special and should be protected like native birds.
Seriously. We know for sure the Degrowth movement itself will come with its own grift. It's the price that must be paid. Like Al Gore and his multiroomed mansion.
Indeed. We need to protect growthist ideology as we chew on our petri dish steak and larvae patty hamburger, accompanied with chilled recycled toilet water. Later we can take the 4wd diesel down the 12 lane highway at 2kph to the beach, for a swim among the tampons, or maybe fish for an old tyre or floating log?
Yes, exponential growth is sweet.
Savings lead to prosperity over time and economic growth helps create savings.
But everything in moderation, for instance there's no point living in a car or under a bridge so you can save extra. The resident environmentalists here would have us take that approach with the planet, and cut back on all carbon ouput to the point we barely survive or enjoy ourselves
Thumbs up if you like my analogy
Our current model is "socialist" (in the contemporary social media use, as here) in that it's redistribution to property, business, elderly etc.
Avoiding name-calling any sharing with younger or poorer as "socialism" while living in a redistributionist model to property and older will enable a more reasonable discussion.
The first sign of a weak argument, is when it castigates by label. Socialist, communist...
Firstly, kudos to Gareth and Interest.co - this is the front of NZ journalism (and the whither banks? article is good too).
Fifteen years ago, when I started here, I didn't think in terms of degrowth - more in terms of energy maintainability. I'd been an early adopter, it was time to spread the message, But the message kept learning, and went through Peak Oil (peak energy, really), EROEI, entropy, the Limits to Growth (revisited; it was not unknown) and inevitably, in hindsight, Degrowth.
The question isn't whether we will degrow - we will - the question is whether we align our surfboard before the wave breaks, or whether we are still broad-side-on. My thing, these days, is teaching infrastructure triage; repurposing being another name for it.
Gonna be interesting to watch the discussion unfold - there are several more denigrators-by-name not featuring yet...
Communism is still communism even if you try to call it another name. The weakest argument of all is when you describe communism and have to say up front that what you are about to describe isn’t communism. This is a loon idea that will never take hold, except for few fringe nutters like normal.
And not everything you don't like is communism, despite it being used to label everything from seat belt laws to racial mixing to sustainability, to having property speculators pay a share of tax.
The big issue is that humans face resource and environmental constraints and will need to figure out how to deal with them viably. Simply deliberately living at the direct expense of the kids and grandkids to avoid any inconvenience to ourselves is not a great way to plan for handling these unfolding issues.
The big issue is that humans face resource and environmental constraints and will need to figure out how to deal with them viably.
It's very difficult to argue for this and also improved living standards at the same time.
Unless those living standards are more qualia of life stuff, although that doesn't require any sort of redistribution, just fundamental adjustments to life approach.
The discussion you're opening there re quality of life is the very relevant one. Quality of life is not necessarily access to endless amounts of $2 Shop stuff, fast fashion, or various other flotsam and jetsam people are constantly marketed at about.
Quality of life might indeed be improved through better healthcare, and even through other services. This indeed is how many of our public services came about in past decades and centuries, to improve overall societal quality of life. Improving the lot of many also benefits the few, seemed to be the grudging learning of past times...sometimes very reluctantly, as in London only getting around to proper sewers when the river of shit backed all the way up to the houses of parliament https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stink
Redistribution is an interesting topic, as right now it's used hugely. E.g. the recent billions redistributed to property to keep prices up in hard times, and to bail out wet and shaken houses. We're already doing it. It might be a case of ceasing some of our present redistribution aimed at inflating / propping up assets, and using more of that to fund actual useful stuff.
It might be a case of ceasing some of our present redistribution aimed at inflating / propping up assets, and using more of that to fund actual useful stuff.
If only the public voted accordingly to this, educate those around you folks, it is the best thing we can do.
Makes ignorant comments......
It's a ?
You are - as usual - 100% wrong.
Communism in its pure form, is egalitarian sharing of all - it is still 100% compatible with GROWTH. It never last long; psychopaths quickly take over, and there is no mechanism - short of armed rebellion - to remove them.
De-growth is a physical thing. It will happen, no matter what the societal format. That said, egalitarian local economies have a better chance of weathering the degrowth phase, than big, stratified ones. We are already watching globalism disintegrate (Fukuyama was f-ing wrong) and it is simple to extrapolate the trend.
A simple question: Every litre of fuel burned on your behalf - either directly or indirectly - is a litre my grandchildren (and theirs and theirs and theirs) will NEVER be able to burn. And every ton of CO2 exhausted on your behalf - unmitigated via the denial of folk of your kind - they will have to cop the impacts of.
Do you think you are being fair to them?
I'd have called it theft, and arguably fraud, from an unrepresented cohort (don't claim democracy - vis-a-vis future generations; we're a vicious kleptocracy). A so-called free market really means a short-term cohort having free reign at the expense of all who follow.
And I've read Atlas Shrugged....
My conscience is not affected, what about yours.
A simple question for you... You said your house is made from pieces of rubbish you collected at the tip, do you expect your grandkids to do the same or allow them to have decent homes, maybe with some iron and stainless steel and aluminium, even some granite. All mined from the earth
"Murray Grimwood is a hands-on environmentalist, and minimalist... He and partner Jennie live in a house built from recycled materials. Murray... has a lot of unfinished projects." Murray Grimwood, PDK, you're being true to form and dodgy
And since you raised it, here's a question for you. As you have this awareness not to burn fuels because it impacts your grandchildren and subsequent generations, what specific actions are you taking
I repeat - where did you get 'dump' from?
Materials-recyclers have been around a long time.
But it points out a few things you might want to contemplate: You start from a POV, then try and fit narratives to your POV. That is why you've spent a lot of time researching ME, but none researching the science of Limits to Growth, overshoot, entropy and so on. You seem to think that attacking the messenger will kill the message (its the most common form of denial, btw). Of course, it won't.
Folk like me, start from first-principles, sans bias. We end up wherever the science takes us, then ask how can we fit in?
Fundamental difference.
We reached the limits of growth. This is what you are always droning on about. If you have been doing it for 50 years, how many times to you want to be wrong ? People have been saying the world is going to end for hundreds of years.....and they are also wrong. But in a way they are right, because in a few billion years the earth will crash into the sun, so in a few billion years they will be right. I hope they will be happy they wasted their lives telling us about it.
It's like pulling teeth.
No, I haven't been saying we ARE for 50 years, I've been saying WILL.
Subtle difference I grant you.
If you perhaps did as much research as you do shooting the messenger?
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jiec.13442
'As a society, we have to admit that despite 50 years of knowledge about the dynamics of the collapse of our life support systems, we have failed to initiate a systematic change to prevent this collapse. It is becoming increasingly clear that, despite technological advances, the change needed to put us on a different trajectory will also require a change in belief systems, mindsets, and the way we organize our society (Irwin, 2015; Wamsler & Brink, 2018)'.
Poor old PDK peak oil didn't work out for him so he has to reinvent himself into new buzzwords like degrowth.
United States produces more crude oil than any country, ever
Nah PDK we shoot the MESSAGE but you cant handle it. I've also said that moderation is better than extremism but you cant handle that either.
Having planted hundreds and hundreds of trees in the last 4 years I think you're BARKING UP the wrong tree. Now, go back to your shed and finish those unfinished jobs
You use a similar argument quite often. A few questions:
- as procreation falls away (which it is), if there's no one to bequeath these resources to, is there a problem?
- if burning the fuels creates a problem for the kids, why does it matter if they can't inherit them to burn to create a problem for their kids?
- do the kids not benefit from all the current and previous fossil fueled development across a huge range of fields, from health, to telecommunications, infrastructure and transport?
Now we're getting somewhere - great questions and what a contrast from the prior two rants!
Population decline is more likely to be deficit-driven than proactive; natural attrition (in the First World) cannot be fast enough to outpace scarcity (at our level of activity). There is also the question of Haber-Bosch fertiliser - without which 4 billion are not fed....
It's not burning that we should be bequeathing them for - it's feedstock. All our pipework; water into cities and farms, wastes away, syringes, how many things are made from fossil feedstock? (sure, there are catalytic limitations).
No, if said infrastructure is fossil-dependent. What's the point in car-dependent suburbia, if you cant run cars, supply bitumen, get goods in and wastes out? If you can't run diggers to get to the plastic pipes you can't replace anyway?
So you get to the point where you know population will decline, faster than lack-of-procreating will drive. You know there is about half the fossil resource left (and that goes for a lot which is extracted). So you have to ask: What do we want to create, that will be valid beyond fossil energy (not feedstock; that's a much longer game if we're no burning)? There is no point carrying on creating stuff which is guaranteed to be obsolete; that's a total waste of the remaining resource.
But wasting the remaining resource, is what this current government is all about. The joke is that they are temporary; it will end. The sad part is the wasred opportunity.
Of course, we could admit to having no conscience - that would be easier. Not that I can recall anything which flew high, which didn't land when it ran out of fuel...
PDK Murray Grimwood (great surname) writes the occasional article on interest.co. I looked up his bio online and see he potters in sheds and does a column "the good life" for sheds magazine. He'd be a good bloke if it weren't for the antagonistic and sometimes crude comments he posts here. Yes he was a councillor a few years back, as to the council chair I couldnt say. Cheers
I'd suggest reading some wider discussion if you are actually interested. A few interesting discussions in interviews with Vaclav Smil, and the book "What We Owe the Future" by William MacAskill. The point is not to agree with them, but to find out more.
However, to question two, the argument from those making it is not that the fossil fuels should be saved for the kids to burn frivolously as we are, but that they should be used less frivolously.
A simple example concerning your third point is that where resources are becoming more expensive, it can make more sense to prioritise health infrastructure over subsidising frivolous use. Especially when we expect to garnish following generations' wages (collectivism, redistribution...Communism, according to some) to fund our old age care.
But in practical terms, actually engaging more with resource and energy costs will inform policy. For example, we might realise that given our inability to maintain our current road network to standards in the face of resource inflation, building more large roads while neglecting other transport methods might be very costly and inefficient and ultimately not constructive. Personal car travel in future might actually look more like in NZ's 1950s than today.
Thus, we might plan for the future more effectively by considering future resource and energy issues.
What to do today?
I could go plant a few trees , and tidy up some vegies for our own consumption. That would contribute nothing to our GDP.
Or i could go for a road trip , burn a bit of fuel , some RUC's. That would contribute $ 100 or so to our GDP, maybe double that .
First step is to get the metrics right.
Yes, not suggesting we go to that micro level, just making a point.
But voluntary work for organisation's could be counted, for e.g. and the unemployed/ other beneficiary could be asked to list their non paid activities, I've known a few who worked as hard as at least a part time job, non aid, and not counted. Retired people too.
Absolutely agree with you.
In "poorer" countries, their GDP is low, but it can't factor in the large amount of the society that is informal. Some of the wealthiest people I've met have lived in the most financially deprived places.
The base assumption that human wellbeing is monitorable via fiscal transactions is pretty flawed. But also how many people live.
Ideally, people should be living externally from the formal economy.
Some of the richest people I've dealt with have lived in developing countries too. Some of them were politicians there, on quite low salaries but extremely large informal incomes from taxpayer money. Others were wealthy because labour law reform campaigners had a fortunate habit of simply disappearing, never to be heard from again.
Our replaceable energy system won't support 100 000 000, which will be our population around 2100
Which is suggesting we need to cull global population. It scares me when the bearded folk start talking about this. Not saying they're wrong, but who gets to choose who dies? Charles Manson had ideas that were not too dissimilar about people and ecology.
Happy for anyone who wants to pursue degrowthing to do so but I wouldn't want to live in that country.
I've always believed that in the wellspring of human ingenuity, the promise of a better and more bountiful tomorrow for society. I don't know if the next big thing will be Thorium reactors or Sodium batteries but I think many people will welcome the easier lives, more leisure time and material wellbeing those advanced bring.
Finally we don't need to degrowth to protect the environment, as people have fewer children balance will be restored in coming generations. All the problems man creates man is solving to paraphrase John F. Kennedy.
Indeed. Stone tools, fire, the wheel...ITER Tokomak?
To be honest this is the underlying problem with the limits to growth argument, it sees the world as simple thermodynamics where we use the oil or uranium or something else, entropy increases, work is done, probabilities get more complex etc. It's really lovely, easy to appreciate and a self contained understanding of the future. Consequently it is also painfully wrong.
The misunderstanding is the second law of thermodynamics actually states entropy cannot decrease, not that it must increase. This sounds very benign and academic but is actually looking through the keyhole into the future. Entropy doesn't increase, it just looks more complex to us because we lack information about some systems. There are always macrostates that turn high entropy systems into low entropy systems but they require information we cannot readily access. Our notion of entropy increasing is based on the physical properties of the macroscopic machines available to us, it isn't a fundamental law of nature.
That is why growth is likely perpetual, it doesn't actually really violate any law yet known for it to do so. Now to what extent we will exploit this infinite potential for growth is unknown but nothing precludes that possibility.
it isn't a fundamental law of nature
Eh? It literally is one of the fundamental laws!
That's what I learned at University as well...but later on I met a physicist who pointed out my understanding of entropy was flawed by the frame I was thinking within:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7516914/
The most important conclusion of this definition is that entropy, being a state function, is not a function of time. Entropy does not change with time, and entropy does not have a tendency to increase. It is very common to say that entropy increases towards its maximum at equilibrium. This is wrong. The correct statement is: The entropy is the maximum! As such it is not a function of time.
Tech-optimism is one hope.
Interesting that the likes of Vaclav Smil - who is doing the numbers on resource use and availability - isn't quite so optimistic. Thinks it's more unfounded hope/faith.
Others do argue that we could benefit from tech optimism, but might actually require a bit of that JFK spirit you cite, i.e. resolving some of the most pressing issues will require a similar societal approach as that of the moon mission.
One of the interesting discussion points/ideas the likes of Degrowth raises is that humans would have to find other ways than buying and displaying "stuff" to give themselves meaning (and status, for that matter). We have gotten rather accustomed to displays of stuff to signal our success. This would be an emotional wrench for many - probably part of the challenge. Their accumulation of stuff or tokens would cease to be meaningful.
Working out what can be maintained, and what to junk, is going to be and interesting juggle.
I suspect we'll go to simpler, locally-fixable stuff, and be amazed at the expertise we attain. We'll be amazingly accurate harnessing solar energy - and some will hopefully be inspired enough to retain our written words - it will be in paper, not E, form.
Not necessarily so. The item has to be designed to be maintained before it is constructed but it doesn't always follow that it will be more expensive to manufacture. The issue really comes down to the perception of time available. Want it now - get another new one. Want it a little later then this one can be inspected, repaired, replaced with a rebuilt unit or whatever. If all that matters is $ at the end of the day then the planned obsolescence way is probably not for you. I currently daily use hand tooling which is mostly in the 100/120 year old age bracket. It works well and is only subject to planned maintenance to keep it working. It didn't cost a fortune when it was originally manufactured.It was the tooling tradesmen used. These particular items have been looked after by the prior users. I'm just the next user along the line.There is no rush to finish the job, The longer time taken doesn't result in higher prices because time is not money in my case. The fact is this tooling will run for another 100 years. Problem is very few people know how to use it.
The item has to be designed to be maintained before it is constructed but it doesn't always follow that it will be more expensive to manufacture
Building in the ability to dismantle something is always more costly than having something clip together in the factory, purely by the inclusion of screws.
Making all the componentry swappable, more so again.
I can relate though, one of my daily vehicles is 55 years old, very simple to maintain, will likely last longer than me.
It didn't take long for the 'degrowth' definition to be high jacked as another word for communism.
The other definition I have seen is that the demographics are going to cause degrowth regardless of political 'ism'.
China is going to be one of the quickest and biggest to experience this so we will get a good look at what happens in a jurisdiction that already has an ideology closest to believing in and using 'equity'.
Or of course we could always look to North Korea as an example of a country that has already transitioned.
Population is still increasing. 130 million births per year. Those people will be around for eighty years. It will be long past collapse time before demographics reduces the crushing effect of humanity on the planets life support systems.
Meanwhile pronatalists are looking to encourage breeding to boost the ranks of nationalist meat available to project military/economic power.
1 billion people live below $1 a day, a few billion not much more. How many planets would be needed to lift their consumption to the entitled westerner level?
North Korea is more an example of what happens when carrying capacity is exceeded and being ruled by morons, rather than a model for degrowth.
North Korea and Cuba are an interesting comparison. Both lost the energy/resource flow when Russia collapsed. Cuba was intelligently led, and weathered energy-descent much better.
Neither are good measures or interesting comparisons as both are family dictatorships run for the benefit of family - and the citizens get screwed. Cuba is poor but that doesnt amount to degrowth just incompetent leadership that has got it there but sure they use less energy per person than say us - partly because the power goes off from time to time -and they have less labour saving devices.
Exactly. That's why they vote Trump - it's a one-finger to those who are screwing them.
Grattaway still doesn't factor in the energy thing; Cuba lost that input - one no society can do without. They'd already done the one-finger to the folk who were screwing them - US-based mafia...
Without having read all the comments so may be repeating a previous post.
Yes let's go sustainable. Let's make goods again that last instead of using it 3 times and you have to throw it in the bin. Cheap goods used (relatively) frequently are far more expensive in the longer run.They are cheap for a reason and not just because of being made in a low wage economy. That would be a great start.
If we need to use something once or twice a year, rent or borrow it rather than buying one and having to throw it out after 2 years. And if it is a quality tool why does the whole neighbourhood need one. Just to show mine is bigger than yours?
That and population reduction will already do heaps. But we are going to have a lot of bored people who are likely to put their mind to inventing something new. And so the cycle continues. Homo Sapiens is wired a bit different than all other critters on this planet and we developed a brain for a reason. Time that we start to use it rather than following the latest pack ideology.
Then - ironically - you miss the point.
Because it not 'spending', is it? It's 'allocating'. More exactly, it's allocating resources and energy (both from stock being rapidly depleted).
There is no 'price' on that - as I learned post-2008.
Ask what a government should be doing, and the answer is simple; drawing up a plan to use the remaining time to put us on as maintainable a footing as possible.
If you want to allocate tokens to that, all yours, but reference them to the stocks remaining, or your tokens will just get out of whack. Oh wait...
Great to see words like degrowth enter mainstream conversation. Attracting all the usual labelling based on a lack of understanding of the subject. I think those driving the degrowth conversation need some marketing assistance to make it more palatable for the masses who only see someone taking something from them to make someone else’s life better. Which all sounds great of course. The only problem being the having something taken from them bit. If this is the extent of the de growth model it has already failed. It needs a touch of good old fashioned marketing to give it a chance. At least the conversation has brought out that thorny subject of ‘restructuring our tax system’ into the light of day again. Which can perhaps be thought about as ‘de-growth’ as it looks to re-distribute wealth and resources from the ‘haves’ to the ‘have-nots’. Or in other words stealing money from those who have spent a lifetime sweating blood to accumulate a small nest-egg and giving it to those ‘lazy, ungrateful communists who have spent their lives consuming resources from their deserved position at the bottom of the pile!
A timely discussion given the current paradigm.
It would appear many here are in absolute denial and just don't want to see any truth, don't want the illusion of their reality upset. They don't want to know that everything they were taught to believe might actually be a lie. Totally understandable.
There are some flawed assumptions about "re-distribution" that are going to raise the hackles of many here. It fails to acknowledge that it has been the history of imbalanced distribution based on flawed values that has led us to here.
We have "grown" industry, technology, and material items. We have grown scarcity and fear. We have grown our superiority complex. Degrowth is only a partial answer as we are also required to grow in other areas of humanity.
These articles will be far outside the realm of many here to comprehend, but for those with ears to hear;
https://www.satyoga.org/blog/critical-communique-a-state-of-the-world-r…
https://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/seeing-wetiko-on-capitalism-mind-…
Thanks for the links. I don't really do deities, or beliefs, so the first was an interesting read but that's all.
The second hit more buttons. I have long owned Quinn's books; prescient and a clever slant. Ishmael and My Ishmael are crackers; right up there with Short History of Progress.
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