This is exactly what we need. Gives me hope to see it :) 💕

Be interesting to see if this gains any real traction. One of the more common criticisms I hear of #Degrowth is that it's way too politically radioactive to have any policy impact, and as evidence people often point out that no elected politician in an industrialized country has been willing to touch it with a 10-foot pole. Perhaps that's starting to change? 🤔

For sure. It does kind of feel like a very intentional breaking of a major taboo for the first time I'm aware of, though. I guess I'm kind of at the point where I'll take any plausible cause for optimism I can get... 😂

They left one out: Infinite growth is literally impossible on a finite Earth.

All of their points can be categorized as left-leaning, and people who identify differently will be able to construct arguments against them (even if they'll be bad & wrong) - but that left-out one, we might call it Point Zero, that's just fact. There's no way around it. Continuous growth = infinite growth, but we have finite room to exist in. Even the universe itself can't sustain infinite growth.

I don't think it's any more abstract than the four other points - most people understand the words "finite" and "infinite", and know that they're opposites.

I don't think it's made clear often enough that the growth paradigm = infinite growth. In absence of this, I'm afraid many people just default (more or less consciously) to "growth" meaning "until there's enough stuff", implicitly assuming somebody knows when to stop. The mind tends to work like that.

Yes - but I stand by my suggestion that it should actually be the first on that numbered list, because unlike them, it cannot be argued against on the basis of "we will invent a solution" or "I don't agree".

@breitensteinart Still has a negative ring to it, though - defensive. We shouldn't be defensive; we're not doing anything wrong.

I also agree. 'Degrowth' as a word has the effect of elevating 'growth' to some sort of default, which the de- version is in opposition to, thereby significantly weakening itself...

Also, it's generally better to brand yourself by what you're *for*, rather than *against*.

I strongly agree with all of this. But "Degrowth" is terrible, terrible branding. It's the first thing people will see, and they will immediately think "But growth is good" and write it off.

@lispi314 What's your alternative? Communism has been given several good tries, and has a terrible track record. Other than going back to subsistence farming, how should we proceed?

@lispi314 OK, good. So do I. So perhaps our only real difference is that I see this as capitalism (free market economy) working correctly, whereas you see it as not-capitalism perhaps precisely *because* it's working correctly.

Gibbs Free Energy and Thermodynamics is probably a good addition to this analysis. Degrowth is a bad term. A system tends towards entropy and energy keeps it organized - whether growing or not. We tend to think dead and quiescent are the same thing (they aren’t). Dead goes to equilibrium, quiescent is far from equilibrium. The EU statement is a start -talking about increasing flow in the system. Balanced growth? Equitable growth? Predatory capitalism? Perspective is everything.

@lispi314 That is quite a comprehensive and complex bundle of policies. I won't try to comment on them all individually. But I like the broad thrust of this, without being on board with each individual prong.

💯

@charles_ex stoic @Ginger149

@jwcph

As a counter point, I find this to be the *weakest* argument if degrowth.

For any amount of input, output can grow at the rate of technological improvement. Thus we can sustain growth, in theory. Infinite growth is technically possible, assuming we have not surpassed some critical threshold of resource usage--which is a stronger point to attack the current "infinite growth" mindset.

Arguing "infinite growth is impossible" opens us up to strong counter arguments.

@jwcph
Assuming we are not just trying to convince only theoretical physicists, I don't think that is convincing.

Output, however measured, can increase indefinitely in any reasonable time scale from what we have today without using more resources at the pace of technological growth.

The issue is that we are already using far more resources than the planet can sustain, so the question of "whether infinite growth is possible?" is a moot point.

@FantasticalEconomics No, it doesn't. Your argument is not strong, and I don't understand why you think so - you even have to throw in a "technically", plus a completely intangible and un-quantifiable assumption, just to try to glue the rickety mess together.

It's obfuscation by verbiage, pure and simple.

Infinite growth in a finite system is impossible. Please point to the part you have trouble with.

Do whatever you think is most helpful, fight on friend!

@FantasticalEconomics OK. I'm more concerned with how to make what may be humanity's most important case to people who not only don't already agree, but don't know about the basic problem at hand, aren't motivated to find out, are being misinformed, and whose attention is constantly being hijacked, both by living their life & by the sensory bombardment of the digital world we exist in. They are unlikely to be swayed by, or even interested in, "debate".

@jwcph
Genuinely, yes.

Mastodon is the perfect place to refine our thinking and arguments. Most everyone here agrees on 95% of things and no one is likely to be pushed away from supporting degrowth from what I've said.

Hopefully, people will move to other conversations with more compelling arguments. It's very hard convince people to support degrowth by using what's easiest to counter :/

That's my experience holding debates about this in my classes at least.

@FantasticalEconomics I have to ask: Do you believe you're helping?

@FantasticalEconomics @jwcph
For what it's worth, I think JW is the one making the most coherent points here, by quite a large margin.

Whatever theoretical claim can be made about technology bettering things is dim when seen in context because it's really clear that markets love an externality, and so if someone bent on growth can say that it's possible that somehow that growth can be compensated for, then that compensation becomes the responsibility of someone else or the market. The problem is that unless people are held to account in that, the theoretical balance that Kyle is claiming has about zero chance of happening. And we have far too little time to be waiting on such miracles.

In practical terms, which is all we can focus on in the extraordinarily limited time humanity has left on earth, it's more correct to say that the theoretical options Kyle sees are just smokescreen that will enable continued ills. Maybe your intent is better, Kyle, but if so it's blinding to to a practical effect that is likely VERY negative.

The problem is simple: We have an addiction to growth. We are practiced at it. We enjoy it. We have developed habits around it. But it is killing us. None of that will be fixed by creating theoretical discussions about how there's a world in which reform is not necessary. There might be such a world. But if we are not making plans to get there, taking steps aggressively that get us there within our window of healthy life, then the theoretical case is irrelevant. We're addicts who have rationalized not quitting.

But also, with every crank of the winch, creating more reliance on tech, we also create potential energy waiting to snap if something goes wrong, something slips, and the system unwinds. If an acre of land can support 10 people but we find tech to have it support 100, that's great but if that acre of land is lost to a storm, let's say, then 100 people will starve, not 10. Every time we rely on tech to help us live past capacity, we up the stakes that way. They noticed a similar thing in airplanes as they figured out how to pack them tighter and tighter: when a crash happens, more die.

So I decided at some point that the test of carrying capacity of the planet is not the steady state on a good day kind of measure, but rather the ability of that system to withstand crashes, the temporary unavailability of parts of it, etc. We are not prepared for disaster. Shareholder capitalism treats robustness and sustainability as economic inefficiencies to be removed because they generally don't show on the quarterly bottom line except as an expenditure with no benefit. It's hard to quantify a counterfactual.

We need metrics not of Gross Domestic Product but of Gross Domestic Sustainability, of getting ourselves to a system that is robust against the kinds of catastrophes that are potentially forseeable to encounter. Economic, political, and weather/climate. A company or product that does not measure up as highly sustainable and robust against potential problems should be taxed very heavily so that the state can make preparations in lieu, so that there is no way for a company to make money by shortcutting sustainability.

Presently the reason people like Trump so much is the sugar high he creates in businesses by allowing them to pretend to profit by eliminating safety and sustainability and other environmental "red tape" that he sees as superfluous. This serves a culture in which profits are regularly harvested from companies into private bank accounts that cannot be drawn back out of when we see what a horror these profiteers have left us. They are racing to suck all the value out of the world before it collapses.

For a brief parable on this, see my 2009 essay "Hollow Support". It's not about climate, but about how markets under shareholder capitalism like to invest and what the consequences of that are:

http://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2009/03/hollow-support.html

#Capitalism #ShareholderCapitalism #HollowSupport #Climate #Consumption #Growth #DeGrowth #Economics #Sustainability #Environment

@kentpitman

Great points and I agree 100%. All your arguments are about why, even if growth is possible, it's problematic.

We should entirely avoid the theoretical rabbit hole of if 'growth is possible' and focus on the stronger arguments about why growth is undesirable.

You are right that "economy can grow at rate of technological improvement" reeks of neoliberalism and techno-optimism, both of which the people we are trying to convert are biased to believe.

@jwcph @breadandcircuses

@kentpitman @jwcph
Fully agree. Too many people (especially economists) forget that the neoclassical models are directly built on the idea that 'optimal' distribution of resources means goods going to those with the highest willingness to pay.

People starving on the street is 'efficient' because, by definition, they have little demand for food, housing, etc. Kent's COVID mask example highlights this all too aptly.

There's also a "capitalism optimism" that is not well-earned, a belief that (a) can happen implies will happen if needed because (b) capitalism efficiently discovers need and connects it with supply. That has been the narrative all along, and it's just observably false.

During covid, capitalism neither efficiently nor in some cases really at all managed to connect the need for masks, vaccine, lysol, toilet paper, etc. with sufficient, timely, and cost-effective supply. There could not have been a clearer example of just how dismal capitalism rises to such an occasion. Capitalism is arbitrary, extractive, and unconcerned with completeness.

Indeed, it is all about discerning who can and should be simply ignored based on no other criterion than whether serving them is going to maximize profit. This is the reason never to claim government (which has a responsibility to all in a fair way) should be run like a business (which operates under a responsibility to no one with no fairness constraints other than those imposed by laws set by those reps who are bought and paid for by successful business execs, not the people they are said to represent).

We should aggressively watch for confusions of "can" and "will" in conversation about technology and insist that any reliance on "can" is accompanied by strong, non-reductionist legislation.

(Reducing a social problem to money or carbon credits is what I mean by reductionist. That will end up gamifying things and losing track of the original problem.)

#capitalism #ShareholderCapitalism #Markets #Society

@FantasticalEconomics @jwcph
> People starving on the street is 'efficient'

A painfully great way to sum up how capitalism views the world.

"They believed every life must profit them.

When life was profit itself."
SearingTruth