The Radical Plan to Save the Planet by Working Less: The degrowth movement wants to shrink the economy to address climate change, and create lives with less stuff, less work, and better well-being.
The degrowth movement wants to intentionally shrink the economy to address climate change, and create lives with less stuff, less work, and better well-being. But is it a utopian fantasy?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
How would business work? Currently a business's purpose by law is to make money. How would you enforce a different goal without going full centralized economy?
And how is trying to add less value more effective than internalizing externalized costs? For example, co2 is an externalized cost, one companies don't need to pay for right now, it's external to them. If we made them pay for it to fund carbon capture at 1 ton removed for every 1 ton emitted, they would decrease their emissions and the rest would be removed. You could do something similar for other ecological issues as well. What's the benefit of degroth over internalizing costs?
"In 2014, the United States Supreme Court voiced its position in no uncertain terms. In Burwell v Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., the Supreme Court stated that “Modern corporate law does not require for profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else”.
It won’t happen because the ones interested in keeping us convinced we’re hardwired to acquire stuff would not want it, and they’re the ones in control.
Ascetics exist. Minimalists exist. Fuck, Marie Kondo exists. The desire for stuff is not some immutable force like gravity. It’s just what we’ve been taught by the ones selling the stuff.
I disagree that we're hardwired to acquire stuff. But even if we are, we're sentient beings who overcome a lot of things we're hardwired to do, so that is just one more thing we should be aware of about our own thinking.
Humans are also hardwired to be adaptable and survive in many many circumstances. Materialism is one such circumstance. If this movement gains momentum and the world actually changes because of it humans will adapt again and survive.
The problem is that survival in these circumstances seems to depend on the continuation of it for all those in it, which leads to heavy resistance to changing the circumstances we've adapted to. It requires us to look beyond what we know and work towards the greater good with little guarantee that this will work out for ourselves individually within our own lives even if we know it'll be good for everybody in the long term. Therefore, it goes against that innate survival instinct.
I truly believe that the only way out of this dumpster fire of a world we live in depends on changing those "fundamentals" (big word, seeing how materialism is relatively recent to mankind and is only fundamental as long as the majority believes it is and keeps the charade going) but in the short term it means going against the instinct to persevere and stay in the rat race, because stepping out of the race to live by new rules while the rest is undecided or flat out decides to simply keep running is going to set you back within the confines of the "old rules".