So, you expect humanity to collectively decide to stop growing? How about third world nations that have yet to industrialize...surely we’d have to prevent them from growing as well? Tell me...what’s the ism you’d employ to bring on “de-growth”?
Capitalism = Colonialism = Climate Change
- Thread starter Micky Mikey
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De-growth is hilariously unrealistic
Well, if we don't develop technological solutions soon, de-growth will occur as a natural process. Countries won't be able to handle a multitude of environmental crises and still maintain their standard of living.
Insensitive
Superstar
Oh it's very realistic.
Humans might think it's an impossibility.
Mother nature just needs someone to hold her beer.
Very true. We see the measures which countries took in response to COVID. Now just a imagine a crisis that is a 10x worse. When the prospect of human extinction is in clear view, there will be no measures we wont be willing to take to salvage what's left. In hindsight de-growth won't look like such an extreme concept. That is why massive efforts to mitigate Climate Change should be made NOW. The longer we wait the more severe and draconian those measures will have to be.
Hood Critic
The Power Circle
Humanity doesn't get a choice unless it figures out how to live elsewhere or control aspects of our universe and reality that currently seem unimaginable.
Totally agree. Just don't think we have it in us to do a complete 180....change/growth is probably the most defining characteristic of "modern" society. I'd argue post-modern society has done nothing but accelerate it.
In the past religion was largely used to prevent progress (so as to benefit the few at the top). That ship has sailed, though.
Absolutely. That's my point.
Left to our own devices, its ridiculous to think humanity is going decide to live more reasonably.
We can't even collectively decide to put a damn mask on lol.
Global catastrophe resulting from climate change, and de-growth as the result of collective human action to avoid catastrophe are very different things. The former is likely, the latter is hilariously unrealistic, in my opinion.
There are plenty of ways to improve quality of life without whoring yourself to capitalism. Capitalist control over society has made us myopic - we think that because it happened one way, that must be the only way.
Personally, I would prefer a shift to libertarian socialism, but that's not even necessary. The main thing that is actually necessary is a shift away from a loans-at-interest based money system. This book has a lot of solid ideas, and the author (in this book and others) has gotten into why and how those ideas have been purposely subverted in the past.
Sacred Economics
Sacred Economics traces the history of money from ancient gift economies to modern capitalism, revealing how the money system has contributed to alienation, competition, and scarcity, destroyed community, and necessitated endless growth. Today, these trends have reached their extreme—but in the...
books.google.co.in
How does what you're claiming differ from the perspective of, say, a slave in the 1700s? I don't understand the point of the defeatism. Modern capitalism is relatively new, and modern capitalists have continuously felt so insecure about its position that they repeatedly resorted to extreme force to maintain the system. You seem much, much more confident about the staying power of capitalism than the actual people tasked with maintaining it were historically.
The fallacy here is that this somehow involves people "left to their own devices", on either side of the issue. Capitalism isn't the result of leaving people to their own devices, it's only maintain via massive coercion throughout the system, such as a money system based on loans-at-interest, artificial scarcity that ensures employers maintain as much power over employees as possible, and incentives throughout the society that ensure anyone with greater financial access gets better services at every single stage (education, health care, justice system, etc.). Those aren't necessities, those are purposely built into the system to maintain the power of the richest capitalists.
It would be possible to build completely different incentives into the system - for example, negative interest rates, universal basic income, and a money system that actively promotes social goods. The reason we don't do this is because a minority of the population has a strong personal stake in maintaining the status quo, and they're very powerful.
Infinite population growth isn't a thing though. Birth rates in every nation are declining, and in many nations are already below 2 kids/family. Global population growth has been decreasing for decades, and the UN median projection is that population will basically stabilize during the 2nd half of this century.
We're going to be around 8-10 billion people on this planet for the foreseeable future. But even with comfortable lifestyles, one person can easily consume 20x as many resources as another person. The question is whether we're going to be 9 billion people consuming at a sustainable rate, or 9 billion people consuming 10x more than what the planet can withstand. A LOT of modern consumption is completely wasteful and contributes comparatively little to our personal well-being (or in many cases is even counterproductive), it's just promoted because it enriches capitalists for us to keep consuming more and more and more.
Claiming that capitalism is inevitable is also an "ism". Claiming that technology is our only savior is also an "ism".
Capitalism was destined to fail from the beginning, it's inherently unsustainable because constant acceleration of resource exploitation is impossible on a finite world. I don't see why you're so determined to refuse to acknowledge that. Capitalism works for the short historical period where there was enough room on the planet to constantly grow and exploit the remaining gaps. As an ideology to sustain ourselves on a maxed-out planet, it's impossible and unworkable no matter WHAT technology you have, because no technology changes the fact that someone will always have a profit motive to exploit your few remaining resources.
Sacred Economics: Chapter 6, "The Economics of Usury" - Sacred Economics | Charles Eisenstein
The following chapter is from Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition, available from EVOLVER EDITIONS/North Atlantic Books. Return to the Sacred Economics content page here. In spite of the holy promises of people to banish war once and for all,
sacred-economics.com
This parable explains it well:
Once upon a time, in a small village in the Outback, people used barter for all their transactions. On every market day, people walked around with chickens, eggs, hams, and breads, and engaged in prolonged negotiations among themselves to exchange what they needed. At key periods of the year, like harvests or whenever someone’s barn needed big repairs after a storm, people recalled the tradition of helping each other out that they had brought from the old country. They knew that if they had a problem someday, others would aid them in return.
One market day, a stranger with shiny black shoes and an elegant white hat came by and observed the whole process with a sardonic smile. When he saw one farmer running around to corral the six chickens he wanted to exchange for a big ham, he could not refrain from laughing. “Poor people,” he said, “so primitive.” The farmer’s wife overheard him and challenged the stranger, “Do you think you can do a better job handling chickens?” “Chickens, no,” responded the stranger, “But there is a much better way to eliminate all that hassle.” “Oh yes, how so?” asked the woman. “See that tree there?” the stranger replied. “Well, I will go wait there for one of you to bring me one large cowhide. Then have every family visit me. I’ll explain the better way.”
And so it happened. He took the cowhide, and cut perfect leather rounds in it, and put an elaborate and graceful little stamp on each round. Then he gave to each family 10 rounds, and explained that each represented the value of one chicken. “Now you can trade and bargain with the rounds instead of the unwieldy chickens,” he explained.
It made sense. Everybody was impressed with the man with the shiny shoes and inspiring hat.
“Oh, by the way,” he added after every family had received their 10 rounds, “in a year’s time, I will come back and sit under that same tree. I want you to each bring me back 11 rounds. That 11th round is a token of appreciation for the technological improvement I just made possible in your lives.” “But where will the 11th round come from?” asked the farmer with the six chickens. “You’ll see,” said the man with a reassuring smile.
Assuming that the population and its annual production remain exactly the same during that next year, what do you think had to happen? Remember, that 11th round was never created. Therefore, bottom line, one of each 11 families will have to lose all its rounds, even if everybody managed their affairs well, in order to provide the 11th round to 10 others.
So when a storm threatened the crop of one of the families, people became less generous with their time to help bring it in before disaster struck. While it was much more convenient to exchange the rounds instead of the chickens on market days, the new game also had the unintended side effect of actively discouraging the spontaneous cooperation that was traditional in the village. Instead, the new money game was generating a systemic undertow of competition among all the participants.
[continued]
This parable begins to show how competition, insecurity, and greed are woven into our economy because of interest. They can never be eliminated as long as the necessities of life are denominated in interest-money. But let us continue the story now to show how interest also creates an endless pressure for perpetual economic growth.
There are three primary ways Lietaer’s story could end: default, growth in the money supply, or redistribution of wealth. One of each eleven families could go bankrupt and surrender their farms to the man in the hat (the banker), or he could procure another cowhide and make more currency, or the villagers could tar-and-feather the banker and refuse to repay the rounds. The same choices face any economy based on usury.
So imagine now that the villagers gather round the man in the hat and say, “Sir, could you please give us some additional rounds so that none of us need go bankrupt?”
The man says, “I will, but only to those who can assure me they will pay me back. Since each round is worth one chicken, I’ll lend new rounds to people who have more chickens than the number of rounds they already owe me. That way, if they don’t pay back the rounds, I can seize their chickens instead. Oh, and because I’m such a nice guy, I’ll even create new rounds for people who don’t have additional chickens right now, if they can persuade me that they will breed more chickens in the future. So show me your business plan! Show me that you are trustworthy (one villager can create ‘credit reports’ to help you do that). I’ll lend at 10 percent-if you are a clever breeder, you can increase your flock by 20 percent per year, pay me back, and get rich yourself, too.”
The villagers ask, “That sounds OK, but since you are creating the new rounds at 10 percent interest also, there still won’t be enough to pay you back in the end.”
“That won’t be a problem,” says the man. “You see, when that time arrives, I will have created even more rounds, and when those come due, I’ll create yet more. I will always be willing to lend new rounds into existence. Of course, you’ll have to produce more chickens, but as long as you keep increasing chicken production, there will never be a problem.”
A child comes up to him and says, “Excuse me, sir, my family is sick, and we don’t have enough rounds to buy food. Can you issue some new rounds to me?”
“I’m sorry,” says the man, “but I cannot do that. You see, I only create rounds for those who are going to pay me back. Now, if your family has some chickens to pledge as collateral, or if you can prove you are able to work a little harder to breed more chickens, then I will be happy to give you the rounds.”
With a few unfortunate exceptions, the system worked fine for a while. The villagers grew their flocks fast enough to obtain the additional rounds they needed to pay back the man in the hat. Some, for whatever reason-ill fortune or ineptitude-did indeed go bankrupt, and their more fortunate, more efficient neighbors took over their farms and hired them as labor. Overall, though, the flocks grew at 10 percent a year along with the money supply. The village and its flocks had grown so large that the man in the hat was joined by many others like him, all busily cutting out new rounds and issuing them to anyone with a good plan to breed more chickens.
From time to time, problems arose. For one, it became apparent that no one really needed all those chickens. “We’re getting sick of eggs,” the children complained. “Every room in the house has a feather bed now,” complained the housewives. In order to keep consumption of chicken products growing, the villagers invented all kinds of devices. It became fashionable to buy a new feather mattress every month, and bigger houses to keep them in, and to have yards and yards full of chickens. Disputes arose with other villages that were settled with huge egg-throwing battles. “We must create demand for more chickens!” shouted the mayor, who was the brother-in-law of the man in the hat. “That way we will all continue to grow rich.”
One day, a village old-timer noticed another problem. Whereas the fields around the village had once been green and fertile, now they were brown and foul. All the vegetation had been stripped away to plant grain to feed the chickens. The ponds and streams, once full of fish, were now cesspools of stinking manure. She said, “This has to stop! If we keep expanding our flocks, we will soon drown in chicken shyt!”
The man in the hat pulled her aside and, in reassuring tones, told her, “Don’t worry, there is another village down the road with plenty of fertile fields. The men of our village are planning to farm out chicken production to them. And if they don’t agree … well, we outnumber them. Anyway, you can’t be serious about ending growth. Why, how would your neighbors pay off their debts? How would I be able to create new rounds? Even I would go bankrupt.”
And so, one by one, all the villages turned to stinking cesspools surrounding enormous flocks of chickens that no one really needed, and the villages fought each other for the few remaining green spaces that could support a few more years of growth. Yet despite their best efforts to maintain growth, its pace began to slow. As growth slowed, debt began to rise in proportion to income, until many people spent all their available rounds just paying off the man in the hat. Many went bankrupt and had to work at subsistence wages for employers who themselves could barely meet their obligations to the man in the hat. There were fewer and fewer people who could afford to buy chicken products, making it even harder to maintain demand and growth. Amid an environment-wrecking superabundance of chickens, more and more people had barely enough on which to live, leading to the paradox of scarcity amidst abundance.
And that is where things stand today.
There are three primary ways Lietaer’s story could end: default, growth in the money supply, or redistribution of wealth. One of each eleven families could go bankrupt and surrender their farms to the man in the hat (the banker), or he could procure another cowhide and make more currency, or the villagers could tar-and-feather the banker and refuse to repay the rounds. The same choices face any economy based on usury.
So imagine now that the villagers gather round the man in the hat and say, “Sir, could you please give us some additional rounds so that none of us need go bankrupt?”
The man says, “I will, but only to those who can assure me they will pay me back. Since each round is worth one chicken, I’ll lend new rounds to people who have more chickens than the number of rounds they already owe me. That way, if they don’t pay back the rounds, I can seize their chickens instead. Oh, and because I’m such a nice guy, I’ll even create new rounds for people who don’t have additional chickens right now, if they can persuade me that they will breed more chickens in the future. So show me your business plan! Show me that you are trustworthy (one villager can create ‘credit reports’ to help you do that). I’ll lend at 10 percent-if you are a clever breeder, you can increase your flock by 20 percent per year, pay me back, and get rich yourself, too.”
The villagers ask, “That sounds OK, but since you are creating the new rounds at 10 percent interest also, there still won’t be enough to pay you back in the end.”
“That won’t be a problem,” says the man. “You see, when that time arrives, I will have created even more rounds, and when those come due, I’ll create yet more. I will always be willing to lend new rounds into existence. Of course, you’ll have to produce more chickens, but as long as you keep increasing chicken production, there will never be a problem.”
A child comes up to him and says, “Excuse me, sir, my family is sick, and we don’t have enough rounds to buy food. Can you issue some new rounds to me?”
“I’m sorry,” says the man, “but I cannot do that. You see, I only create rounds for those who are going to pay me back. Now, if your family has some chickens to pledge as collateral, or if you can prove you are able to work a little harder to breed more chickens, then I will be happy to give you the rounds.”
With a few unfortunate exceptions, the system worked fine for a while. The villagers grew their flocks fast enough to obtain the additional rounds they needed to pay back the man in the hat. Some, for whatever reason-ill fortune or ineptitude-did indeed go bankrupt, and their more fortunate, more efficient neighbors took over their farms and hired them as labor. Overall, though, the flocks grew at 10 percent a year along with the money supply. The village and its flocks had grown so large that the man in the hat was joined by many others like him, all busily cutting out new rounds and issuing them to anyone with a good plan to breed more chickens.
From time to time, problems arose. For one, it became apparent that no one really needed all those chickens. “We’re getting sick of eggs,” the children complained. “Every room in the house has a feather bed now,” complained the housewives. In order to keep consumption of chicken products growing, the villagers invented all kinds of devices. It became fashionable to buy a new feather mattress every month, and bigger houses to keep them in, and to have yards and yards full of chickens. Disputes arose with other villages that were settled with huge egg-throwing battles. “We must create demand for more chickens!” shouted the mayor, who was the brother-in-law of the man in the hat. “That way we will all continue to grow rich.”
One day, a village old-timer noticed another problem. Whereas the fields around the village had once been green and fertile, now they were brown and foul. All the vegetation had been stripped away to plant grain to feed the chickens. The ponds and streams, once full of fish, were now cesspools of stinking manure. She said, “This has to stop! If we keep expanding our flocks, we will soon drown in chicken shyt!”
The man in the hat pulled her aside and, in reassuring tones, told her, “Don’t worry, there is another village down the road with plenty of fertile fields. The men of our village are planning to farm out chicken production to them. And if they don’t agree … well, we outnumber them. Anyway, you can’t be serious about ending growth. Why, how would your neighbors pay off their debts? How would I be able to create new rounds? Even I would go bankrupt.”
And so, one by one, all the villages turned to stinking cesspools surrounding enormous flocks of chickens that no one really needed, and the villages fought each other for the few remaining green spaces that could support a few more years of growth. Yet despite their best efforts to maintain growth, its pace began to slow. As growth slowed, debt began to rise in proportion to income, until many people spent all their available rounds just paying off the man in the hat. Many went bankrupt and had to work at subsistence wages for employers who themselves could barely meet their obligations to the man in the hat. There were fewer and fewer people who could afford to buy chicken products, making it even harder to maintain demand and growth. Amid an environment-wrecking superabundance of chickens, more and more people had barely enough on which to live, leading to the paradox of scarcity amidst abundance.
And that is where things stand today.