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Just morons, morons

Definition
Sustainable degrowth is a downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well-being and enhances ecological conditions and equity on the planet. It calls for a future where societies live within their ecological means, with open, localized economies and resources more equally distributed through new forms of democratic institutions. Such societies will no longer have to “grow or die.” Material accumulation will no longer hold a prime position in the population’s cultural imaginary. The primacy of efficiency will be substituted by a focus on sufficiency, and innovation will no longer focus on technology for technology’s sake but will concentrate on new social and technical arrangements that will enable us to live convivially and frugally. Degrowth does not only challenge the centrality of GDP as an overarching policy objective but proposes a framework for transformation to a lower and sustainable level of production and consumption, a shrinking of the economic system to leave more space for human cooperation and ecosystems.

What in buggery do they think the economy is if it isn’t human cooperation?

25 thoughts on “Just morons, morons”

  1. They’re talking to the wrong people. Let them go to, say, Bangladesh and lecture people to their faces about the need for “regrowth” localism, and living within your ecological means.

  2. Eco-freakery is the third branch of cultural Marxism –after anti-waycism and the femmi-poison. It’s aim is universal socialistic tyranny under the guise of “saving the planet”. They don’t care if that means the people get semi-wiped out and the survivors reduced to eternal poverty and drudgery.

    Save middle-class Bubblers and esp pundits however. They and their spawn must –somehow-continue to enjoy their nice life style after the eco-survivors are reduced to techno-peasantry–at best.

  3. We’re there already. Nobody aspires to material goods any more. Flash car? You’re still stuck in traffic. Fancy smartphone? £40 a month is easily affordable.

    Much of the innovation in recent years has been about better sweating existing assets (e.g. Uber, Airbnb); not about creating new physical goods.

  4. Andrew M: That is because we are semi-moribund. Any new super tech that came along and threatened massive disruption to the state would not be allowed. If cars were just appearing now do you think they would develop as they actually did in the past?

    The only tech poli-pork are keen on is snooping and control tech.

  5. It’s interesting how many people of this sort regard the “economic system” or “the market” as some sort of malign inhuman force, almost demonic.
    It really does seem that there’s a quasi-religious thing going on here.

  6. It’s a short step from “de-growth” to “de-population” – and who do you think they’re assuming will be eugenicised/forcibly sterilised? I bet you a pound the list doesn’t include radical forward thinking people like themselves or their friends. No, it’ll be The Enemy, whoever that is

  7. How much consumption is of “Stuff” these days, in a physical sense? Our computers don’t weigh as much as those of twenty years ago, nor phones of course. In terms of consuming energy, our cars and household appliances are more efficient.

    This is what I don’t get about that “no infinite growth on a finite planet” guff. My sofa or dining table don’t seem to weigh twice as much as three decades ago, despite the growth of the economy since then.

    Might be useful to have a look at domestic and transport energy consumption, steel consumption (are figures available for eg wood?) in the UK over the last few decades.

  8. At the heart of their misunderstanding is this.

    We consume value. So, what physical limits are there to the ability to add value?

    Any? Bueller?

  9. > It’s a short step from “de-growth” to […] forcibly sterilised

    Yep. The left/right divide is shaped like a horseshoe: the views at one extreme are surprisingly close to the views at the opposite extreme.

  10. @Andrew M – couldn’t agree more; if you travel far enough out at both sides of politics they meet up again round the back in some weird authoritarian hinterland where The Curajus State is a great thing and everyone hates the Jews

  11. The Meissen Bison

    Sustainable degrowth is a downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well-being and enhances ecological conditions and equity on the planet.

    So War, Famine and Pestilence all contribute to the new economic nirvana.

  12. Andrew M and Flatcap, This is a myth, created from the untruth that (may Godwin forgive me) the Nazis and Fascists were of the right, when clearly from their behaviour, they were as extreme statist as the communists, SNP, Labour party or the poor benighted Liberal Dimocrats.

    What does a governemnt of the right look like? Greece under the Junta, Chile rescued from Allende – maybe. It would be an experiment worth trying here.

  13. Its an odds-on certainty that these extremists have never farmed or had to do anything remotely like farming to support their existence. They will live in cities with advanced public transportation systems. Everything they eat and consume will be provided by sophisticated modern networks manned by specialists. If they fall ill or into destitution they will be rescued by a system paid for by economic surpluses.

    Despite all this, they want to fuck it all up.

  14. Its an odds-on certainty that these extremists have never farmed or had to do anything remotely like farming to support their existence.

    I’ve noticed that very few people who think peasant-style farming to be more wholesome than modern, intensive farming have done much farming (of any kind) themselves. One of the few benefits of having picked every imaginable kind of vegetable by hand at some point before the age of 18 is being able to pull this trump card out of my sleeve whenever I’m faced with a middle-class city type talking about farming.

  15. A spot of light farming is fun to choose to do as a hobby.

    Having to make a living with it, presumably without the use of fossil fuels or fertilizers – and being forced to have to by a bunch of crazed islington eco-loonies… well let’s say it sounds it little less amusing and leave it at that.

    I have always aspired to farm hempen products. Could be there’ll be a boom in demand before long

  16. I sneeze in threes

    why did you miss of the end of the quote, its the best bit.

    “……Well, we have to end apartheid for one. And slow down the nuclear arms race, stop terrorism and world hunger. We have to provide food and shelter for the homeless, and oppose racial discrimination and promote civil rights, while also promoting equal rights for women. We have to encourage a return to traditional moral values. Most importantly, we have to promote general social concern and less materialism in young people. “

  17. ‘downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well-being’

    War is peace, freedom is slavery.

  18. A downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well-being

    Ambiguous. Does the downscaling increase human well-being or is it a downscaling of production and consumption, both of which are things that increase human well-being?

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