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?
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.
From the narrowly focused aspect of clothing, what can we do? Repair. Repair your clothes. Don’t throw away a ripped shirt, don’t replace it with a flimsy new shirt made by underpaid workers. Sew it. Patch it. Check your library for books about mending, go to YouTube and seek out basic repair videos. A packet of needles, a thimble, a spool of black thread, and a spool of white thread will take care of the majority of repairs. What you can’t do yourself can be handled by your neighborhood laundry or dry cleaner.
Practice radical repairing. Mend your way to a better world.
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”.
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.
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".