May 17, 2023 - 10:00am
For the last hundred years or so, a primary goal of most governments has been achieving economic growth – that is, boosting GDP from one year to the next. This was even true in the Soviet Union, where state-owned companies would boast about their production of key commodities like steel.
Yet economic growth isn’t universally popular. A sizeable contingent of academics and activists, mostly on the political Left, believes it’s something we shouldn’t be striving for. As Stian Westlake notes, this view became fashionable among British progressives in the late 2000s, with support from think tank reports such as “Growth Isn’t Possible”, as well as books like Tim Jackson’s Prosperity Without Growth.
A core tenet of the “degrowth” movement is that much economic activity is wasteful or even harmful, and we ought to focus on “human well-being” instead. As to what that might entail, some proposed measures include “scaling down destructive sectors” and introducing a “green jobs guarantee”.
One might be tempted to dismiss “degrowth” as a minor academic fad. But its influence should not be underestimated.
In December of last year, Nature – one of the world’s most prestigious scientific journals – published an article titled “Degrowth can work — here’s how science can help”. What’s more, three of the authors have been awarded €9.9 million by the European Research Council to study “post-growth” policies. Since the ERC’s money comes from the EU budget, it is European taxpayers who are footing the bill.
Now, a lot of questionable research gets funded and this project is at least described in intelligible English (which is more than can be said for some academic work). There may even be value in considering what a “post-growth” world might look like.
With that said, the entire “degrowth” movement seems to be based on a fallacy – that growth in GDP is the same as growth in the use of resources. Although this fallacy has been repeatedly debunked, it somehow refuses to die (perhaps because many “degrowthers” are motivated by opposition to capitalism as much as by concern for the environment).
It’s fairly trivial to show that GDP does not measure the use of resources. Between 1995 and 2020, real GDP per capita in Sweden increased by 49%. Yet over the same period, trade-adjusted energy use per person fell by 12%. So despite using substantially less energy, Swedes had access to almost 50% more goods and services. And it’s a similar story in many other countries.
What this means is that GDP can keep on increasing even as our environmental impact goes down. In fact, there’s evidence that pollution rises during the early stages of development and then falls during the later stages – as countries spend more money on environmental goods.
Of course, we can’t get complacent and assume that so long as the economy’s humming along, everything else will just work itself out. Safeguarding the environment requires sensible regulations, as well as incentives to encourage innovation. But “degrowth” really makes no sense, unless you actually want to be poorer.
Ironically, Britain has managed to achieve “degrowth” on one important measure: since 2008, output per hour has barely risen. Yet, as Westlake notes, this clear trend toward a steady-state economy has not been cheered by critics of GDP. One suspects that if they saw true “degrowth” in action, they’d be even less enthused.
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SubscribeWhat is ‘growth’ for? To what end? When does it stop? Ever? If not, why? Are we trying to endlessly increase material prosperity? Is that good? If so, why does every extant study demonstrate that rich societies have high rates of suicide, depression, loneliness and social breakdown? Probably because setting ‘growth’ as your cultural goal will demolish the things that actually make life worth living: community, local and group identity, a healthy natural world, working families and mental health.
‘Degrowth’ is not some new fad. Critics of economic growth have been around for centuries. Can we look at the modern world and dismiss them? What end does growth serve, and what are the costs? Unless those two questions can be answered – and I don’t see hypercapitalism’s champions answering them – they will keep asking them
Economic growth across the West was much stronger in the post War era than it has been since (say) 2000. And community, local and group identity, a healthy natural world, working families and mental health were all generally better, at least in so far as they were measured. Many of the problems you cite are actually the results of zero or very sluggish growth. If the economy isn’t growing, there will be conflict, and for every winner in a zero-sum world, there has to be a loser.
Well said. The puritans are out in force on this thread. Thank you for refuting their nonsense.
In response to Mr Carl, all I would say is that “degrowth”, like all the idiocies and abominations of our day, is merely the latest, largest step in a long staircase, down which the Mrs Sparsits of the left have been leading us for some thirty years.
From a common age of consent they’ve swept past civil partnerships and on to the full industrialisation of intimate relations and the attempted destruction of biology. From the pooled sovereignty of “Europe” they are surging towards borderless, international chaos. And from restraints on industrial malpractice they are charging towards the new Stone Age. They are the Gadarene Swine.
Well said. The puritans are out in force on this thread. Thank you for refuting their nonsense.
In response to Mr Carl, all I would say is that “degrowth”, like all the idiocies and abominations of our day, is merely the latest, largest step in a long staircase, down which the Mrs Sparsits of the left have been leading us for some thirty years.
From a common age of consent they’ve swept past civil partnerships and on to the full industrialisation of intimate relations and the attempted destruction of biology. From the pooled sovereignty of “Europe” they are surging towards borderless, international chaos. And from restraints on industrial malpractice they are charging towards the new Stone Age. They are the Gadarene Swine.
Try persuading trade unions not to demand pay rises.
It’s not that hard. Working people mostly just don’t want to go backwards. When the cost of living and inflation eat away at our living standards we ask for pay rises. Or perhaps if the corporation we work for is wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice, we might just possibly ask for an actual increase.
Then how would they ever get a pay increase? Or was that a joke?
Funnily enough, it’s normal practice in private industry to offer annual pay increases without them being “demanded” or needing trade unions. Provided they can afford it.
This happens automatically because in a working labour market there is competition for valuable staff and people will move for better opportunities.
Trade unions feel more and more like a relic of a collectivist past. And they are often protecting the privileges of one group of members over another – the airline unions at British Airways being a prime example.
Funnily enough, it’s normal practice in private industry to offer annual pay increases without them being “demanded” or needing trade unions. Provided they can afford it.
This happens automatically because in a working labour market there is competition for valuable staff and people will move for better opportunities.
Trade unions feel more and more like a relic of a collectivist past. And they are often protecting the privileges of one group of members over another – the airline unions at British Airways being a prime example.
It’s not that hard. Working people mostly just don’t want to go backwards. When the cost of living and inflation eat away at our living standards we ask for pay rises. Or perhaps if the corporation we work for is wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice, we might just possibly ask for an actual increase.
Then how would they ever get a pay increase? Or was that a joke?
Ok, I’m going to sound completely gaga bonkers, going OTT almost as bad as our legendary hyperbolic UnHerd poster Sanford, but hey.
The ‘Growth vs Degrowth’ debate is now almost completely besides the point – the LLMs are here, and the world is now transformed in under five years. In fact, even that seems long, two years and the world is looking unrecognisable I reckon.
Accelerated developmental timelines across all STEM domains, and the resulting impacts on people, politics and government are now clearly all going to go bananas hereonin – discovery following discovery, event following event, the world of employment churning at a dizzying speed for the foreseeable and everything that flows from that. Surely everyone can see this. I mean, not literally everyone can see it, as in, I’m not expecting that toddler on the park swing or that OAP in the carehome to comprehend what has arrived on our doorstep, but I seriously do not understand why most people with any kind of engagement with the cognitive world would not instantly see we have entered the whirlwind. Although, that some very smart people seemingly don’t see it was obvious from the questions posed to Altman at the Congressional hearing yesterday – either that or those Senators were deliberately holding off, for fear of going down rabbit holes which would make them look like they have just been reading the entire P.K.D1CK oeuvre while simultaneously imbibing large quantities of lysergic diethylamide in public.
No doubt AI will have a large impact. But I think it’s far too early to be certain what that will be. I think we’re still relatively early on the Gartner hype cycle chart and predictions this early can be very unreliable.
My own gut feeling is that this will be another development in the “winner takes all” trend that’s emerged with the globalisation of products (iPhone, Tesla, etc – US products used to be North American market only – but there’s now a single worldwide product – it’s not just US companies doing this) and the nature of technology to create de facto monopolies (Google, Amazon, etc).
Traditionally service work (plumbers, electricians, etc) might be relatively unaffected. At the top end, the rewards for being original/first will surely remain. Being average (in the middle) looks increasingly precarious – AI can probably do “average” pretty well.
I’ve been messing around extensively with not just the openai and google LLMs, but also the open source ones like alpaca. They are here if you want to check them out: https://chat.lmsys.org/
and I can tell you they are pretty clumping good, fantastic in fact when it comes to generating code. If you want proof, you can repeat my experiment – I asked various of the LLMs, ChatGPT, Bard, Alpaca etc to write me the code for a neural network, in different languages (Python, C#, F#). I then asked the models, within the same session, like a conversation, “add back propagation”, then, “add a transformer layer”, then, “replace sigmoid with RELU”. The output in every case was outright astonishing.
To me, this all feels completely different from anything I have ever experienced before – and this much is clear to me: a damn is about to break on humanity. That leaked memo inside google is right – there is no moat. This lady will explain what I mean: https://youtu.be/URvja3IyMDo
The upshot is a million people, like me, are messing around with and attempting to improve the LLMs – because it’s possible to do everything on a shoestring including the training. It’s inevitable a whole raft of new discoveries are coming, as we all head, alpaca-like, for the cliff edge of extinction, although I’ve called my model that I’m building, lemming.
The risk in AI is Sam Altman’s idea of licensing; this will create a credentialed class of AI users. The rest of us will be locked out.
I’ve been messing around extensively with not just the openai and google LLMs, but also the open source ones like alpaca. They are here if you want to check them out: https://chat.lmsys.org/
and I can tell you they are pretty clumping good, fantastic in fact when it comes to generating code. If you want proof, you can repeat my experiment – I asked various of the LLMs, ChatGPT, Bard, Alpaca etc to write me the code for a neural network, in different languages (Python, C#, F#). I then asked the models, within the same session, like a conversation, “add back propagation”, then, “add a transformer layer”, then, “replace sigmoid with RELU”. The output in every case was outright astonishing.
To me, this all feels completely different from anything I have ever experienced before – and this much is clear to me: a damn is about to break on humanity. That leaked memo inside google is right – there is no moat. This lady will explain what I mean: https://youtu.be/URvja3IyMDo
The upshot is a million people, like me, are messing around with and attempting to improve the LLMs – because it’s possible to do everything on a shoestring including the training. It’s inevitable a whole raft of new discoveries are coming, as we all head, alpaca-like, for the cliff edge of extinction, although I’ve called my model that I’m building, lemming.
The risk in AI is Sam Altman’s idea of licensing; this will create a credentialed class of AI users. The rest of us will be locked out.
No doubt AI will have a large impact. But I think it’s far too early to be certain what that will be. I think we’re still relatively early on the Gartner hype cycle chart and predictions this early can be very unreliable.
My own gut feeling is that this will be another development in the “winner takes all” trend that’s emerged with the globalisation of products (iPhone, Tesla, etc – US products used to be North American market only – but there’s now a single worldwide product – it’s not just US companies doing this) and the nature of technology to create de facto monopolies (Google, Amazon, etc).
Traditionally service work (plumbers, electricians, etc) might be relatively unaffected. At the top end, the rewards for being original/first will surely remain. Being average (in the middle) looks increasingly precarious – AI can probably do “average” pretty well.
“Are we trying to endlessly increase material prosperity?”
Except that ordinary people in the West have been getting poorer for several decades now. There is more stuff, too be sure, but quality goes down every year. Remember when a stove would last essentially forever? Now it’s 10 years max. Growthists celebrate the rise in GPD when I have to go and buy a new stove, but their calculations have nothing to do with human welfare, only with the rate at which resources are turned into garbage and pollution.
I don’t think this is true at all;
“…setting ‘growth’ as your cultural goal will demolish the things that actually make life worth living: community, local and group identity, a healthy natural world, working families and mental health.”
To begin with, growth isn’t a cultural goal. It’s an economic goal. And growth doesn’t preclude a healthy, happy life, or a strong, vibrant community. Poverty does.
I’m willing to reconsider the idea that economic growth is necessary, but first i need someone to give me an example of a country or culture where the economy shrinks and people are healthier and happier.
Economic growth across the West was much stronger in the post War era than it has been since (say) 2000. And community, local and group identity, a healthy natural world, working families and mental health were all generally better, at least in so far as they were measured. Many of the problems you cite are actually the results of zero or very sluggish growth. If the economy isn’t growing, there will be conflict, and for every winner in a zero-sum world, there has to be a loser.
Try persuading trade unions not to demand pay rises.
Ok, I’m going to sound completely gaga bonkers, going OTT almost as bad as our legendary hyperbolic UnHerd poster Sanford, but hey.
The ‘Growth vs Degrowth’ debate is now almost completely besides the point – the LLMs are here, and the world is now transformed in under five years. In fact, even that seems long, two years and the world is looking unrecognisable I reckon.
Accelerated developmental timelines across all STEM domains, and the resulting impacts on people, politics and government are now clearly all going to go bananas hereonin – discovery following discovery, event following event, the world of employment churning at a dizzying speed for the foreseeable and everything that flows from that. Surely everyone can see this. I mean, not literally everyone can see it, as in, I’m not expecting that toddler on the park swing or that OAP in the carehome to comprehend what has arrived on our doorstep, but I seriously do not understand why most people with any kind of engagement with the cognitive world would not instantly see we have entered the whirlwind. Although, that some very smart people seemingly don’t see it was obvious from the questions posed to Altman at the Congressional hearing yesterday – either that or those Senators were deliberately holding off, for fear of going down rabbit holes which would make them look like they have just been reading the entire P.K.D1CK oeuvre while simultaneously imbibing large quantities of lysergic diethylamide in public.
“Are we trying to endlessly increase material prosperity?”
Except that ordinary people in the West have been getting poorer for several decades now. There is more stuff, too be sure, but quality goes down every year. Remember when a stove would last essentially forever? Now it’s 10 years max. Growthists celebrate the rise in GPD when I have to go and buy a new stove, but their calculations have nothing to do with human welfare, only with the rate at which resources are turned into garbage and pollution.
I don’t think this is true at all;
“…setting ‘growth’ as your cultural goal will demolish the things that actually make life worth living: community, local and group identity, a healthy natural world, working families and mental health.”
To begin with, growth isn’t a cultural goal. It’s an economic goal. And growth doesn’t preclude a healthy, happy life, or a strong, vibrant community. Poverty does.
I’m willing to reconsider the idea that economic growth is necessary, but first i need someone to give me an example of a country or culture where the economy shrinks and people are healthier and happier.
What is ‘growth’ for? To what end? When does it stop? Ever? If not, why? Are we trying to endlessly increase material prosperity? Is that good? If so, why does every extant study demonstrate that rich societies have high rates of suicide, depression, loneliness and social breakdown? Probably because setting ‘growth’ as your cultural goal will demolish the things that actually make life worth living: community, local and group identity, a healthy natural world, working families and mental health.
‘Degrowth’ is not some new fad. Critics of economic growth have been around for centuries. Can we look at the modern world and dismiss them? What end does growth serve, and what are the costs? Unless those two questions can be answered – and I don’t see hypercapitalism’s champions answering them – they will keep asking them
As a minimalist myself, I have often wondered what would happen if everyone was like me. I’m amazed at the people who enjoy buying ‘useless’ items just for the ‘fun’ of shopping, but then they are confused by my preferences for hiking for hours at a time or reading books for fun. Let the market decide. What we don’t need are laws deciding how much growth we should have.
And what would be the fun in being a minimalist if everyone else was ? I assume part of the appeal is presumably a desire to stand out from the crowd (nothing at all wrong with that).
I don’t have the self discipline for it (minimalism), though I sometimes wish I did.
I grok that
And what would be the fun in being a minimalist if everyone else was ? I assume part of the appeal is presumably a desire to stand out from the crowd (nothing at all wrong with that).
I don’t have the self discipline for it (minimalism), though I sometimes wish I did.
I grok that
As a minimalist myself, I have often wondered what would happen if everyone was like me. I’m amazed at the people who enjoy buying ‘useless’ items just for the ‘fun’ of shopping, but then they are confused by my preferences for hiking for hours at a time or reading books for fun. Let the market decide. What we don’t need are laws deciding how much growth we should have.
You know who supports degrowth? People who have money and security – people who don’t have to worry about putting food on the table or shelter over their heads. Sell this to working poor and the third world and see what they say.
You know who supports degrowth? People who have money and security – people who don’t have to worry about putting food on the table or shelter over their heads. Sell this to working poor and the third world and see what they say.
I think there’s an element of people talking past each other in these types of debate. Sweden ‘grew’ between 1995 and 2000 without using more energy because more and more of what it consumed (and the energy to produce it) took place outside of Sweden. Same for most of the rest of the developed world. Thank you China. But unfortunately there isn’t another ‘China’ to offset China’s future energy needs, nor the rest of the developing world. Tim Morton has spelt this out exhaustively on his Surplus Energy Economics blog for several years. The ‘good’ news for pro-growth and de-growth advocates is that collective humanity won’t have much say in the matter in the decades of energy depletion that lie ahead. https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/
I think there’s an element of people talking past each other in these types of debate. Sweden ‘grew’ between 1995 and 2000 without using more energy because more and more of what it consumed (and the energy to produce it) took place outside of Sweden. Same for most of the rest of the developed world. Thank you China. But unfortunately there isn’t another ‘China’ to offset China’s future energy needs, nor the rest of the developing world. Tim Morton has spelt this out exhaustively on his Surplus Energy Economics blog for several years. The ‘good’ news for pro-growth and de-growth advocates is that collective humanity won’t have much say in the matter in the decades of energy depletion that lie ahead. https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/
It never ceases to amaze (and annoy) me, the amount of useless junk produced which lines the shelves and floorspace of endless stores and in particular, ‘tourist tat’ shops which blight even the best tourist destinations.
Who produces it? What happens to it? Where does it end up when, inevitably, no-one buys all this rubbish?
There are companies that try to recycle overproduced/unsold clothing for instance, rushed out to satisfy the latest fashion fad that ends before anyone outside a small group realises it’s happening. But this can be multiplied across a whole range of consumer goods.
My point here is – no doubt all this overproduction and waste counts towards the totality of what “growth” tries to measure, whether or not it’s linked in with GDP (whilst being something different). What a waste of human lives, producing all this stuff.
What we actually need are different, more human indices of what we might define as the development of human potential. That in itself would entail a very lively discussion in and around the way our politics works – or doesn’t. This would, by the way, be far from anti-capitalist – i’m not a socialist by any stretch of the imagination. By human potential, i’m referring to something rather more complex than people as economic units of production or consumption, but beyond that it becomes rather more difficult to define, which is possibly part of the problem. Sensible debate becomes difficult due to misunderstandings and biases.
Your “tourist tat” is somebody else’s treasured holiday memento, and perhaps a local’s job. Their “boring” might be your high culture. Best to let the market, rather than a bureaucrat, decide their relative value, as there is no objective answer.
My point was about waste, which the market produces in vast quantities. Much of the clothing (for instance) produced in sweatshops in the third world ends up in landfill. If that doesn’t matter to you, fine, but perhaps your understanding of the market isn’t what’s needed, and that is far from being a cultural (highbrow/lowbrow) issue.
The wish to control waste is a wish to micro-manage normal human behaviour and hence totalitarian in spirit. No, it’s not like controlling murder or robbery because these are first extreme, second less than normal and hence easily and properly held down. Once you start complaining about mere waste and choice you are at one with the puritan choir which shuts down life itself. Life is messy. Humans – a force of nature in their own right and out of their own control as a species – are messy. Get over it.
You’re missing the point. No-one needs your “life is messy” little homily, so let’s just continue with (for instance) polluting the oceans with plastic which wraps all this junk, shall we? Grow up.
The spiteful intemperance of your reply suggests first that growing up is your priority, not mine; and second that you are indeed a bossy totalitarian unused to being disagreed with.
The spiteful intemperance of your reply suggests first that growing up is your priority, not mine; and second that you are indeed a bossy totalitarian unused to being disagreed with.
You’re missing the point. No-one needs your “life is messy” little homily, so let’s just continue with (for instance) polluting the oceans with plastic which wraps all this junk, shall we? Grow up.
I instinctively tend to agree.
But then I remember that this was exactly the argument of the Marxists – that capitalism was “inefficient” because the competition produced duplicated effort and products. Neatly forgetting that without competition, you never really get innovation and progress.
If wasteful tourist tat is the price we have to pay for this, so be it. We don’t have to buy it.
The wish to control waste is a wish to micro-manage normal human behaviour and hence totalitarian in spirit. No, it’s not like controlling murder or robbery because these are first extreme, second less than normal and hence easily and properly held down. Once you start complaining about mere waste and choice you are at one with the puritan choir which shuts down life itself. Life is messy. Humans – a force of nature in their own right and out of their own control as a species – are messy. Get over it.
I instinctively tend to agree.
But then I remember that this was exactly the argument of the Marxists – that capitalism was “inefficient” because the competition produced duplicated effort and products. Neatly forgetting that without competition, you never really get innovation and progress.
If wasteful tourist tat is the price we have to pay for this, so be it. We don’t have to buy it.
My point was about waste, which the market produces in vast quantities. Much of the clothing (for instance) produced in sweatshops in the third world ends up in landfill. If that doesn’t matter to you, fine, but perhaps your understanding of the market isn’t what’s needed, and that is far from being a cultural (highbrow/lowbrow) issue.
Your “tourist tat” is somebody else’s treasured holiday memento, and perhaps a local’s job. Their “boring” might be your high culture. Best to let the market, rather than a bureaucrat, decide their relative value, as there is no objective answer.
It never ceases to amaze (and annoy) me, the amount of useless junk produced which lines the shelves and floorspace of endless stores and in particular, ‘tourist tat’ shops which blight even the best tourist destinations.
Who produces it? What happens to it? Where does it end up when, inevitably, no-one buys all this rubbish?
There are companies that try to recycle overproduced/unsold clothing for instance, rushed out to satisfy the latest fashion fad that ends before anyone outside a small group realises it’s happening. But this can be multiplied across a whole range of consumer goods.
My point here is – no doubt all this overproduction and waste counts towards the totality of what “growth” tries to measure, whether or not it’s linked in with GDP (whilst being something different). What a waste of human lives, producing all this stuff.
What we actually need are different, more human indices of what we might define as the development of human potential. That in itself would entail a very lively discussion in and around the way our politics works – or doesn’t. This would, by the way, be far from anti-capitalist – i’m not a socialist by any stretch of the imagination. By human potential, i’m referring to something rather more complex than people as economic units of production or consumption, but beyond that it becomes rather more difficult to define, which is possibly part of the problem. Sensible debate becomes difficult due to misunderstandings and biases.
I was just having this debate on an emailing list with hundreds of degrowth academics. I think their moderator has decided not to an allow my comment through – so I may as well post it here.
On degrowth activism in universities:
[1] Degrowth and social justice activism: If academics and activists want to contribute to an environmental politics that has real political traction – which is to say, a programme of political and economic change that could attract the consistent support of 60% + of the population, even where said change involves real economic pain – then probably the first thing would be to separate the environmental/climate change agenda from the radical ‘social justice/identity politics culture war issues that really only appeal to 20% of the population, and infuriate probably 50%. Eric Kauffman at LSE has crunched the numbers. A climate action conference in Toronto that devotes the opening session to pronouns, just after the Green Party has torn itself apart over a misgendering scandal…..has basically already lost Alberta. Climate change politics in Canada (and the world) can’t afford to lose Alberta – period. You don’t need to make a substantive judgement about those hot button issues. It’s just a straightforward political calculus. I suppose the questions you might ask are: What compromises are you willing to make? What compromises may be necessary? How might you pull on board non-liberal and corporate skeptical conservatives ? Taking a bird’s eye view, degrowth activists/academics seems be adopting a Pharisaical stance — ‘ outside and above’ privileging clerical purity over popular traction.
[2] My neighbours are old order Mennonites. Their carbon footprint is probably 1 % of mine or any of my very environmentally engaged, social justice warrior students. They don’t give a hoot about the environment.
Social justice in the way most academics understand it, is actually a very high energy, high complexity proposition. For instance a trans operation (‘top/bottom surgery’) is top of the pyramid in that regard – dozens of procedures, complex hormones and pharmaceuticals, and life-long care and interventions.
The same is true with the welfare state more generally – in all its permutations. Shifting responsibility for care and mutual aid from family to the state involved a Faustian bargain….an exclusive solidarity based on citizenship and dependent absolutely on growth. No growth, no fiscal transfers….no childcare, elder care, psych. care….etc.
The assumption that political-economic, ecological and social justice agendas all align and point in the same direction is manifestly not true. And the assumption that there is only one, progressive social justice orientation is equally blind and partisan.
The Canadian Green Party kicks out pro-life candidates ….because of ‘social justice’. Is the party doing so well it can do without Catholic votes? Of course not. Is there any logical connection between ecology and abortion? Of course not. Was E.F. Schumacher pro-life? Was Gandhi? Was Tolstoy? Yes they were.
It is not language that is getting in the way. I’m afraid it is the routine construction of anyone with values that don’t all coincide with the leading edge of progressivism as ‘bad faith actors’ that is the problem. Here is a serious question: What would you have to do to make red necks or petrol -heads or Ontario farmers, or Ottawa valley Catholics vote green? There is an agenda that could do that…..Something close to distributism….family centred….libertarianism for households and small, place-bound enterprises and communities….Do that and people might accept some of the changes in terms of national economy and global governance. But not if we call them names for not ‘getting it’ – and where it, is an indigestible, spiky ball of eco-modernist, socialist, progressive and secularist assumptions and policies.
[3] The European Union:
The biggest elephant in the room in this post is social cohesion, political legitimation and mutual identification. Most of the degrowth lobby is secularist, Federalist and pro-EU.
The larger the political unit, the more need for active ‘we-identification’. In post-war nation states this was underwritten by, but also a condition for, redistributive fiscal transfers – from a growing economy.
Think of the Barnett formula governing UK (South East England) transfers to Scotland. In the EU fragile common identity is even MORE dependent on such transfers. This means the EU is necessarily more dependent on growth than its constituent member states. The EU is nothing if not a growth coalition. The obvious implication of this is that the EU can’t, won’t and should not survive. This is pretty much why someone like Paul Kingsnorth in the end voted BREXIT. It was the standard position for Greens in the 1970s and 80s (and many on the left). The ONLY conceivable form of EUgreen politics is a kind of eco-modernist/WEF globalism – high energy, high complexity.
All the evidence from the last decade is that Germans will not pay for Greek austerity; that democratically planned economic contraction is a political non-starter. It would lead to violent political disorder, the collapse of the Euro and countries crashing out of the union. The momentum such as it was for fiscal/welfare integration – which would be an absolute prerequisite for what you outline – stalled in 2008 and has gone into reverse.
Basically, you want people to bear a great deal of pain. It’s silly to deny this. Our lives, institutions, families have been completely reconstructed /perverted even…to the needs and expectations of the big STATE and the corporate MARKET. For people to pull together in a period of contraction and reconstruction, any top down planning would have to be matched by a great deal of bottom up community cohesion, ‘Dunkirk spirit’ and intergenerational families pulling together. All of our social, economic and educational infrastructure undermines the ascriptive, family-based forms of cohesion as a matter of policy – at every level.
As a matter of principle the political left is FOR high energy /complexity care solutions and AGAINST low energy/complexity self-organised traditional solutions rooted in family and community: E.g.
Against homeschooling; for very expensive state schoolingFor the expansion of expensive and free university education (creatingTurchin’s over production of the elite problem)Against low overhead unregulated child home care solutions; for expensive, regulated, highly ‘trained’ state or market provisionAgainst unregulated, DIY micro-entrepreneurial forms of economic life (farm gate distilleries; home slaughter/processing of meat etc) ; in favour of intrusive state regulation Against traditional families with a sex based division of labour; in favour of dual income households, ultra commodification of social life (esp care) and equality in the labour market (this is what Mary Harrington is questioning in her feminist critique of progress)Against a presumption of home-based elder care; For an assumption of individual spatial/social mobility and state/market care solutions
Even when radical degrowth constituencies coalesce – young people /students are almost never willing to commit to the boring commitment or growing food every day in perpetuity. Everyone talks community but they want individual freedom and choice. I may be wrong, but none of the XR activists would accept even the level of individual constraint that was normal for 99% of people in the 1930s/40s
Diversity, social and spatial mobility, students studying all over Europe hundreds of miles from home, integrated slick labour markets – all mitigate against this. In London, the East End’s famous defiant spirit in the blitz was a function of place-bound, close knit community and shared culture/life experience.
Any attempt to forge that kind of solidarity would not be liberal. Victor Orban is in a much better position to do this in Hungary than any West European government – if he so chose (he won’t of course), let alone the EU. And yet Orban is a political outlaw for the left/green degrowth community
And I would guess that to a man and woman, every person on the degrowth email list to which I am party, is either pro-EU, very hostile to BREXIt, would most probably advocate the UK rejoining – or if not, would be very unlikely to voice such an opinion ( for academics this is getting into shunning territory).
This is a wicked dilemma. I have no idea how one would resolve it – or whether that is possible.. But ignoring it won’t make it go away.
Finally, I would also hazard a guess that a degrowth strategy that retains the metaphysical materialism and secularism of the Enlightenment will also fail – must fail – because behavioural change never comes from education or knowledge, but from shared meaning frameworks. My next door neighbours are old order Mennonites. They don’t give a toss about degrowth or climate change, or even the culture war. They just do their thing – which happens to be hard core Christian and family/land based. And it also just so happens that their per capita emissions are about 1/100 those of even the greenest, degrowth activists in Kitchener and Guelph (and there are many)
If you wanted a model that might work at least in principle, it would look more like the Catholic Land Movement https://catholiclandmovement.info but I’m sure that will go down like Andrew Tate at the Quaker Yearly Meeting
Anyway, I guess my question is: EU or not? Shared religion/ontology or not? Enlightenment individualism or not? And where are these successful models of central planning that can parsimoniously allocate energy/complexity between various domains.
“Here is a serious question: What would you have to do to make red necks or petrol -heads or Ontario farmers, or Ottawa valley Catholics vote green?”
There can only be one answer to this question. Widespread and ubiquitous adoption of nuclear energy. Wind and solar simply don’t work. Period.
I tend to agree. But also perhaps a libertarianism for households (deregulate for instance, farm gate sales, home distilling/sale, home slaughter – anything where a family can use whatever assets they have for low-overhead production and sale) and in other areas where there is needless extension of state regulation and power….homeschooling, domestic building regs etc… and a full on defence of family. marriage, traditional morality.
I tend to agree. But also perhaps a libertarianism for households (deregulate for instance, farm gate sales, home distilling/sale, home slaughter – anything where a family can use whatever assets they have for low-overhead production and sale) and in other areas where there is needless extension of state regulation and power….homeschooling, domestic building regs etc… and a full on defence of family. marriage, traditional morality.
“Here is a serious question: What would you have to do to make red necks or petrol -heads or Ontario farmers, or Ottawa valley Catholics vote green?”
There can only be one answer to this question. Widespread and ubiquitous adoption of nuclear energy. Wind and solar simply don’t work. Period.
I was just having this debate on an emailing list with hundreds of degrowth academics. I think their moderator has decided not to an allow my comment through – so I may as well post it here.
On degrowth activism in universities:
[1] Degrowth and social justice activism: If academics and activists want to contribute to an environmental politics that has real political traction – which is to say, a programme of political and economic change that could attract the consistent support of 60% + of the population, even where said change involves real economic pain – then probably the first thing would be to separate the environmental/climate change agenda from the radical ‘social justice/identity politics culture war issues that really only appeal to 20% of the population, and infuriate probably 50%. Eric Kauffman at LSE has crunched the numbers. A climate action conference in Toronto that devotes the opening session to pronouns, just after the Green Party has torn itself apart over a misgendering scandal…..has basically already lost Alberta. Climate change politics in Canada (and the world) can’t afford to lose Alberta – period. You don’t need to make a substantive judgement about those hot button issues. It’s just a straightforward political calculus. I suppose the questions you might ask are: What compromises are you willing to make? What compromises may be necessary? How might you pull on board non-liberal and corporate skeptical conservatives ? Taking a bird’s eye view, degrowth activists/academics seems be adopting a Pharisaical stance — ‘ outside and above’ privileging clerical purity over popular traction.
[2] My neighbours are old order Mennonites. Their carbon footprint is probably 1 % of mine or any of my very environmentally engaged, social justice warrior students. They don’t give a hoot about the environment.
Social justice in the way most academics understand it, is actually a very high energy, high complexity proposition. For instance a trans operation (‘top/bottom surgery’) is top of the pyramid in that regard – dozens of procedures, complex hormones and pharmaceuticals, and life-long care and interventions.
The same is true with the welfare state more generally – in all its permutations. Shifting responsibility for care and mutual aid from family to the state involved a Faustian bargain….an exclusive solidarity based on citizenship and dependent absolutely on growth. No growth, no fiscal transfers….no childcare, elder care, psych. care….etc.
The assumption that political-economic, ecological and social justice agendas all align and point in the same direction is manifestly not true. And the assumption that there is only one, progressive social justice orientation is equally blind and partisan.
The Canadian Green Party kicks out pro-life candidates ….because of ‘social justice’. Is the party doing so well it can do without Catholic votes? Of course not. Is there any logical connection between ecology and abortion? Of course not. Was E.F. Schumacher pro-life? Was Gandhi? Was Tolstoy? Yes they were.
It is not language that is getting in the way. I’m afraid it is the routine construction of anyone with values that don’t all coincide with the leading edge of progressivism as ‘bad faith actors’ that is the problem. Here is a serious question: What would you have to do to make red necks or petrol -heads or Ontario farmers, or Ottawa valley Catholics vote green? There is an agenda that could do that…..Something close to distributism….family centred….libertarianism for households and small, place-bound enterprises and communities….Do that and people might accept some of the changes in terms of national economy and global governance. But not if we call them names for not ‘getting it’ – and where it, is an indigestible, spiky ball of eco-modernist, socialist, progressive and secularist assumptions and policies.
[3] The European Union:
The biggest elephant in the room in this post is social cohesion, political legitimation and mutual identification. Most of the degrowth lobby is secularist, Federalist and pro-EU.
The larger the political unit, the more need for active ‘we-identification’. In post-war nation states this was underwritten by, but also a condition for, redistributive fiscal transfers – from a growing economy.
Think of the Barnett formula governing UK (South East England) transfers to Scotland. In the EU fragile common identity is even MORE dependent on such transfers. This means the EU is necessarily more dependent on growth than its constituent member states. The EU is nothing if not a growth coalition. The obvious implication of this is that the EU can’t, won’t and should not survive. This is pretty much why someone like Paul Kingsnorth in the end voted BREXIT. It was the standard position for Greens in the 1970s and 80s (and many on the left). The ONLY conceivable form of EUgreen politics is a kind of eco-modernist/WEF globalism – high energy, high complexity.
All the evidence from the last decade is that Germans will not pay for Greek austerity; that democratically planned economic contraction is a political non-starter. It would lead to violent political disorder, the collapse of the Euro and countries crashing out of the union. The momentum such as it was for fiscal/welfare integration – which would be an absolute prerequisite for what you outline – stalled in 2008 and has gone into reverse.
Basically, you want people to bear a great deal of pain. It’s silly to deny this. Our lives, institutions, families have been completely reconstructed /perverted even…to the needs and expectations of the big STATE and the corporate MARKET. For people to pull together in a period of contraction and reconstruction, any top down planning would have to be matched by a great deal of bottom up community cohesion, ‘Dunkirk spirit’ and intergenerational families pulling together. All of our social, economic and educational infrastructure undermines the ascriptive, family-based forms of cohesion as a matter of policy – at every level.
As a matter of principle the political left is FOR high energy /complexity care solutions and AGAINST low energy/complexity self-organised traditional solutions rooted in family and community: E.g.
Against homeschooling; for very expensive state schoolingFor the expansion of expensive and free university education (creatingTurchin’s over production of the elite problem)Against low overhead unregulated child home care solutions; for expensive, regulated, highly ‘trained’ state or market provisionAgainst unregulated, DIY micro-entrepreneurial forms of economic life (farm gate distilleries; home slaughter/processing of meat etc) ; in favour of intrusive state regulation Against traditional families with a sex based division of labour; in favour of dual income households, ultra commodification of social life (esp care) and equality in the labour market (this is what Mary Harrington is questioning in her feminist critique of progress)Against a presumption of home-based elder care; For an assumption of individual spatial/social mobility and state/market care solutions
Even when radical degrowth constituencies coalesce – young people /students are almost never willing to commit to the boring commitment or growing food every day in perpetuity. Everyone talks community but they want individual freedom and choice. I may be wrong, but none of the XR activists would accept even the level of individual constraint that was normal for 99% of people in the 1930s/40s
Diversity, social and spatial mobility, students studying all over Europe hundreds of miles from home, integrated slick labour markets – all mitigate against this. In London, the East End’s famous defiant spirit in the blitz was a function of place-bound, close knit community and shared culture/life experience.
Any attempt to forge that kind of solidarity would not be liberal. Victor Orban is in a much better position to do this in Hungary than any West European government – if he so chose (he won’t of course), let alone the EU. And yet Orban is a political outlaw for the left/green degrowth community
And I would guess that to a man and woman, every person on the degrowth email list to which I am party, is either pro-EU, very hostile to BREXIt, would most probably advocate the UK rejoining – or if not, would be very unlikely to voice such an opinion ( for academics this is getting into shunning territory).
This is a wicked dilemma. I have no idea how one would resolve it – or whether that is possible.. But ignoring it won’t make it go away.
Finally, I would also hazard a guess that a degrowth strategy that retains the metaphysical materialism and secularism of the Enlightenment will also fail – must fail – because behavioural change never comes from education or knowledge, but from shared meaning frameworks. My next door neighbours are old order Mennonites. They don’t give a toss about degrowth or climate change, or even the culture war. They just do their thing – which happens to be hard core Christian and family/land based. And it also just so happens that their per capita emissions are about 1/100 those of even the greenest, degrowth activists in Kitchener and Guelph (and there are many)
If you wanted a model that might work at least in principle, it would look more like the Catholic Land Movement https://catholiclandmovement.info but I’m sure that will go down like Andrew Tate at the Quaker Yearly Meeting
Anyway, I guess my question is: EU or not? Shared religion/ontology or not? Enlightenment individualism or not? And where are these successful models of central planning that can parsimoniously allocate energy/complexity between various domains.
Well, yes, but that just proves that they’re not identical metrics, not that growth is something you can do forever. Every single time I’ve heard the argument that growth can be infinite, including in the links in this article, the argument boils down to “sometimes you can get growth from more efficient use of resources, so growth isn’t always increasing the use of resources”. This is true. It is also missing the point, because you can’t infinitely increase efficiency, and in fact there are physical limits to the efficiency of certain processes, including – crucially – the process of extracting useable energy, whether from fossil fuels, renewables or nuclear reaction.
Well, yes, but that just proves that they’re not identical metrics, not that growth is something you can do forever. Every single time I’ve heard the argument that growth can be infinite, including in the links in this article, the argument boils down to “sometimes you can get growth from more efficient use of resources, so growth isn’t always increasing the use of resources”. This is true. It is also missing the point, because you can’t infinitely increase efficiency, and in fact there are physical limits to the efficiency of certain processes, including – crucially – the process of extracting useable energy, whether from fossil fuels, renewables or nuclear reaction.
Thanks for this, Noah. And thanks Unherd, for platforming the canceled.
Thanks for this, Noah. And thanks Unherd, for platforming the canceled.
Problems arise when political cultures are wedded to absolutist positions.
Not all growth is good:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10450221/Dumped-Atacama-desert-mountain-discarded-cheap-clothes-West.html
Problems arise when political cultures are wedded to absolutist positions.
Not all growth is good:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10450221/Dumped-Atacama-desert-mountain-discarded-cheap-clothes-West.html
… this clear trend toward a steady-state economy …
Is this the managed circular economy in the “sustainability” of Schwab and the WEF – the reframing of Marcuse’s “new sensibility” as an administered state whereby the population is managed through enforced equity administered via intersectional identity mantras as to who gets access and privileges?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpMebedQjPM
… this clear trend toward a steady-state economy …
Is this the managed circular economy in the “sustainability” of Schwab and the WEF – the reframing of Marcuse’s “new sensibility” as an administered state whereby the population is managed through enforced equity administered via intersectional identity mantras as to who gets access and privileges?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpMebedQjPM
So if a country made a single, ‘simple’ change such as banning tobacco what would be the effect on GDP? I imagine a reduction in retail business (£8 billion a year…but that money will go somewhere else); a decrease in health care services (huge drops in lung cancer, heart disease); and increases in other activities – smoking cessation services, alternative drugs, customs & policing; hobbies; and old age care (those people living longer need looking after). Imagine if we had an accurate figure on the GDP change (an almost impossible if) – what use would it be in determining whether we are closer to the good life?…..GDP is rather a blunt instrument.
So if a country made a single, ‘simple’ change such as banning tobacco what would be the effect on GDP? I imagine a reduction in retail business (£8 billion a year…but that money will go somewhere else); a decrease in health care services (huge drops in lung cancer, heart disease); and increases in other activities – smoking cessation services, alternative drugs, customs & policing; hobbies; and old age care (those people living longer need looking after). Imagine if we had an accurate figure on the GDP change (an almost impossible if) – what use would it be in determining whether we are closer to the good life?…..GDP is rather a blunt instrument.
The ‘growth’ debate is inevitably in one Article going to be grossly over simplified. What do we mean by growth, growth in what, how is it actually measured, what is good or bad growth etc. But at least we are talking about it and that’ll aid broader understanding.
Low to zero growth would turn much more attention to how wealth is shared if overall it’s static. If the cake is not growing then who has what size of slice becomes an even greater political fault-line and redistribution debates would play a much bigger role in our politics.
One of the interesting coalitions of course is the ‘de-growth’ supporters with an ‘environmental’ theme alongside the ‘de-growth’ supporters with a lower immigration driver for cultural ‘nationalist’ reasons. Intriguing bed fellows.
The ‘growth’ debate is inevitably in one Article going to be grossly over simplified. What do we mean by growth, growth in what, how is it actually measured, what is good or bad growth etc. But at least we are talking about it and that’ll aid broader understanding.
Low to zero growth would turn much more attention to how wealth is shared if overall it’s static. If the cake is not growing then who has what size of slice becomes an even greater political fault-line and redistribution debates would play a much bigger role in our politics.
One of the interesting coalitions of course is the ‘de-growth’ supporters with an ‘environmental’ theme alongside the ‘de-growth’ supporters with a lower immigration driver for cultural ‘nationalist’ reasons. Intriguing bed fellows.
We have a social contract. We are allowed to have human rights but, in return, we have an obligation to the country – for now and for the future. We have to find a way of securing good-quality life for the next generation. We start by defining this term and then we have to sacrifice our personal views for the next generations.
Growth or no growth, that is the question.
We have a social contract. We are allowed to have human rights but, in return, we have an obligation to the country – for now and for the future. We have to find a way of securing good-quality life for the next generation. We start by defining this term and then we have to sacrifice our personal views for the next generations.
Growth or no growth, that is the question.
Eur.9.9m seems a rather excessive amount to be granting a project of political activism
We saw de-growth during COVID; don’t think we want to do that again.
A core tenant of degrowth is the modern industrial consumer economy can’t be operated within Rockstroms planetary boundaries, therefore they think we need to design an ‘economy of care’, reduce industrial output, & spend more time in great orgiastic festivals of Dionysian debauchery.
The fallacy you point to is theoretical, sure, we could dematerialize consumption, now show us some proof. Perhaps the NYSE’s new asset class, NAC’s, will take off, one group on the exchange has valued the market for Nature at $4 quadrillion! We could use the revenue generated for materials science, we gonna need it.
The absolute v relative decoupling bun fight is a sorry sight, Parrique’s overview at the EU BeyondGrowth yesterday summarizes the degrowth pov, which seems to rest on current observable rates of anemic decoupling, rather than modeling roll out of 100% RE on emissions & growth. Even so, still leaves the problem of material thru put.
Ultimately, the issue is, to mass produce anything, including necessities, we build capacity aggressively to bring unit costs down, often set price below costs to drive scale asap, invest in marketing to drive demand, new products, R&D & with a lot of hard work enjoy a big payday. All burning a boat load of oil, using up tons of materials, and with finance capital expecting double digit returns.
That said McKinsey concluded in their decarbonizing the EU report that half of what’s necessary doesn’t meet the standard capital return, which I understood to mean can’t out perform a l/t bond, degrowth or not, we’re heading into something new.
A core tenant of degrowth is the modern industrial consumer economy can’t be operated within Rockstroms planetary boundaries, therefore they think we need to design an ‘economy of care’, reduce industrial output, & spend more time in great orgiastic festivals of Dionysian debauchery.
The fallacy you point to is theoretical, sure, we could dematerialize consumption, now show us some proof. Perhaps the NYSE’s new asset class, NAC’s, will take off, one group on the exchange has valued the market for Nature at $4 quadrillion! We could use the revenue generated for materials science, we gonna need it.
The absolute v relative decoupling bun fight is a sorry sight, Parrique’s overview at the EU BeyondGrowth yesterday summarizes the degrowth pov, which seems to rest on current observable rates of anemic decoupling, rather than modeling roll out of 100% RE on emissions & growth. Even so, still leaves the problem of material thru put.
Ultimately, the issue is, to mass produce anything, including necessities, we build capacity aggressively to bring unit costs down, often set price below costs to drive scale asap, invest in marketing to drive demand, new products, R&D & with a lot of hard work enjoy a big payday. All burning a boat load of oil, using up tons of materials, and with finance capital expecting double digit returns.
That said McKinsey concluded in their decarbonizing the EU report that half of what’s necessary doesn’t meet the standard capital return, which I understood to mean can’t out perform a l/t bond, degrowth or not, we’re heading into something new.
Growth is only an issue in a capitalist economy. (Investors insist on the highest returns, every week, every month, every quarter; otherwise they’ll take their money elsewhere. So corporations compete not just on profitability but on the growth in profitability.)
I’m not anything like a fan of Communism. I’m old enough to remember the grim comedy that was Soviet existence, and some of the horror of Mao’s China. But capitalism is, on the face of it, very imperfect. It leads to harmful concentrations of wealth; the capture of the functions of government by the wealthy; the relative neglect of enterprises that, though profitable, aren’t profitable enough (e.g. new anti-biotics); the constant cheapening of the manufactured products available to us (get your hands on some unsold-stock Levi’s jeans from the 50s or 60s and you’ll see what I mean); etc.
So the question isn’t growth vs stasis. It’s how do we fix, or replace, capitalism. Before our pants come apart at the seams!
Growth is only an issue in a capitalist economy. (Investors insist on the highest returns, every week, every month, every quarter; otherwise they’ll take their money elsewhere. So corporations compete not just on profitability but on the growth in profitability.)
I’m not anything like a fan of Communism. I’m old enough to remember the grim comedy that was Soviet existence, and some of the horror of Mao’s China. But capitalism is, on the face of it, very imperfect. It leads to harmful concentrations of wealth; the capture of the functions of government by the wealthy; the relative neglect of enterprises that, though profitable, aren’t profitable enough (e.g. new anti-biotics); the constant cheapening of the manufactured products available to us (get your hands on some unsold-stock Levi’s jeans from the 50s or 60s and you’ll see what I mean); etc.
So the question isn’t growth vs stasis. It’s how do we fix, or replace, capitalism. Before our pants come apart at the seams!