"Degrowth or post-growth is not a form of austerity, it is not about getting poorer. It is a concept to rethink our values and what matters in life. At the core of degrowth concepts are values such as well-being, care, self-organization, and conviviality. It is a compelling invitation to prioritize our relationships with each other and with nature over extreme individualism and our addiction to stuff and purely consumerist forms of entertainment. "
@bombadillo I think it's more a "call to arms against the rich" and the middle class SUV lifestyle. To me, it's all about respect for the materials, using only as much as you need, passing the materials on so that they can be reused. It's about learning to dream about less instead of dreaming of more.
@gerrymcgovern What bothers me in degrowth ideas is lack of practical tools. I still don't know who this talk about degrowth is trying to address. I hope it's not the working class people who are working their asses off and not getting much in return. Is it an apology for the middle classes or a call to arms against the rich?
The devastating fires around the northern hemisphere this summer have led me to wondering more about how many economies are so dependent on tourism, a 'purely consumerist form of entertainment' and one largely based on flying, and how they'll survive as the climate emergency deepens. Degrowth may require them to become moire locally self-sustaining.
@outi@bombadillo I think it's all about consuming less, care for Nature more. We need to build up the tools and methods around that. y own area is in digital design and I've been working on ways to may digital design lighter and use less resources and energy.
i see degrowth at this moment as an idea, an analysis, and mostly it is only an academic analysis.
i've never read marx / the capital, so i might be wrong - but maybe it is sorta a same thing - the action and practical tools, implementation, need yet to get invented and executed.
"The ideology of infinite growth, which is intrinsic to capitalism, has now become the biggest threat to life itself."
Required: > strategies to outline pathways beyond #capitalism > democratization of the economy, where workers are in control > a profound redistribution of wealth to finance public services > universal basic income > international solidarity > support for the Global South
@outi@gerrymcgovern I don't think that we can bring about a degrowth economy now. Once the ecological collapse starts to hinder economic growth globally we will adapt to an economic model that doesn't require growth. But until that it's just an academic idea. (We really need to get Janne Korhonen to Mastodon btw)
@outi@gerrymcgovern I haven't read Das Kapital either, but I'm pretty sure that Marx never proposed any concrete actions. I think that his theory was that when the working class becomes fully aware of it's situation, the new model of economy comes about by itself.
i meant only the similarity in timescales, not ideological - first there were marx et al intellectuals and academics, analysing what is wrong, why there is poverty and misery (or today ecological catastrophe), theoretize a counter-utopia, and only after that theoretize the ways how to get there.
hmm suppose marx thought of the methods and strategies too, like "seizing the means of production" (?).
anyway, i agree that degrowth isn't a ready program, yet, i hope.
@outi@gerrymcgovern I think that if Marx lived today he would be pleased to see that economic growth has lifted millions of people out of hunger, in both sides of the iron curtain. But I'm sure that he would agree that the limits of growth have been exceeded.
@bombadillo@filipesm@outi We can't get a good solution if we don't define the problem right. Growth and overconsumption is the problem. We have become devourers of the Earth's energy and materials, and the waste from our devouring is toxic. Growth is the problem.
@filipesm@outi@gerrymcgovern I just don't see how we could switch to a degrowth model in a world where the economy is still growing. We can't even agree on what the problem is, let alone what the solution could be.
@filipesm@bombadillo@outi Population growth is a problem. However the top 10% do 50% of the damage to the environment, and the bottom 50% do 10%. The devouring of the SUV-driving middle class and the super rich is where the most stress lies.
@bombadillo@outi@gerrymcgovern 2. Who said population growth is always a good thing? That might be one of the causes, or consequences, or both, of the problem
@bombadillo@outi@gerrymcgovern 1. The last statement is simply incorrect. There is a possibility that highly uneven societies like our global one could increase in population without producing more, by just becoming more efficient and distributing more evenly. I bet that yeah, 1800-today, you had to increase production to not lose wellbeing per person. But that's not the whole picture, and certainly doesn't justify anything capitalism has done
@filipesm@outi@gerrymcgovern If we tried to feed everyone today with an economy the size of 1800 it wouldn't suffice even if it was perfectly distributed. Population growth generates and requires economic growth. You cannot separate the two.
@bombadillo@outi@gerrymcgovern it was not growth that lifted people out of hunger. It was food getting distributed. That could have happened with or without growth (at a worldwide level of course). Just because we had growth and less people are in famine, doesn't mean one caused the other directly.
Also, we have more people living under $10 than in 1990. I will find the chart and post it under this later