Post AVaBVTCvTgmOAf7kLQ by cian@post.lurk.org
 (DIR) More posts by cian@post.lurk.org
 (DIR) Post #AVaBVRRk1dRSi22Y9w by cian@post.lurk.org
       2023-05-10T23:13:45Z
       
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       I just finished 'We are all degrowthers' and it is excellent.An important project for the left is to dethrone GDP so nobody (at least on our side) takes it seriously.I'm not sure what you'd replace it with, but maybe the instinct to try and measure it is a mistaken one.https://www.academia.edu/40975347/We_Are_All_Degrowthers_We_Are_All_Ecomodernists_Analysis_of_a_Debate
       
 (DIR) Post #AVaBVSQiMwDNl8ZFCK by rushraptor@babka.social
       2023-05-11T19:33:19Z
       
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       @cian I tend to get cynical whenever I see arguments for degrowth because I don't see how we implement that without the right wing instituting fascism in response. When I was younger, I thought that we would just wait for them to die off but Im not as optimistic now, both because we are running out of time and because the "we will not eat bugs and live in pods" movement spans all agesSeems to me like it isnt green capital vs. degrowth but green capital vs armed civil war
       
 (DIR) Post #AVaBVT8Jkp5pwMy4A4 by cian@post.lurk.org
       2023-05-12T12:44:50Z
       
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       @rushraptor Degrowth is happening whether we like it or not. We can already see the ways in which global warming is disrupting global supply chains and production, and that's only going to get worse. On top of that we've exceeded natural resource limits. We've already seen the collapse of the ocean (which for some reason doesn't get talked about much, but the Ocean is dying), we're beginning to see real reductions in agricultural production for a range of reasons. We're still in the early stages. Eventually if we do nothing degrowth will happen due to the collapse of human civilization (or in the bleaker, but unfortunately scientifically plausible, senarios the extinction of the human race along with much of the biome).
       
 (DIR) Post #AVaBVTCvTgmOAf7kLQ by cian@post.lurk.org
       2023-05-10T23:20:12Z
       
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       Written by @KevinCarson1 who should be better known.
       
 (DIR) Post #AVaBVTorCf7Y4Is2T2 by cian@post.lurk.org
       2023-05-12T12:45:00Z
       
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       @rushraptor If humans do something about global warming in time (ok, I know it looks increasingly implausible), then we face a resource contrainsts issue that almost nobody in the environmental movement wants to face up to. There aren't enough renewable resources to sustain modern society in its current, highly inequitable, form. There are real solar limits, and on top of that there are resource limits. Unless the nuclear industry finally delivers on its promises (I'm very skeptical. AI and nuclear both have a long history of hype, and under-delivery), we're going to have to find a way to make do with less. Which means we can't have electric cars. We can't have giant McMansions, open refridgerators in supermarkets, giant combine harvestors and huge datasystems serving up the internet.
       
 (DIR) Post #AVaBVUbmGmFiW1l6ie by cian@post.lurk.org
       2023-05-12T12:49:49Z
       
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       @rushraptor However, that doesn't mean we have to live impoverished lives. Our modern society is incredibly inefficient (and @KevinCarson1 rightly emphasizes this), and those inefficiencies exist because of capitalism and exploitation. Much of consumption of our resources exist because of inefficient production processes that make a few people very rich. Our agricultural systems are both destructive and inefficient, because those things are necessary for the to be profitable for farm owners and agro-business. But because capitalism has stolen the word 'efficient' to mean 'profitable' we don't notice these things.
       
 (DIR) Post #AVaBVVBa7etOJ4VhWi by cian@post.lurk.org
       2023-05-12T12:54:06Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @rushraptor @KevinCarson1 Where the degrowthers go wrong is by using the word 'degrowth' (which has implications of austerity), and focusing on GDP. GDP is actually a useful metric, but it should not be THE metric. If you want to know how much activity is going on in an economy, then it is certainly useful. But the problem is that not all that activity is useful, and we're not measuring how many resources went into that final figure.Instead we should be measuring useful output (granted a hard metric to identify - though probably no harder than measuring GDP), and identifying how efficiently that output was generated. Similarly, we should measure how much of the output of a society is USEFUL output. If we started doing those things we'd quickly see that while the US seems like a rich society when you measure output, if you measure useful output it actually does quite poorly. And if you measure efficiency, we're talking Soviet Union levels of waste.