[HN Gopher] Southern thought, islandness and real-existing degro...
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Southern thought, islandness and real-existing degrowth in the
Mediterranean
Author : cardamomo
Score : 19 points
Date : 2022-05-28 16:12 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencedirect.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencedirect.com)
| paganel wrote:
| De-growth means "increased poverty" for most of us, I really hate
| this double-speak.
|
| Yes, I know this continued growth thing is not sustainable in the
| medium to long term (and saying that until very recently meant
| you were branded as a stupid Malthusian, still does, but less
| so), but I think we should stop f.ing around when it comes to
| naming stuff and call it what it is: we need less stuff to
| consume for the ecosystem to remain stable (or so we currently
| think), which means more poverty for the majority of us.
| polotics wrote:
| Desired degrowth actually has a name: sobriety.
| jaqalopes wrote:
| With inflation and increasing inequality I'm already living a
| more "impoverished" life than my parents when they were my age,
| yet economic growth has been out of control. I don't think your
| vision of "most of us" is at all connected to reality.
| paganel wrote:
| The de-growth is mostly targeted at the up and coming
| demographic behemoths of India and China, maybe also Africa
| as a whole. It's the West's way of telling them: "you can't
| be like us, that would be bad for the planet".
|
| Of course, many low-middle-class to working class people from
| the West will also fall on the wrong side of all this, but in
| a way they already have started experiencing it, like you
| mention (you can look at existing NIMBY policies in the West
| as de facto de-growth policies that directly and negatively
| affect those socio-economic chunks of the populace).
| heydenberk wrote:
| As an environmentalist, I have plenty of friends who are
| interested in degrowth, or even actively promote the concept.
| Curiously, however, none of them are interested in moving to one
| of the many rural counties in the US currently undergoing
| degrowth.
| soldehierro wrote:
| Can you provide an example of one of these counties and why you
| consider they are undergoing "degrowth"? Degrowth is usually
| conceptualized as an intentional process, rather than economic
| decline.
| dash2 wrote:
| That sounds suspiciously like "The reality of falling income
| sucks, but my imagination of how it _might_ be is awesome. "
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Half of global GDP growth is simply population growth.
|
| You could be in place like Japan where you have lower
| population, but still productivity growth such that incomes
| don't decline.
|
| You could also be a place like pretty much everywhere in
| the world before the Industrial Revolution when the
| Malthusian Trap was a popular thought - and your population
| grows but productivity declines. GDP goes up, but you get
| more miserable. Not great.
|
| I don't think anyone imagines falling incomes as awesome.
|
| Additionally, even if productivity and population decline -
| the Fed can always devalue money such that your income goes
| up - even if your situation is getting materially worse.
|
| I don't know why people obsess over population growth. We
| already don't want to invest in the people we have.
|
| Productivity growth should be the thing we all want.
| There's not a lot of people that are like: Damn those
| tractors that stole all the agricultural jobs!
|
| For the most part - we're happy 90% of the population
| doesn't have to work in agriculture.
| ardit33 wrote:
| Degrowth with declining economy means Detroit. Or many other
| rust belt cities.
|
| Degrowth without economic decline, means Carmel By the Sea in
| Ca, or those small towns in the Key West where only the rich
| can afford to live.
|
| You can put many towns in the SF Bay Area which have actively
| stalled any growth. They have one thing in common: they are
| super expensive.
| JSavageOne wrote:
| Rural areas in the U.S are unwalkable (not just rural areas,
| but most of the U.S), not to mention probably devoid of people
| and community. People value community and walkability.
|
| Also degrowth doesn't imply living in rural areas.
| caffeine wrote:
| Stuff like this makes one question whether the "university" as a
| concept has long outlived its usefulness.
|
| I mean, someone wrote a grant proposal, and someone else approved
| it, for this! (Probably.)
| montefischer wrote:
| For those interested, Ivan Illich wrote a series of books
| criticizing the modern approach to healthcare, education,
| transportation, gender etc. from a perspective that might be
| called "degrowth" today. A great introductory essay on Illich
| (https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2022/05/the-corruption-of...)
| was published recently in American Affairs. In my experience, the
| power of a single personality passionately committed to an idea
| is usually a better introduction than an academic survey article.
| Illich was a radical and none of his ideas come with batteries
| included, but exploring his ideaspace was an invigorating
| experience for someone who had hitherto only pitched his tent in
| the libertarian technocapitalist suburbs of the mind.
| ardit33 wrote:
| Dumb paper. What the author calls degrowth, it is living in a
| more primitive and old fashion way. Neighbor Albania and Italy
| have this problem as well. There are plenty of villages where
| people live like it is still the early 1900s.
|
| The author forgot to mention that they have one thing in common:
| all this villages it is mostly older people that live there, with
| few young ones left, mostly doing agriculture related work.
|
| Most young people have left these villages due to the lack of
| economic opportunities. So, this thing called 'degrowth' is just
| economic stagnation.
|
| Also, you don't have to travel in Europe to see this. We have the
| Amish folks here, and that's what a successful ultimate degrowth
| is. In Southern Europe it is mostly forced due to economic
| conditions.
|
| There are a lot of left wing radicals that advocate for
| 'degrowth', but that ultimately is advocating for poverty, and
| bring the US back to the 70s.
|
| The libertarian view of degrowth, is to leave like a 'homestead
| farm', while the left version is to live in some giant communist
| coop where people consume only what's needed, but this time it is
| with the 'old fashion" twist.
|
| 52 failed attempt at communism should have given them a clue that
| it doesn't work.
|
| Degrowth = poverty for the masses, while still few elites enjoy
| and live a lavish life.
| softcactus wrote:
| I'd like to offer a differing perspective. Let's say you have a
| company that makes shoes. You attract investors by growing
| steadily at 3% a year. At some point, the market becomes
| crowded or monopolized such that you can no longer grow at 3%
| by attracting new customers or creating new products. So you
| start to increase profit by reducing your margins-- using worse
| materials and worse construction methods. You use planned
| obsolescence to increase the number of times customers have to
| buy your products.
|
| Ask yourself, once this inflection point is reached and quality
| is no longer increasing, does a growth economy make sense? At
| this terminal stage of economic growth there is an increase in
| negative externalities in the pursuit of ever-diminishing
| profits. Much more waste as the shoes are built with worse and
| worse materials. More exploitation in an attempt to reduce
| labor costs. Do you think that over the last 30 years, shoes
| have increased in quality relative to the profit margins of
| these companies? If the answer is no, then it means we need to
| figure out a way to deal with terminal-stage industries.
|
| Sure, there are people advocating for everyone to go live like
| the Amish, but to me degrowth means that if an industry can no
| longer achieve growth through innovation or increases in
| productivity, we should acknowledge that that industry has
| peaked, and not try to squeeze every last dollar out of it
| through exploitation or waste.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminishing_returns
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