By Robert Bradley Jr.
“Degrowth is about government authoritarianism overriding the natural human impulse to improve. Marcus Feldthus of the Copenhagen Business School needs to reeducate himself about ends and means to at least be able to inform his students about the happy side of life and living.”
No-growth (stagnation) is bad enough. In business, every promotion must be balanced by a demotion or retirement. For one person to buy more, another person must buy less. Charity not, the zero sum game is a recipe for low morale and infighting, just of the opposite of charity through abundance.
Take another step backward to a negative sum game. More losers than winners. The survival of the fittest. Glum is the word as rising expectations is replaced by despair.
Less is not more but less. Less convenience, less leisure, less security, and less philanthropy toward others. And with incentives stymied, the desperadoes look to government to intervene at the expense of others. French economist and classical liberal Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) wrote in 1848:
… it is a well-established fact that the state cannot procure satisfaction for some without adding to the labor of others…. The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.
What needs “degrowth” is government, not the market, a subject for another time.
“Planetary Boundaries”
What is the latest thinking and pitch from the degrowth movement? This social media post from Marcus Feldthus, whose self-described mission is to “build a post growth business in the pursuit of sustainability,” provides an update. His website advertises an online course, “Aligning Business with Planetary Boundaries,” based on four precepts (verbatim):
- Why green growth fails to deliver results fast enough and sufficiently.
- How the inequality and ecological crises are connected.
- Cases of companies that get sustainability right and wrong.
- How to start implementing post growth thinking in a business.
He urges his students to “start a conversation about the assumptions in your company.”
No-growth, de-growth …. Ouch! Calling Julian Simon!
Feldthus continues on the environmental front (reproduced verbatim):
- Assuming you can decouple carbon emissions from economic growth sufficiently to live up to the Paris Agreement (no evidence of that happening)
- Assuming some new technology will magically appear and solve point 1 (techno-optimism ignores that hope is not a strategy)
- Assuming climate change is the only problem (when there are 8 other planetary boundaries)
- Assuming stable prices on energy and materials (when energy expenditures are increasing)
- Assuming that increases in energy efficiencies lead to absolute energy and material reductions in a growth-based system (the money you save, you use to grow the output, to make more money, which cancels out the initial savings – also known as The Rebound Effect)
- Assuming that you can recycle your way out of the ecological crisis (the 2nd law of thermodynamics explains why that is not possible)
- Assuming that services have no, or an insignificant, ecological footprint (services cannot entirely replace the material sector)
Marcus Feldthus sees hope and momentum:
Degrowth is breaking into the mainstream. Covered by: UN, Harvard Business Review, NY Times, Ernst & Young, BBC, and Bloomberg Festival. As something to be explored, not ridiculed. Here is a quote from each 👇
Bloomberg Festival: Ted Talk by Gaya Herrington
“Our choice is not whether to keep growing or not. But whether the end of growth is coming by design or disaster. Either we choose limits or have them forced upon us.”
Harvard Business Review: In Defense of Degrowth
“The core of the degrowth argument is the historical fact that economic growth and emissions are inexorably connected (…) To be realistic about the fundamental challenges of growth, we must adjust our cultural assumptions and reconfigure unsustainable business models.”
UN Rapporteur, Olivier De Schutter: Eradicating poverty beyond growth
“The transition to a post-growth development trajectory, focused on the realization of human rights rather than on an increase in the aggregate levels of production and consumption, should be explicitly mentioned in A Pact for the Future”.
New York Times: Shrink the Economy, Save the World?
“Less than two decades ago, an economist like Herman Daly, who argued for a “steady-state economy,” was such an outlier that his fellow economist Benjamin Friedman could declare that “practically nobody opposes economic growth per se.” Yet today there is a burgeoning “post-growth” and “degrowth” movement doing exactly that — in journals, on podcasts, at conferences.”
Ernst & Young: A new economy
“Seemingly organized under many different frameworks (e.g., Doughnut Economics, Beyond GDP, ecological economics, degrowth and regenerative economics), these concepts share the common vision of an economy founded on human and planetary flourishing. We suggest they also point to five guiding principles foundational to accelerating the transition toward this goal.”
BBC: Less is more: Can Degrowth Save The World? by Alvaro Alvarez Ricciardelli
“A group of academics and activists are questioning the possibility of endless economic growth on a finite planet. They instead advocate for a bold solution: degrowth.”
And, if you want to understand what this shift means for businesses, I just launched a beginner’s guide on it. It’s called Post Growth Business 101. 📌 Get it here: https://lnkd.in/ePFW-j5a
Final Comment
Degrowth is the final solution against modernity. It is an anti-human philosophy of stagnation and decline based on the belief that there are too many people. Remember Paul Ehrlich?
Degrowth is a fringe movement within Deep Ecology. It sanctions deindustrialization and thus welcomes high energy prices and energy rationing, even blackouts.
Degrowth is about government authoritarianism overriding the natural human impulse to improve. It lurks in high places and must be exposed for what it is. Marcus Feldthus of the Copenhagen Business School needs to reeducate himself about ends and means to at least be able to inform his students about the happy side of life and living.
_________________________________________________________________
What better time than now?
The biggest employer in Wokeachusetts is the state government -85,000. They are almost entirely upper middle class.
“They are almost entirely upper middle class.”
Which means they are almost entirely woke, self-entitled, far-left prats.
add in Federal govt, City govt, County govt, and public schools and you are officially in the bottom 1/2 of the pyramid.
All government workers in Wokechusetts are well paid. If they’re low skilled, they’re getting more than if they worked at Walmart or a supermarket- or one of the few remaining industries.
Pension scheme as well?
I believe MA state workers get an 80% pension at 30 years service.
Degrowth is just Paul Ehrlich and The Club of Rome. Fifty six years of missing the predicted catastrophe which was to happen Right Soon Now.
Just like all the different names for biodynamic agriculture, renaming a failure seems to be so common.
Why not … Hollywood (Disney) can recreate failures out of what was once box office smashes.
Especially when they’re concerned with appeasing fringe groups and using pronouns
The term “Degrowth” is really a contraction of the full term, which is “Degrowth Communism”, as espoused by the Japanese Communist Kohei Saito.
The policies of bodies like the World Bank, UN and WEF are steeped in the ideological mutterings of Saito. All of the ESG stuff is straight out of his playbook. While the globalists remain coy about the ultimate outcomes of these measures. Degrowth Communism aims squarely to utterly destroy Western civilization. These are the policies that are currently being implemented by the governments of Western countries, against the interests of their own people in the most extreme way possible. They seek to eliminate the vast majority of all humans on the planet, a plan so evil that almost everyone recoils from the idea that it could be happening, they simply cannot accept that such evil could be embarked upon by other humans. But, it’s happening, and it’s happening now.
The end game is a world population of < 2 billion souls.
The “architects” of a “saved” planet will soon tire of reliance on natural attrition, and start to take matters into their own hands.
They’ll probably speak of their populace reduction measures at WEF, UN, EU, etc gatherings as a “Correction” program.
Natural attrition was abandoned decades ago: the mind cancer that is liberalism and socialism went after children in the womb first, then that wasn’t enough so DDT was banned, and now they let anyone with the slightest pretense off themselves. Soon to come: compulsory assisted suicide.
The only things missing from this remake of the fascist/communist 1930s are megalomaniac mustachioed dictators
Scaring kids into believing they will not live to adulthood, young adults swearing off having kids because the world is on fire, and various population control measures one of which is the concept of putting contraceptives in the drinking water, flooding city streets with illegal aliens and then slyly letting them vote.
And now electing a person president just because of sex and race.
Yea.
Stuff like this nonsense explains why Denmark’s largest and most valuable company (by 10x), Novo Nordisk—insulin and semiglutide— does not make the Fortune global 500 despite big global diabetes and obesity markets.
Color me saddened that even the Harvard Business Rebiew has published articles on this stuff.
“Our choice is not whether to keep growing or not. But whether the end of growth is coming by design or disaster. Either we choose limits or have them forced upon us.” Both ways the results are the same, no?
no reason to think there will be an end of growth
There are lots of reasons to think there will be an end of growth. The earth is finite being the most basic one. Sooner or later any exponential growth curve is going to exceed the capacity of the earth. Fossils fuels are finite and we are using them at an exponentially increasing rate which cannot last. You can argue about when they will run out but at some point they will all be consumed. The same is true of solar energy — the sun will burn itself out in several billion years. So clearly there has to be an end to growth the only question is when.
I wrote a book titled Gaia’s Limits about that published 2011. Really complicated and very uncertain stuff. There is a provable but uncertain soft limit, food, and a probable harder but still ‘softish’ limit in liquid transportation fuels (which for example, limit the notion of ‘available water’.
Really complicated stuff I spent almost 3 years researching the book. No tipping points or abrupt crises are implied by either limit. Just slow wind downs.
The book figured the Earths carrying capacity at about 7.5 billion people given dietary adjustments. It is now over 8 and projected to peak about 10.5
Rud, I really encourage you to read EM Smiths articles on this, He has researched it most of his life. https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/there-is-no-energy-shortage/
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/nro/
I think you can be a lot more optimistic as far as resources, including food.
Some links on why food is not a problem…
“Even agriculture and food is in plentiful supply and will stay that way as long was we wish to do so:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2015/08/17/the-unimportance-of-land-to-farming/
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2013/01/11/grains-and-why-food-will-stay-plentiful/
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2013/05/04/knowing-beans-and-lentils-and-peas-and/
So, I read all your Chiefio food references. For various reasons, they all are wrong. Read up on virtual water. Read up on global diets.
Cheifio’s clear belief that pulses coild ever suffice for protein is just wrong. Even in Hindu India, pulses are ordinarily supplemented by lamb and yoghurt (which dish in sautéed onions is called Rogan Dosh).
I suggest a general, “They are all wrong” is useless and unconvincing, compared to the detailed and proofs given, it is in fact, useless. He never advocated a meatless diet. there are whole sections on animal farms. Read again and consider to actually quote what is ” all wrong”
BTW, he is incredibly responsive, I suggest you comment on his blog. You can however expect a clear and detailed rebuttal. You may even learn some things. You know a great deal, yet your dismissal, which makes a very incorrect criticism, tells me you merely glanced, read a small section or two, and deeply misunderstood.
It is not protein that counts. It is amino acids.
Folks may want to check this out: Millet and Buckwheat (combination) contain all of the essential amino acids. In our home, we don’t eat much meat, but these two are consumed regularly, and have been, for over twenty years. We grind them in the mixer along with other grains. (buckwheat is really not a ‘grain’.)
Sparta, meat, poultry, fish, eggs, and dairy products, contain all the essential amino acids we need, and EM Smith never mentioned not using those sources. I have no idea what Rud read, but not the links posted.
So you make a straw man about limiting protein to pulses, and really think we have such hard limits on water, whish was directly addressed.
Fresh Water”There are enormous quantities of fresh water on the planet. The Amazon and the Mississippi both dump truly gigantic quantities into the ocean. Ditto the Nile, the Danube, the Yellow, and all those dozens of rivers in Russia. Often some of that water has been used and reused dozens of times before it reaches the ocean. Yet it could be used again, if desired. But we find it is more convenient to let it go back into the ocean for the sun and wind to distill it into fresh rain rather than to clean it up for our use once again. These folks give it as about 40,000 cubic kilometers per year. ………. Rather a lot… especially when you consider that we can reuse the water several times before it returns to the ocean or sky.
Saudi Desalinizer
But even then, most of the fresh water was not used even once. Look at the Amazon. Substantially unused. So to the extent that there is a problem, it is more about location than quantity. We have lots of fresh water, just not where we would like to have more. We have demonstrated plenty of ability to move water long distances and to store it when we choose to. So it’s been a choice, not a shortage.
Why don’t we “get on it” and move more water? Sometimes it is for political reasons. National boundaries or political movements to “protect” the environment or status quo. Sunbelt Water was going to use tankers to move water from Canada to California, but ran into political issues. It’s not a technology or geography problem. Their plan to use supertankers shows that. They could transport water to any coastline or port in the world.
There are still some folks looking at reasonable, yet grand, water transfer systems. Westward Ho describes one of these. The fascinating thing about it, for me, is the imaginative “leverage” of using existing rivers, dams, and hydroelectric generators to make the system much cheaper and more practical. There are still some Engineers ready, willing, and able to Dream Big! It is not a shortage of practical ideas or imagination either.
Other times it is because in many ways it is now cheaper to make clean fresh water. It is mostly about the economics of cheapest supply and NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) politics.
Desalinizer
Original image library
The Saudi Kingdom now gets 70%+ of it’s drinking water from desalinization and some is used for growing vegetables in greenhouses. (You can download an interesting pdf file about them here. They are an existence proof of the ability to run major cities on sea water. There are even folks who are combining the desalinization with the structure of the greenhouse!
Desalinizer technology has recently had a leap forward with the invention of a device to recover pressure. Much energy went into pumping water to pressure on one side of the membrane only to toss that away by letting the pressure drop as the waste stream was disposed. Now we recover that energy with about 98% efficiency.
Thanks to this device, (and politics) it is now cheaper to make fresh water along the coast of California rather than to put a dam in the mountains and a pipeline to carry it to a city near the shore.
Fresh water is unlimited, thanks to advances in desalinization. There is no shortage of fresh water.
So no water shortage and no animal protein shortage either, if we try a little, and cooperate a lot. “There is no shortage of land. Food shortages have nothing to do with production, they have everything to do with politics, wars, religion, and economic access.”
See below my original response to your over quick and under read critique.
…not to mention, additional CO2 PPM makes food growth far more water efficient.
40% of corn crops goes to producing fuel.
Hundreds of square miles dedicated to ever sprawling solar farms. Note that land cannot be farmed or have resident population.
Some increase in hailstorms may put that acreage back into production.
Peak oil! When was that, again? About the time the ice caps melted and the children had no snow, as I recall.
Peak oil, peek and you will find it.
From EM Smith, linked above… (after showing considerably more conventional oil then is usually realized)
“All we have talked about so far is what is named “conventional oil”. There are at least 2 major “unconventional oil” sources that are vastly larger than all of conventional oil. These are the “Tar Sands” (much of which are in Canada) and the “Oil Shale” which covers hugh areas of the United States (along with other parts of the world). The shale is presently not considered an oil reserve of any sort, since nobody can make money off it at present oil prices. Trillions of barrels of oil that exist, but are not counted.
What is a ‘resource’ changes with price and technology.
A resource is something of economic value; it becomes a reserve once folks start using it. Canadian tar sands were not a ‘resource’ 50 years ago, now they are. U.S. oil shale holds a Trillion+ bbl of oil minimum, but is not counted as a resource when prices are below about $100/bbl.
This page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale
puts the recoverable shale oil estimate at about 3 trillion barrels. That is about 100 years at present oil consumption rates if all oil consumption was supplied from shale oil. Somehow I don’t feel like I’m running out…
With oil over $100 / bbl the “oil” reserves of the world double or triple…
How much is “ultimately recoverable”? Nobody knows, but it is immense.
This puts us at somewhere around 200 years out before we are really at risk of “running out of oil”…
cont….
” Synthetic Oil & “Oil” Products; CTL – Coal To LiquidsCoal can be easily turned to gasoline and Diesel (as done by SASOL in Africa, or Rentech, Syntroleum, and Synthesis Energy Company in the U.S.A.) or into “petro” chemicals as is done by Eastman Chemical company (ticker EMN) today.
See: The SASOL site for more.
And they are not the only ones doing this. The process was invented in Germany prior to the Nazi era by FIscher and Tropsch so it is commonly called FT technology. During WWII, the Nazi war machine ran on FT fuels.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer-Tropsch
During the Arab Oil Embargo of the 1970’s, South Africa was threatened with a cut off of fuel from the west. They dug out their history books and SASOL was born. They have been running a modern economy on synthetic oil ever since.
Their economy has benefited from the stable energy costs and foreign exchange retention (i.e. not sending gold to OPEC). They are the most industrially advanced economy in Africa. They are an existence proof that this technology is all that is needed to provide all the “petroleum” fuel products we need, even if we don’t have enough “petroleum”.
All you need to do to make synthetic crude oil is take any material that contains a hydrocarbon component (plastic, paper, biowaste, coal, tree chips, garbage, slaughter house waste) put it in a pressure vessel and cook at high temperature with a little water, and pressure (500 degrees Fahrenheit and pressurized to 600 pounds per square inch, for about 20 minutes). Out comes a synthetic crude comparable to a high quality crude oil.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization
http://discovermagazine.com/2006/apr/anything-oil
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/biomass/pdfs/agricultural_waste.pdf
There is a new microwave process that is also being worked on to do the same thing.
Basically, we run out of “Oil Products” long after we run out of oil, since we can use coal or any other carbon source.”
Why do you envision that growth continues exponentially?
(Or, maybe you don’t … you just exaggerate to make your argument/point seem like it is better than it really is?)
In the US, Democrat families are having children at the rate of 1.4 per family and are destined to unbreed/abort/sterilize their way out of existence while Republicans are birthing at a rate of 1.8 per family. Still below 2 for 2 replacement but better than Dems.
I rather doubt those figures consider the millions of illegals breeding here.
sturmudgeon
Reply to
Bryan A
September 6, 2024 3:26 pm
I rather doubt those figures consider the millions of illegals breeding here
Well that is an average and most They/Them he-shes are non breeders it does average out
Growth can be defined in may different ways, but the idea that growth cannot be limitless on a finite planet seem reasonable to me.
While population grew exponentially, economy tracked it. With slowdown and expected peak at something 10+ BLN, extensive growth will have to end. Future growth will be due to improving standards of living of the 10+ BLN. But even this has limits. A person can consume only so much. We already see it in developed countries.
What a load of juvenile alarmist gibberish.
The earth is finite but you could take ALL the 8.?B populace and house them all in an area the size of the Hawaiian islands leaving the rest of the world un-populated.
Lots of room to grow.
As far as materials go there are 7 other planets with 293 moons and 2 million large asteroids and 20 million smaller ones.
Eventually, through growth and innovation, we will discover a means to reach and develop them economically.
I am not saying that there isn’t a lot of room to grow but just pointing that you can’t have infinite growth in a finite sized volume. Whether you have one planet or 7 it doesn’t make much difference in the end. The ultimate limit is going to be amount of solar power available since all other energy sources are orders of magnitude smaller and will be used up millions of years before solar power runs out.
You aren’t saying anything worth bothering with or relevant to the present.
Just your usual mindless prattle.
Solar??? Solar only performs anywhere near nameplate from 10am until 2pm…4 hours a day and produces NOTHING after 6pm when peak demand arrives. Solar is only good for running calculators and recharging batteries. Solar can’t run a modern society. Solar can’t even replicate itself.
Solar can’t be used to mine, refine and transport quartz or coal (necessary to recreate solar panels).
Solar can’t be used to run blast furnaces to convert ferrous oxide to Iron then to Steel. Coal is needed for that…both the refinement and smelting
Solar can’t be used to create Wind Turbines…you need petrochemical stocks from oil and gas to create the lightweight components and coal for the strong steel masts
These beasts are needed and they don’t run on Solar or Wind, they need Diesel (oil exploration, extraction and refinement)
I believe you misread. Solar aka the sun, is the source of all energy resources on earth, except geothermal. In space, solar energy is what he is describing.
Nuclear is also viable, but constrained by what this planet has to offer.
So, ultimately, in the long run, solar energy is the key. That is unless we create a technology that allows us to build a mini sun.
You’re ignoring nuclear. And it’s not orders-of-magnitude smaller.
So solar panels and their maintenance and upkeep are infinite in lifespan? Do you even think about what you are positing? If oil and minerals are gone, there ain’t going to be any solar or wind power, much less a grid, ya nonce.
The presumption is a finite sized volume.
When planetary surface limits population growth, we can go in 3 dimensions. Underground or space.
While the future, long term, is not known, there is no need to slam on the breaks today.
Consider ALL of the alternatives. Honestly weigh them by probability of occurrence. Plan for each of them and apply effort to achieve realistic goals. Science and engineering, not politics or emotion swayed public opinion.
And don’t forget the (planned)/unplanned wars that wipe out young men and their ‘seed’.
Lots of areas on this planet that are either very sparsley inhabited, or inhabited not at all. Water supplies may be discovered anywhere, anytime.
I’m guessing that you have just read “Limits to Growth”.
You should read Thomas Sowell’s book: Basic Economics. Free market capitalism solves the problem of limited resources. Unfortunately, Communists, like you, wouldn’t understand that.
“. . . the sun will burn itself out in several billion years.”
And that is going to be important? With Communists like Comrade Harris, the US won’t last a few years. Do you know how long a million years is? Let alone a billion years.
“Fossils fuels are finite . . . .”
They aren’t yet. With Climate Change nonsense, they will last forever.
“. . . but at some point they will all be consumed.”
So?
Earth’s natural systems are constantly creating new hydrocarbons. Takes more than a few centuries, granted, but it is constantly ongoing.
Algae die. Sink. Subduct. Cooked into oil.
The real question is how to achieve balance over the long term.
No it isn’t. The real question is what will it take to reach the stars?
The problem will certainly be solved, but it may take a long time to do so. A thousand years? Several? I’m not worried.
Ah- the great misunderstanding of economic growth- it doesn’t have to mean using more resources- it means people being more productive- creating more value. If the product you produce is better and longer lasting- you didn’t have to use more resources. OF COURSE there can’t be infinite growth- nobody says there can be- but meanwhile, this is not time to slack off thinking we’re using up the planet, that we should stop economic growth. That’s simple minded.
70’s called and want their talking points back.
Humans are not limited to the resources of just this planet anymore. Those who believe we are, ignore history and science. The universe is saturated in hydrocarbons. the Asteroids are lousy with metals and other useful materials. The Moon has all of the minerals and elements needed, and free vacuum, to build semiconductors. If you think that humans will not have reached other stars 10,000 years from now, you’re quite unimaginative. The Solar system is practically laid out like stepping stones…
“the sun will burn itself out in several billion years”
Oh, no. We’re all gonna die.
/sarc
The real answer was given by J.M. Keyens, at some point we will all be so well off that we will no longer care. “The Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren” http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf
Of course as we have approached the horizon he projected, we have not seen the leisure orientation he thought we might have — the 15 hour workweek. Economists have noted the paradox and proposed theories: https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2024/beyond-bls/a-reappraisal-of-keyness-economic-possibilities-for-our-grandchildren.htm
The resource argument was compellingly demolished by Julian Simon years ago. What is a resource is, is defined by the technologies we create and use.
In her last couple of years, my mother was bed ridden so I bought her a really nice television, a 36″ Sony. It weighed a couple of hundred pounds. I had to hire a couple of big strong workmen to install it. A couple of months ago, the tv in our family room had to be replaced. Its replacement, a 55″ flat screen weighed about 30 lbs and my wife and I (not strong people) were able to lift it on to the counter in our family room easily. A couple of years ago we got rid of our land line telepones and ripped a lot of copper wire out of the wall.
We are getting more out of less physical resources.
World population is close to its peak and will probably go down. “Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline” by Darrell Bricke,, John Ibbitson, (2019) https://www.amazon.com/Empty-Planet-Global-Population-Decline/dp/1984823213
Forecasting ‘happenings’ hasn’t had a very good success rate. If Freedom ever comes back, innovation will, also.
Agree
“Choose limits or have them forced upon us.”
Forced by whom?
COPs tried and failed 29 times in a row.
Ed Miliband now proposes destroying UK industry, which won’t fly.
Earth is greening, not browning.
UN cannot force limits, green governments cannot force limits and survive, and Mother Earth will only force limits on ‘green solutions’ lacking sufficient mineral resources for envisioned implementation.
Exactly Rud.
All those Club of Rome / Limits to Growth predictions now have all the credibility and gravitas of what some bloke down the pub was ranting about after too many pints.
Agree again. What I tried to say, but obviously failed, is whether we force changes to expect an outcome or let the outcome be its’ own determination of right or wrong we still get the same conundrum. So why force something that may turn out better if we just leave it alone?
I was going to post something similar. Many have misread your post.
80% EV by 2030. Net Zero by xxxx. Coercion by governments is having them forced upon us.
“80% EV by 2030″ Never happen.
Malthus was wrong. He will always be wrong. Why waste your life following idiots?
NO.
The results are not the same, & your characterization of ‘forced’ limits makes it appear that natural limits are bad. Worldwide doom won’t come from natural limits … it will only come from worldwide cooperation.
You took his post out of context.
Cut and paste:
“Our choice is not whether to keep growing or not. But whether the end of growth is coming by design or disaster. Either we choose limits or have them forced upon us.” Both ways the results are the same, no?
He was responding to the Bloomberg quote. He did not characterize as you seem to believe..
It is true that worldwide doom, excepting an extra terrestrial ELE, will only come from a one world order.
This sounds like is a precept to one of Trumps planks
“For every new regulation that is passed, 10 existing ones will be eliminated!”
Government degrowth ala Trump
Trump should change it to 20.
If he thinks it is good for himself he might change it.
Your rancid TDS is retarding any thought process you might once have been capable of.
Your ignorance is palpable since Trump LOST significant wealth while he was President and never took a dime of that Presidential salary either.
Try that scary idea of doing research instead of being a brainwashed Trump hater……
And of course, the de-growth of government regulations would almost certainly lead to the RE-GROWTH of society.
Reminds me of the Trump catch-call….. MAGA !!
De-growth of Government certainly could lead to regrowth of society by removing government control over our almost every aspect of our lives and creating economic growth.
Aspects like…
What to Eat (bugs not beef, soy not dairy)
What to Drive (EV not ICV)
What to Wear
How to cook (Electric not Gas)
How to heat (Ditto, Tritto, Quadrittoand Quintitto)
How far to travel (15 minute zones)
What gets taxed
What does and doesn’t source our power
The US military under Trump was run out of Afghanistan by the Taliban.
That is one of the reasons he wasn’t reelected.
COMPLETE BS !!!
It was Biden that haphazardly pulled our military out and left Billions in Military equipment behind for the Taliban
The US armed forces completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan on August 30, 2021 In all, the United States left behind more than $7 billion worth of weapons and equipment when it left Afghanistan
It’s more like 85 billion. And apparently Comrade Harris was the last one in the room to recommend the stupid pull-out. She’s proud of the results.
It was $7B until Bidenflation took hold and bloated it to $85B in Bidenflated $$$
Trump formulated a sane plan to pull out of Afghanistan by May 1, because it was during the winter and the non-combat season.
Biden in his hatred of all things Trump, threw out that plan and chaotically withdrew during the PEAK COMBAT SEASON.
Trump was not run out of Afghanistan. Both Trump and Biden saw that a 20 year occupation was long enough.
Now you are plainly LYING since Trump wanted to end the dumb American military presence in a nation that didn’t want them there and had been there for 25 years already losing men, equipment and money, thus gradually reduced their troop levels as per the agreement he had with the Taliban.
It was Biden who screwed it up as it occurred on his time as he didn’t stick with the agreement and first delayed it for months then suddenly started a rapid withdrawal leaving behind a pile of weaponry.
Don’t you ever do research?
There have been cultures that have continued for decades, centuries, maybe millenia even, without growth. Ups and downs, but basically static, without significant technical innovation and without much social change either. So it is possible that the greens may manage to bring something like this about, for the West.
What the reaction of the rest of the world will be to a static or declining West however? That’s the interesting one. You don’t want to be the only country to have nobly restricted itself to hand weapons, when everyone else has moved on to gunpowder.
True that historically there have been cultures and nations without ‘growth’ for centuries. But they were isolated, with lots of evidence of hard times.
greens brining that on for the West ignores that most of the world’s population is in India, China, and Africa. They won’t play, and are certainly not isolated.
Minerals from Africa, textiles from India (and Bangladesh), metals and durable goods manufacturing from China.
Australia is an example.
Our indigines are lauded for being one of the longest continuous cultures in the World with little change to their lifestyles of hunter/gatherer over 65,000 years (apparently) and not a wheel amongst them.
Along comes other peoples with cultures that improve their lot in life rather than stagnate (Dutch/English/French) and the world changed for the locals.
Degrowth might end up with a similar fate as there will always be people who would rather improve their situation than remain under the yoke of oppression.
It is not the meek that will inherit the Earth
It was the same with the American Indians. Who knows how many millennia they were stuck in the stone age, until Europeans arrived. No innovation at all after the stone arrowhead.
It’s fascinating that the current progressive academics and other assorted leftists seem to have this nostalgic romance for Australian Aborigines, as though they were somehow the ultimate achievement in human culture, living in harmony with the land.
Nothing could be further from the truth though. In reality, life for pre-colonial aboriginal people was incredibly brutal, with superstitious animist religious practices, astonishing levels of interpersonal violence both within and between tribes, and widespread practices of infanticide and cannibalism. As for the environment, well before they arrived (the 65k years ago figure is highly suspect, there were significant migrations out of Southern India 4k years ago, and some earlier waves, but the people who existed in Australia 50-60k years ago were almost certainly not the same as the current aboriginal people) the country was inhabited by a wide variety of large animal life, from reptiles, gigantic birds and huge marsupials. All of these large animals were extinct by the time Europeans arrived, with the exception of salt water crocodiles, which probably saw the arrival of humans as just a new food source. Whether their extinction was a result of direct hunting, or the practice of setting fires everywhere to flush out game, is somewhat irrelevant. In any case, the likelihood that the “environmental stewardship” of aboriginal people played a significant part in the extinction of Australian megafauna is quite high.
This misguided pursuit of the life of the “noble savage” is utterly boring. There were no noble savages, just a distant and romantic lens through which their existence was viewed. In reality, the lives of people in these primative societies were constant struggle with no rights, freedoms or justice other than what was meted out by the tribal chief (which was fine if he liked you, if not… not so much). This is no target to aim for.
“There were no noble savages…”
There probably were, but the less than noble savages raped their women and took their stuff.
From what I understand the Aboriginal population today STILL has a lot of the same problems. I will stop here because I think many, many people are not open to this discussion and it can go very deep indeed.
Government is a necessity, people are not by nature all good. Government is the proper outfit to enforce the laws we have given them. Laws to prevent bad people from cheating us, stealing from us and protecting us from harm. We need laws for bad players both in the country and out. Having said that it is clear that our government has moved from a state of offering basic protection to a state demanding absolute obedience as it creates nanny state rules and regulations we don’t want and don’t need. It is past time to trim it down to size.
Bob, a conclusion I’ve reached over the course of my 7+ decades here is that in addressing any societal issue, we humans always go too far in one direction, then over- correct in the opposite direction, then rinse & repeat a number of times, and by then the original issue has been made redundant.
It seems to me that this is our nature, and human nature doesn’t change.
In all the millennia of social pendulum, not arriving at any kind of equilibrium, who is it we have the hubris to believe we can control the weather?
It once was a sacred tenet of liberal democracy (whether populist or constitutional republic) that the governments first and foremost responsibility was to protect the citizenry from the government.
I’m sorry but I disagree.
People are inherently NOT bad. We can absolutely benefit from a small government but it cannot be a national government that rules over, as in the US, 330 million people.
That is something that many philosophers understood and it is definitely something that anti-Federalist understood extremely well.
A tribal government for example, has a responsibility to the people because the violence they can wield against their people is equal to the violence their people can weird against them.
Ultimately any form of government is backed by violence (read: enforcement ability) they can unleash on the population that is not cooperating.
When an imbalance appears, that is, the population cannot unleash the same level of violence on the government and thus keep it in check we are dealing with tyranny.
Ultimately violence always matters and the saying “violence is never and answer” is something that rhe government would like the population to believe because it gives them, yet another, upper hand.
I’m all for a small, decentralized government and we could’ve have it if we only listened to the anti-Federalist a little more.
But we chose to have an empire with an authoritarian(read: more violence than the population backing it) government that is now he’ll bent on unleashing a death cult of the de-growth for example.
If we ever go back to the begging of this country and read the anti-Federalist papers, implement them and stay with it we could have a functioning government that is kept in check by the people (not their representatives that become overlords as expected).
My wife and I were discussing the service that Amazon offers.
Something breaks or is not quite right and you need a replacement. These days it often involves going to the Amazon.au site and ordering a replacement in the knowledge it arrives tomorrow. It is such a simple and efficient process. The alternative would be to have a look on line to find a supplier, get in the car and contend with the traffic to shop around for a few hours trying to find the best option.
Our only paid TV subscription is Amazon Prime.
I imagine a lot of people get value from Amazon. In my view, Jeff Bezos deserves his wealth because he has made life simpler, more convenient and easier for many people. .
I am doubtful that Marcus Feldthus is doing anything that will benefit society.
People like Bezos and Musk are looking to expand horizons rather than confine.
” But whether the end of growth is coming by design or disaster.'[G. Herrington]
” … the natural human impulse to improve.” [R. Bradley]
Note the two different meanings: growth versus improve
Demographers claim that population growth is reversing but that does not mean society can’t improve. Designing “degrowth” is a fool’s errand. Designing “improvement” is best left to individuals. “Degrowth” of government and non-government “elitists” would be improvement.
Lets all work toward degrowing the UN. Hopefully Trump will renew his efforts in that regard.
Just label it what it is – fascism. The state controls everything and individuals simply do not matter. Too bad if you have to adjust your standards downward. You don’t matter.
A standstill society of consumption (NonGrowth (is a society in which there is no room for personal advancement without removing the advancement of someone who has already achieved it. It’s a society in which opportunity, not just wages and prices, are controlled.
But there is not equality of lifestyle or consumption, as human labor is not valued or rewarded equally as all labor doesn’t require the same preparation, personal investment or effort. We know that: incentives (additional resources) must exist to create a doctor or tech entrepreneur vs a streetsweeper. But since “more” can be gained, but “more” can’t be attained in a gross stable, NoGrowth, society, who gets the opportunity has to be controlled.
A Degrowth Society means businesses shut down. (Even a No-growth Society means businesses shutdown: we’re then just replacing, repairing, upgrading what we already have. We don’t need many home builders or car or furniture manufacturers.) And then people lose well paid jobs. There’s essentially no “profit” in the system. The efficiency of scale only comes through capturing existing businesses, and putting people out of their jobs.
We’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. And since our Western worlds (at least) are on a treadmill of deficit financing, ie spending tomorrow’s money today, without growth there is no excess money tomorrow to pay our existing debts. Think what happens to an individual who decides to pay his debts: his immediate “tomorrow” is a reduced lifestyle of today – which is experienced as “Degrowth”.
The Great Depression was a time of Degrowth. How was that?
Here’s the lowdown on the planetary boundaries notion
https://rclutz.com/2023/09/17/dont-buy-planetary-boundaries-hype/
Ocean Acidification is one of those bogus fake expressions designed to scare.
Compart that to we are reducing the alkalinity of the ocean.
From Jaws: “You yell barracuda, everybody says, ‘Huh? What? ‘ You yell shark, we’ve got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July.”
Change from a pH of 8.5 to a pH of 83. is not acidification, it is a reduction of alkalinity.
Changing from a pH of 7.0 to a pH of 6.9 is acidification..
Should the ph of 83 be 8.3? lol
And it isn’t happening anyway.
Here is a compendium of all ocean surface pH readings since 1900
If anything there is a very slight upward trend. ie becoming more CAUSTIC.
And they get the “safe operating range” of CO2 totally wrong.
“Safe range” is probably ABOVE 350ppm !! And even more is better.
Enhanced CO2 also enhances biodiversity..
Other “boundaries” are also a load of hogwash.
Extinctions??? Name one in the last 20 years apart from a rat washed off a tropical sandbar….
The atmosphere has plenty of nitrogen, Nitrogen is almost as necessary as CO2 for feeding the world’s population.
Human growth rate has been slowing for decades now that families are realizing that most of their children are surviving. The world population is expected to peak in the 2080s.
its going to peak in 2040, by 2080 there will be 1/2 as many people as now
That’s not the reason chief.
Birth rate, yes, but not growth rate. As more kids survive and reproduce, population increases.
The illegal immigrants and islamist invaders into UK, EU and USA still have to reproduce enough to eventually take over.
False it is their increased standard of living is why birth rate declines.
One fundamental issue which affects everyone is ‘efficiency’.
Not only is the production of energy, from any source, fundamental to our survival, prosperity and well-being, but also both the efficiency with which produce that energy, and the efficiency with which we use that energy.
An extreme example of inefficient use of energy is spending a trillion dollars building homes, factories, power stations, roads and hospitals, then another trillion dollars destroying all those structures during a conflict or war.
In this example, we have thrown 2 trillion dollars down the drain, not to mention the loss of life on which it is difficult to put an economic value. How stupid!
However, there are numerous examples in daily life, of inefficient and wasteful use of energy. I’ll just give one example, otherwise my post would be very long.
1. Total sports market revenue worldwide.
In 2022, the industry’s revenue amounted to over 403 billion U.S. dollars and was expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 9.13 percent between 2022 and 2028. By 2028, the global sports market was expected to be worth over 680 billion U.S. dollars.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/370560/worldwide-sports-market-revenue/
I’m not sure these figures of over 400 billion include golf, which is estimated to have had a market value of US$ 8.5 billion in 2022, and continues to rise.
https://www.skyquestt.com/report/golf-club-market
In other words, modern societies spend hundreds of billions of dollars, annually, to see who can run faster, swim faster, kick a ball through two posts, jump higher than a monkey, hit a little white ball into a small hole on a green, and so on and on. What a waste of energy!
Not a total waste, but still wasteful. It is entertainment.
panem et circenses
Let’s all take up knitting!
or let’s gather in communities to work together in the forests, to remove the litter, and reduce the risk of fire, instead of sitting down, doing nothing, and watching silly people fighting each other for the purpose of kicking a ball through two posts.
“Remember Paul Ehrlich?”
Yes,
at first with horror; … now with hate & disdain !!
A long time ago, independent of the Population Bomb, I was mulling over the definition of a strong economy needing x% growth versus x% inflation. De-growth is not needed. Balance.
Oh, and my conclusion, but having 2% (or whatever) growth, meant 2% higher wages, meant a larger infusion of tax dollars.
A congressman a number of years ago declared that they knew how better to spend our money than we did.
Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
Existence as you know it is over.
You will have nothing and you will be happy.
Or else.
But they are losing. You are seeing a dying Regime that is not as smart as the dying Soviets were.
They will, imo, unleash a naked violence on the population and they will get their bowel movements pushed in by the people.
They aren’t smart enough to end it peacefully (like the Soviets did) so they will end it in fire. At the end, they will lose.
“The core of the degrowth argument is the historical fact that economic growth and emissions are inexorably connected (…)
Quite an assertion, but is this really an historical fact? If a non-alcoholic beer contains 0.5% alcohol, does an atmosphere that contains 0.04% of CO2 qualify as non-carbon? Can such a small quantity of CO2 have a major effect on temperature? I get that CO2 molecules deflect and therefore retard some portion of the earth’s heat radiating back into space, but can such small quantities really make a significant difference?
At it’s basic this os a anti-human death cult.
They hate themselves due to their many insecurities and thus they hate humans.
Read the books of the “hot” philosopher of the WEF Harari.
In his books he, for example, blames humans for destroying Neanderthals, and sees it as our flaw, thus the need arises to simply get rid of all of us, because we are so, so “bad”. Midwit, nitwit, surrounded by morons. This is who rules over us.
Death cults in history usually just deleted themselves, mostly by not reproducing.
This isn’t a new thought. This is about 1000 years old train of thought(or more). Somewhere in some people their psyche goes all wrong and they start hating themselves. Then they come up with a death cult.
What’s dangerous about this, cureent iteration is that it is indeed global and it holds a lot of power. It is coming from the elitist midwits at the top.
That happened in the Amazonian civilization once and we all know how it ended.
The thing that gives me lots of hope is that, today, many many regular people are “in the known”. That is also very different from the historical norm.
People are awake to the existence of the death cult in the highest echelons of power. They call them Satanists and evil. I guess it’s a good description in some manner and definitely a better one than just ignoring them, or worse, going along with the cult.
I think the cult is dying though, I think they are panicking now. Still a dangerous thing but it shows that not much seems to be going their way now.
I unfortunately don’t see a peaceful solution to this.