Also, from this post but also our own conversations, I think a basic argument you’re making is:
“Degrowth” is a fundamentally unstable coalition between two ideological currents.
Team anti-GDP wants abundance, less work. They’ve confused the metric (GDP) for the thing it is meant to measure. Many of their critics of the GDP metric are fine, but fundamentally they’re putting radical chic on boring old productivity faith, redistribution, and better technocratic accounting of what “true” growth is. They want growth, just not the kind we have now.
The other faction, the true anti growthers, want to make things worse for humanity. Get rid of things that make people happy. Malthusianism. Less resources, overall less wellbeing. we’ll try to militate a bit maybe with better practices, but fundamentally humans flourishing now is unconscionable theft from the future.
The same person might flit from arguments of faction A and B. They aren’t necessarily factions as in organized groups as much as two very different arguments. They use similar terms but are arguing for contradictory things.
Just as water is pure and earth is fecund, so too could we have two relatively clear (if with varying feasibility) arguments existing. We don’t live in that world. We live in the mud of those two things entwined. Impossible to separate in practice and therefore in the process making us all dirtier.
The sludge of bad, contradictory, impossible arguments make this group of people so infuriating to engage.
I can definitely see that being true. I think the left in general is at a crossroads between your two teams. I would say degrowthers are more like 30% team anti-GDP and 70% team make things worse. My take is a lot of team make things worse *believes* they will make the world better by taking things away from people. You can see this in degrowth's fascination with banning advertising.
That sounds right. But I think the anti advertising thing is actually important.
If your program calls for less production -- fewer goods, possibly fewer services -- how do you square that with “people being okay with that?” Well, you have to reduce their *desire* for goods and services. And therefore advertising takes on a totemic importance. If you believe that people are bamboozled by ads into desiring _stuff_, then you can head off a revolt by removing that bamboozlement.
A degrowth agenda that doesn’t bad advertising has to reckon with the fact that their agenda is unpopular. And they don’t want that.
i think that's a correct description of their thinking but i also think it's an error to think that you could smooth over a large gdp decline just by banning advertising
In your next post, will you talk about the factions in degrowthers? Feels like there’s a bait and switch there that could be explained by different groups under the same banner
Also, from this post but also our own conversations, I think a basic argument you’re making is:
“Degrowth” is a fundamentally unstable coalition between two ideological currents.
Team anti-GDP wants abundance, less work. They’ve confused the metric (GDP) for the thing it is meant to measure. Many of their critics of the GDP metric are fine, but fundamentally they’re putting radical chic on boring old productivity faith, redistribution, and better technocratic accounting of what “true” growth is. They want growth, just not the kind we have now.
The other faction, the true anti growthers, want to make things worse for humanity. Get rid of things that make people happy. Malthusianism. Less resources, overall less wellbeing. we’ll try to militate a bit maybe with better practices, but fundamentally humans flourishing now is unconscionable theft from the future.
The same person might flit from arguments of faction A and B. They aren’t necessarily factions as in organized groups as much as two very different arguments. They use similar terms but are arguing for contradictory things.
Just as water is pure and earth is fecund, so too could we have two relatively clear (if with varying feasibility) arguments existing. We don’t live in that world. We live in the mud of those two things entwined. Impossible to separate in practice and therefore in the process making us all dirtier.
The sludge of bad, contradictory, impossible arguments make this group of people so infuriating to engage.
I can definitely see that being true. I think the left in general is at a crossroads between your two teams. I would say degrowthers are more like 30% team anti-GDP and 70% team make things worse. My take is a lot of team make things worse *believes* they will make the world better by taking things away from people. You can see this in degrowth's fascination with banning advertising.
That sounds right. But I think the anti advertising thing is actually important.
If your program calls for less production -- fewer goods, possibly fewer services -- how do you square that with “people being okay with that?” Well, you have to reduce their *desire* for goods and services. And therefore advertising takes on a totemic importance. If you believe that people are bamboozled by ads into desiring _stuff_, then you can head off a revolt by removing that bamboozlement.
A degrowth agenda that doesn’t bad advertising has to reckon with the fact that their agenda is unpopular. And they don’t want that.
i think that's a correct description of their thinking but i also think it's an error to think that you could smooth over a large gdp decline just by banning advertising
Well yeah, I agree with you there
That UBI quote is killer.
In your next post, will you talk about the factions in degrowthers? Feels like there’s a bait and switch there that could be explained by different groups under the same banner