Literally just that, I am tired of hearing about how China is doing green development. I really wanna hear some degrowth voices because I personally don’t think drowning in consumer goods is a way I want to imagine a better life.
Some Upstream episodes touch on that, specifically the ones with Jason Hickel
But also I want to note that the development of the underdeveloped world is necessary for equitable degrowth. You can’t build communism without the development of the means of production
That’s true however America doesn’t need that and Americans fucking want even more, there’s something sickening in American mindset that they have essentially eaten the world yet want more and now drool over China because it can save them from consequences of having eaten the world without reducing their consumption.
you have to build transit and infrastructure to take cars off the road, we can’t magically move into dense urban housing that either doesn’t exist or is being hoarded so nobody can afford it. degrowth doesn’t mean you don’t make anything while degrowthing.
You’re getting me wrong, I don’t mean infrastructure or housing. I mean consumer goods, more and more chips, more and more computers, more than ever needed. Useless gadgets.
ah, that’s fair.
unless there’s another leap in efficiency we’re past the point of replacing a pentium 2 with new compute that’s more capable and uses less electricity.
I have terrible news for you: we are in fact surrounded by tons of devices running Windows CE on ancient x86 processors.
ATMs, cash registers, SCADA systems… Every city has a bunch of old-ass infrastructure running on 90s embedded PCs.
To solve this you have to abolish capitalism. We can quibble over the need to pathologize Americans, but the important point is that this so-called pathology simply reflects the logic of value production and capitalism more broadly.
Capitalism is essentially the production of surplus-value. This can never ever change so long as we have capitalism. Degrowth is incompatible with the requirement to expand value. Our relationship with nature is extremely fucked (obviously) and the only way to fix that is with careful, conscious management and wind-down of the global economy. That is possible only in a society capable of conscious and planned economy, an economy designed for production of use-value instead of value, and that necessarily means socialism.
It should also not be forgotten that the world economy is predicated on the US as a major consumer of the exports which other countries, including China, rely upon to drive their own economies. Making matters worse is not only must all countries increase value over time, they need much of that value in the form of US Dollars. The world economy is not ready for a disruption in the flow of US Dollars.
thats fair, most of i’ve seen has been congisant of the things you are saying
I mean, I don’t think anyone disagrees in principle, but isn’t a prerequisite for de-growth to have world socialism? With the threat of capitalist regimes, there is a very material need to industrialize above them for a plethora of reasons. Socialists don’t defend consumerism in principle, it’s just that the current pragmatic way to world socialism and eventual degrowth passes through socialism dethroning capitalism, which normally implies higher productive capabilities (and therefore consumption).
you could liberalism your way to something resembling degrowth in some sectors. making fewer goods at a higher quality and price is still making less shit, somebody might try to do that at a national economy level to save capitalism for a few years.
that’s probably also not something OP is interested in since it’s just yachtification of mundane goods.
Hypothetically possible for a few sectors, but tbh I’ll believe it when I see it, the trend I see more often than not is enshittification and planned obsolescence. One of the few sectors where longevity actually increases is, funnily enough, renewables. LiFePo batteries are fucking awesome for self-sufficiency and feature incredible longevity
Is that part of the fantasy of solar punk? Like I have no particular answer but I feel like less wrong’s episodes on library socialism are headed in that direction
Cultures of energy kinda touches on that, if you can get past the fact that the hosts are tenured liberal academics
That’s why I wanted leftist people, most of the people talking about degrowth are liberal academics who just can’t imagine anything beyond the market.
John Bellamy Foster is on YouTube. I don’t think he is a degrowther, but he is essential reading / listening if you are interested in this stuff. He advocates for an “environmental proletariat” and the need to view socialism as an environmental movement on equal footing with the labor question
Interesting, thanks!
They are leftists-ish, more akin to radlibs
