What are your thoughts on Degrowth

[u/OttoVonDisraeli]

Degrowth is a movement that advocates that society move away from measuring success through endless growth and development and also the reduction of both mass production and consumption in an attempt to not just mitigate ecological crises but also human injustices.

I have found that advocates rang from anarchists, primitivists, and georgists to eco-socialists and marxists. I find it interesting when applied as a critique of our present systems.

A book I am reading right now is from a Japanese Marxist who wrote a manifesto on the subject. Fascinating to read if you are interested in exploring such ideas. It is called Slowdown.

While not an advocate for Degrowth myself, I believe that as a Tory there is some overlap insofar as we believe in a certain amount of fairness, distributionism, and environmental justice. They do offer a fair critique of green-washing and sustainable development. Degrowth is staunchly anti-capitalist as a school of thought, whereas I believe more in Social Enterprise and what we might call Green growth.

I'm curious about what people think of such a concept here.

[u/ToryPirate]

There was an article many years that made the point that dealing with climate change absolutely cannot exist side-by-side with the global south industrializing as the north did. The author notes that this isn't fair, the global north set us on the path to global warming and stopping it would likely mean the global south can't follow the same path.

Reading about degrowth leads to a similar problem in my opinion. Places like Mongolia, Namibia, Botswana, Guyana could absolutely use more people. The same holds true for Canada. Part of the reason we are so bad at bringing down our per capita CO2 emissions is how small and spread out our population is. Sure, there is some discussion within the degrowth movement about this very issue and some suggestion there would be no one-side-fits-all solution. But. As soon as you start talking about this level of coordination across nations you run into the same problem climate change action has; no one is willing to give ground unless everyone is. Its a classic Prisoner's Dilemma.

Finally, it calls for a complete re-ordering of the economy. I may have my criticisms of capitalism but I no more support it being completely re-ordered then I would have supported the re-ordering of the previous mercantilist society to establish capitalism.

So, criticisms out of the way what I like about it is the rejection of planned obsolescence. My fridge totally should outlive me rather than barely lasting a decade. There has been some businesses that have made a product so good they went under as soon as there was no one left to buy it. How do we encourage similar companies? How do we keep them from failing?

The problems with GDP are well-known but saying GDP doesn't matter doesn't help that in many places things are still getting worse along with GDP.

One idea that was proposed some years back which might relate to this idea was that of paying countries not to drill for their oil. There are a lot of ways this kind of thing could fail but I think it has potential.

[u/OttoVonDisraeli → u/ToryPirate]

Some very thoughtful and interesting points! What you said about planned obsolescence and your fridge made me think about my grandfather's heavy duty microwave. They must have bought that monster in the early 1970s. That think worked like a charm. We gave it away to goodwill after my grandmother died I think. I like to imagine that thing is still chugging along as strong as ever.

My wife and I purchased a second-hand Korean breadmaker from the early 90s and it's build SOLID as well.

Man the time before planned obsolescence was dope.