I think Noah is talking past the degrowther point: the current highly leveraged, debt-driven system economic system requires growth or else it collapses (total

I think Noah is talking past the degrowther point: the current highly leveraged, debt-driven system economic system requires growth or else it collapses (total nominal value must be exponential, or else you get depressions). I think degrowthers would be fine if there was "natural growth" due to realized gains in efficiency, but forcing a system to "grow or else" has lots of bad consequences, including: overemphasizing consumerism over conservation, stealing from the poor to give to the rich, malinvestment at a societal scale by forcing retirees to gamble in the stock casino, cronyism and corruption at the source of the money spigot, etc.