6 ms·
Seems to me that economic inequality would be the best facilitator of de-growth. If you could send the entire middle class into poverty ASAP, you could maximize
by zsz 5y ago
Seems to me that economic inequality would be the best facilitator of de-growth. If you could send the entire middle class into poverty ASAP, you could maximize de-growth overnight. Add a few draconian rules here and there, re-introduce good old rule of man principles, along with public executions to keep the upstarts in check, and you can have yourself a semi-permanent utopia of de-growth.
Take for example North Korea (among the most advanced places in the world right now, in terms of comprehensive de-growth policies): with their ~540 kWh electricity consumption and just .71t CO2 per capita emission (compared to USA: 11.8 MWh and 15.12t CO2), they are experts in the field of de-growth that all other modern societies should endeavor to emulate.
- mrtesthah 5y agoThe goal is to decrease the size of the economy while simultaneously increasing the quality of life for the majority of people on the planet. Most people already work in useless jobs (e.g., marketing, administration, etc.), and a shutdown of most extractive industries would give people substantially more free time. We can thank capitalism and technology for today’s high productivity level, but we need a properly functioning welfare/UBI system to take actually advantage of it, and so the global distribution of wealth will will need to change to ensure peoples’ basic needs are met. Addressing inequality is similarly important for halting the rise of political authoritarianism (as it grows in reaction to the former), which is an obstacle to all these changes.