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The Case for Degrowth

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Re: The Case for Degrowth

#81

Post by neilwilson »

roflyear wrote: post #65
thematrixturtle wrote: post #51

Japan is a living case study of degrowth: GDP has been essentially flat for the past 20 years. The scale below exaggerates small shifts, but it was $4968B in 2000 and $4937B in 2020. https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/gdp On the ground, this has translated into flat or deflating prices (until very recently) and an increasing bifurcation of society into salarymen, with low but stable incomes anchored on jobs-almost-fo…

There is an obvious way out. Increase immigration. The US does this well. Why doesn't Japan? Because of racism and xenophobia. No one talks about it (wouldn't be surprised if I got downvoted for mentioning it) but Japan is mad racist. They do not like foreigners.

Immigration is just colonial appropriation. It's the solution proposed by city dwellers who think we should live 50 deep in a square mile of massive cities - generally an upper middle class who seem to believe they should have constant access to cheap servants they don't have to personally house and look after.

Japan already has massive cities. It doesn't work.

We need economics that doesn't assume you can always go around the world taking other nations resources - including the people they have schooled and trained to provide for their own population.

Re: The Case for Degrowth

#82

Post by scythe »

> by slowly and reluctantly altering the traditional society, like the Chinese?’

No need to have some kind of "cultural revolution"?

>Endless growth – green or not

These arguments are all the same. They take the current rate of growth, plug in a time period longer than has elapsed since the death of vitalism as a theory of life (an idea which, today, is laughable to consider), and conclude that we need to stop growing immediately.

Obviously we have to stop growing at some point. The Sun produces a finite amount of power [1], the density of the Universe is very low, etc.

Why now? The eco-pessimists never answer this question, and that is because right now is the wrong time to stop growing. This article does not attempt to address it at all, but flings a few symbols around to put on the air of rigor. Bonus points for somehow managing to use the word "decolonise". At the current rate of growth, the right time would probably be in about 150 years. But the rate of growth has actually been slowing down over the last century, and will likely continue to gradually slow, as scientific discoveries continue to become more difficult. Taking that into account, the end of growth is probably half a millenium out, supposing a huge war or other disaster doesn't set us back.

I suspect the real reason people want to advocate for the end of growth now is because everyone wants to be a revolutionary; everyone wants to make the kind of great, world-shaking advancement that Einstein or Fleming or Borlaug did. To admit that while we probably have to stop growing, it won't be for a long time — that would be sort of dull. You can't sell books about it.

1: Energy per unit time.

Re: The Case for Degrowth

#83

Post by thfuran »

germinalphrase wrote: post #78
Manuel_D wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Video games and Netflix are among the least environmentally impactful forms of entertainment. They use far less land and resources than, say, golf or most sports.

Having worked on film sets, they are incredibly wasteful.

A movie can provide tens of millions person-hours of entertainment. How much resources do other forms of entertainment waste at that scale?

Re: The Case for Degrowth

#84

Post by Manuel_D »

germinalphrase wrote: post #78
Manuel_D wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Video games and Netflix are among the least environmentally impactful forms of entertainment. They use far less land and resources than, say, golf or most sports.

Having worked on film sets, they are incredibly wasteful.

Compared to a golf course? Compared to how ever many golf courses are necessary to serve as many entertainment-hours as a movie?

Re: The Case for Degrowth

#85

Post by roflyear »

neilwilson wrote: post #81
roflyear wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an obvious way out. Increase immigration. The US does this well. Why doesn't Japan? Because of racism and xenophobia. No one talks about it (wouldn't be surprised if I got downvoted for mentioning it) but Japan is mad racist. They do not like foreigners.

Immigration is just colonial appropriation. It's the solution proposed by city dwellers who think we should live 50 deep in a square mile of massive cities - generally an upper middle class who seem to believe they should have constant access to cheap servants they don't have to personally house and look after. Japan already has massive cities. It doesn't work. We need economics that doesn't assume you can always go…

If Japan wants to keep their systems running they need immigration. Or they will have to drastically alter their lifestyles.

Re: The Case for Degrowth

#86

Post by skyfaller »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #69
roflyear wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an obvious way out. Increase immigration. The US does this well. Why doesn't Japan? Because of racism and xenophobia. No one talks about it (wouldn't be surprised if I got downvoted for mentioning it) but Japan is mad racist. They do not like foreigners.

This would seem to be only a temporary local solution. Once world population stabilizes or starts shrinking, you can only increase population by exporting the problem to somebody else.

"Good news"! Due to the climate crisis, large sections of the globe are likely to become uninhabitable, so even if world population declines, there will be an influx of refugees into habitable locations. In other words, local population density could easily increase worldwide even if there are fewer people overall.

Re: The Case for Degrowth

#87

Post by roflyear »

Ygg2 wrote: post #76
roflyear wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an obvious way out. Increase immigration. The US does this well. Why doesn't Japan? Because of racism and xenophobia. No one talks about it (wouldn't be surprised if I got downvoted for mentioning it) but Japan is mad racist. They do not like foreigners.

As another poster has noted, that's not a solution, that's just exporting problem to another country. What happens when due to immigration or rising standards the immigration tap runs dry?

It's the only thing that works. Otherwise you have to change how you do everything. Much harder.

Re: The Case for Degrowth

#88

Post by Fatnino »

skyfaller wrote: post #86
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would seem to be only a temporary local solution. Once world population stabilizes or starts shrinking, you can only increase population by exporting the problem to somebody else.

"Good news"! Due to the climate crisis, large sections of the globe are likely to become uninhabitable, so even if world population declines, there will be an influx of refugees into habitable locations. In other words, local population density could easily increase worldwide even if there are fewer people overall.

Or Japan could itself sink into the sea and skip the step of moving people into the newly depopulated islands.

Re: The Case for Degrowth

#89

Post by cryptonector »

sega_sai wrote: post #23

It's certainly a thought provoking piece. I'm wondering how stable the system is if all countries decide to degrowth, but one doesn't play ball. Naively you'd think that country would start to dominate economically/politically, so others may have to 'defect' as well... But maybe that's too simplistic.

> ...if all countries decide to degrowth, ...

Countries don't decide to degrowth -- people are certainly not willing, right now, to make such decisions. Other people make those decisions and force them on people.

> but one doesn't play ball.

And why wouldn't some country play ball, if not because it's better for it to keep growing and take advantage of other countries' partial suicides?

All of this is premised on there being a current, extreme urgency for degrowth. The debates on that are hardly settled.

Re: The Case for Degrowth

#90

Post by walleeee »

roflyear wrote: post #85
neilwilson wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Immigration is just colonial appropriation. It's the solution proposed by city dwellers who think we should live 50 deep in a square mile of massive cities - generally an upper middle class who seem to believe they should have constant access to cheap servants they don't have to personally house and look after. Japan already has massive cities. It doesn't work. We need economics that doesn't assume you can always go…

If Japan wants to keep their systems running they need immigration. Or they will have to drastically alter their lifestyles.

We will all have to drastically alter our lifestyles and the longer we wait the harder it'll be
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