121–130 of 139 posts
"Degrowth" is unlikely to ever happen. It just isn't popular. And people against things like combating climate change tend to use degrowthers as a useful tool to win arguments. "Deprofiting" would be much more likely to have a chance.
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Right. Since renters usually pay the electric bill, what incentive is there for landlords to help tenants save on utilities?
Considering how rough renters are on property there is never an incentive to make things nicer than they have to be. High density housing is never going to be a good candidate for solar anyway. Not enough surface area.
Some renters are rough on property, but many renters are not and look after the property the best they can, considering they are generally forbidden from doing any proper improvements or maintenance.
After all, many renters don't want to keep moving (and are not renting by choice), especially if they have children in school or a job nearby, so they have reason to look after the property they are in for as long as they can stay.
"Degrowth" is unlikely to ever happen. It just isn't popular. And people against things like combating climate change tend to use degrowthers as a useful tool to win arguments. "Deprofiting" would be much more likely to have a chance.
Seems like to me that profit has only accelerated in the last 2 years. Not sure how we have any control over that...... because people are voting with their purchases and purchases are extremely high.
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Why do you think farming is a linear game? What makes you think it’s impossible to get food from other sources that we didn’t invent yet and would probably not even call “farming”?
I think it's easier for the concept of farming to evolve as technology advances, than the production of food not being called farming anymore. Food made in labs could be considered farming, yeast cultures like the ones in Asimov's Foundation could too. As the sibling comment mentions, only things like Star Trek's replicator could be considered beyond farming, as you're using the same pool of resources used to other a…
Why are you so sure that your current speculations would have any sense 200 years from now when some agricultural breakthrough happens. The one we can't even dream about today.
And this is the pattern that has been happening all the time through humankind history.
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Do you know about the "The Turkey Fallacy" ? "the story of a turkey who is fed by the farmer every morning for 1,000 days. Eventually the turkey comes to expect that every visit from the farmer means more good food. After all, that’s all that has ever happened so the turkey figures that’s all that can and will ever happen. But then Day 1,001 arrives. It’s two days before Thanksgiving and when the farmer shows up, he…
luckily we control our own destiny unlike said turkey. Pretty paternalistic to compare people to pets. Quality of life has improved because of our actions, not the hand of some farmer. This is the same line of thinking as the famous "what happened to all the horses" thought which conveniently ignores the fact that horses only existed to serve as tools for people and were therefore replaced when a more useful tool was…
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luckily we control our own destiny unlike said turkey. Pretty paternalistic to compare people to pets. Quality of life has improved because of our actions, not the hand of some farmer. This is the same line of thinking as the famous "what happened to all the horses" thought which conveniently ignores the fact that horses only existed to serve as tools for people and were therefore replaced when a more useful tool was…
Do we really control our own destiny? If so, why in so many places are we creating such terrible conditions for our future?
> why in so many places are we creating such terrible conditions for our future?
Because many people have bad discount rates so they sacrifice future welfare for current welfare. Externalities are also extremely difficult to get people to internalize.
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I think it's easier for the concept of farming to evolve as technology advances, than the production of food not being called farming anymore. Food made in labs could be considered farming, yeast cultures like the ones in Asimov's Foundation could too. As the sibling comment mentions, only things like Star Trek's replicator could be considered beyond farming, as you're using the same pool of resources used to other a…
>> I think it's easier for the concept of farming to evolve as technology advances, than the production of food not being called farming anymore Why are you so sure that your current speculations would have any sense 200 years from now when some agricultural breakthrough happens. The one we can't even dream about today. And this is the pattern that has been happening all the time through humankind history.
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>> I think it's easier for the concept of farming to evolve as technology advances, than the production of food not being called farming anymore Why are you so sure that your current speculations would have any sense 200 years from now when some agricultural breakthrough happens. The one we can't even dream about today. And this is the pattern that has been happening all the time through humankind history.
I'm just speculating that mass production of food will still be considered farming in the future, but you're right, I can't know.
"Very few people know how to build/grow anything end to end. Consumerism appears to be the only way to live in the West right now (with it, a shared feeling of powerlessness)." I recommend you read the Unabomber manifesto. It's much the same sentiment. And I don't mean it in a reductio ad hitlerum type of way. I've read the thing and hey, the motivational part of it is reasonable. It's not wrong. It makes sense. However, the conclusion I draw is that we need to acquiesce to the fact that complex, (seemingly?) fragile systems built on increasing specialization make us uncomfortable, and do them anyway; in practice, they work much better.
"degrowth seems like our only way out" Degrowth is not a way out. We know very well how humanity functions in the low-growth conditions; when the pie is fixed or growing only slowly, whatever it is, one's only way to improve one's lot is at the expense of someone else. That doesn't tend towards communitarian utopia - that tends towards things like feudalism - the way to improve your lot is to get more land, and you will never give up the land you have voluntarily because there's no growth, so there's nothing better to be had in exchange. So the only way to get more productive assets is to take them from someone.
"Is believing technology will save us from climate collapse really that, a belief? Believing this would mean society should keep doing its thing for a tiny tiny chance of getting a free "get out of jail" card (i.e. decoupling is not a fable after all)." Is believing in "climate collapse" really that, a belief? "The largest impact of climate change is that it could wipe off up to 18% of GDP off the worldwide economy by 2050 if global temperatures rise by 3.2°C, the Swiss Re Institute warns." IFCC numbers are even lower although the ones I could find claim they might be an understatement. World GDP has recently been growing by 2.5-3.3% a year. So, if it went down 18% from current values, we'd be all the way back to the apocalyptic hellscape of about 2015.
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But my question still stands. Can we have infinitely growing economy if we make the real world part of it increasingly small? We managed to reduce food production from something like 90% of the economy to 5%, industry to 15%. Maybe at some point all of non-virtual part will be like 1% of our total economy?
It's theoretically possible, the question is who would want to live in that world? What you're asking is more of a sci-fi question that anything pertinent to our current set of problems. Profit motives need to be re-oriented to account for biospheric damage. Right now it doesn't matter what you're doing as long as it is legal and making profits by extracting natural resources as quickly as possible in order to conver…
I completely agree with that. I think markets should be informed of the total cost of their activity through taxation of resources (like energy, metals and such) and damaging activity (like manufactureing of plastic bottles and other things that become the problem at their end of life or CO2 emissions).