The degrowth movement wants to intentionally shrink the economy • Hacker News Board

Re: The degrowth movement wants to intentionally shrink the economy

#111

Post by derrick_jensen » Sat, Jun 01, 2019, 7:36 PM UTC

lm28469 wrote: post #54

derrick_jensen wrote: post #18

For a while, I was pretty sold on anarcho-primitivism as a concept (Derrick Jensen is a prominent figure in that sphere), but it is pretty deluded to think that quality of life would increase and life would be cushy and comfortable.

What improvements in quality of life do we really _need_ though? In first world countries we're so comfy and everything is so convenient that the leading causes of death are due to eating too much and not moving enough. That's pretty ironic if you ask me. We don't have to go back to living in caves and eating raw animals of course. But I don't see how slowing down would decrease our quality of life. There is no limit…

It is more about spreading the wealth to the people who actually need it instead of focusing on consumerist nonsense in a first world bubble

Re: The degrowth movement wants to intentionally shrink the economy

#112

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sun, Jun 02, 2019, 1:36 AM UTC

Mirioron wrote: post #99

lpcam33 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could work if the promise was to give people time instead of a 9 to 5 shitty job, and assuring equality through a Universal Basic Income. That income could be financed with taxes on externalities. Taxing externalities would also benefit the local and more sustainable economy with more decent jobs.

Maybe this would work in the future, but probably not in our lifetime. Paying $12k a year to every American would already cost about as much (more?) as the US collects in taxes.

Because a UBI is cash, the accounting is a little weird. If you pay $10k "more" in taxes but then receive a $12k UBI, has this cost you money?

Outside of some nominal administrative cost in cutting the checks it doesn't "cost" anything on net, it just moves money around. Of course, the above-median person paying $14k in taxes but only receiving $12k back has lost $2k on a personal level, and that's really the cost to be calculated -- the reduction in incentive caused by the tax.

But if you use the model where the UBI replaces existing social assistance programs, marginal tax rates wouldn't be that different than they are now, and the marginal rates on lower income people would be lower when you account for the marginal losses they currently suffer to phase outs of existing means-tested benefits.

Re: The degrowth movement wants to intentionally shrink the economy

#113

Post by zwkrt » Sun, Jun 02, 2019, 6:38 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #73

shstalwart wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I agree with the OP. Suicide is the only rational choice for the dyed in the wool environmentalist.

Posting like this will get you banned here. Please don't. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Thank you

Re: The degrowth movement wants to intentionally shrink the economy

#114

Post by dwaltrip » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 11:11 PM UTC

rebuilder wrote: post #56

dwaltrip wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The universe, heck even the solar system, is pretty big...

At e.g. 2.3% yearly growth in energy usage, humanity would use the sun's entire output in roughly 1400 years time and the entire galaxy's energy output in about 2400 years.[1] I'm all for space exploration and colonization, but I'm sceptical it can solve the growth problem. I mean, what happens on Earth? Edit: 1: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/

Fair enough. That's quicker than I would have guessed, but exponentials are pretty powerful.

If the growth is 1%, then we are good for ~3000 years, even in just our solar system. A tenth of a percent would give us ~30k years in the solar system.

Although, very very low growth would last quite some time on the galactic scale. A hundredth of a percent would give us more than 500k years to reach galactic energy levels. Which may actually be realistic given the difficulties of interstellar travel and cosmic scale engineering.

But yes, it seems that in the next few tens of thousands of years, barring an Earth-shattering revolution in our understanding of energy, we will likely have to learn to live in something much closer to a steady-state system, at least in this solar system.

And even such a paradigm shift would just push out the deadline. But I do think such nitty gritty details of when and how the ceiling is hit will effect how things play out.