71–80 of 114 posts
"Practically, this would also require an increase in free public services; people won’t have to make as much money if they don’t have to spend on healthcare, housing, education, and transportation. Some degrowthers also call for a universal income to compensate for a shorter work week." How about we just give every person a billion dollars? Then no one would have to work, and they could invest their excess cash in th…
Why not commit suicide then? Serious question I'm wondering what their rationalization is.
Even though this is the most misanthropic comment I've ever seen on HN and I'm appalled you would consider writing it, I'll play along! Killing the only people advocating for their movement would make the movement very unlikely to succeed.
a.k.a. Please don't feed the trolls.
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Even though this is the most misanthropic comment I've ever seen on HN and I'm appalled you would consider writing it, I'll play along! Killing the only people advocating for their movement would make the movement very unlikely to succeed.
Eh, I agree with the OP. Suicide is the only rational choice for the dyed in the wool environmentalist.
Why not commit suicide then? Serious question I'm wondering what their rationalization is.
What's stopping them? There's tons of empty land in the world. Go find a stream in the forest and live a sustenance-level life. Oh, they want everyone else to be miserable too.
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> you have to decouple economic growth from increased consumption of natural resources Hasn't technology generally been heading in this direction? It seems we are constantly doing more with less. If it keeps up, and we slowdown procreation, I see no reason why it won't drive resource usage down long term. I mean, I completely disagree with the premise that we must consume non-renewable resources to generate wealth, b…
> Hasn't technology generally been heading in this direction? It seems we are constantly doing more with less Actually no, we haven't and we don't. Carbon emissions are still growing. Classic mistake: You're confusing relative and absolute reductions. We have reduced relative ecological impact a lot, but overall impact has been growing along the way.
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.
Would be great, but human nature is to want more stuff, money and power. On the upside, many "new" sectors don't use natural resources, except human time. E.g. writing blog posts, social media management, doing marketing campaigns for Gucci. Growth in those sectors should be (mostly) easy on the planet.
I wonder to what extent this is a feature of capitalism (or class society in general) rather than human nature.
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> you have to decouple economic growth from increased consumption of natural resources Hasn't technology generally been heading in this direction? It seems we are constantly doing more with less. If it keeps up, and we slowdown procreation, I see no reason why it won't drive resource usage down long term. I mean, I completely disagree with the premise that we must consume non-renewable resources to generate wealth, b…
One way technology can really decrease consumption is by turning humans to machines. If you are essentially a CPU, your energy consumption would likely be very low yet your computational power and lifespan could be much higher. This way earth could support a much higher quantity of "humans", being mostly electric, it could even leave the confinements of earth, this way freeing earth. The only challenge left is to mai…