#and i might look for sth now that goes into any possibilities for de-globalizing supply chains. if you will

[quixoticanarchy]

Ok I read a book on degrowth by jason hickel (Less is More) and I still need to read more but. preliminary thoughts:

I appreciate the quantification of by how much current resource and energy consumption overshoots sustainable limits, and the excoriation of the absurd demand for compound growth on a finite planet; and the book has a decent history of capitalism and the violence and dispossession it rests upon. There is some similar quantification for how proposed degrowth measures would affect resource consumption, though (understandably) piecemeal, so it’s unclear what the full impact of these measures would be vis-à-vis climate meltdown and ecological tipping points, or on what timeline the degrowth transition would have to occur.

Degrowth measures - resource use caps, a shorter work week, basic income, healthcare, income caps, re-localizing supply chains, killing planned obsolescence, moving to a shared rather than personal ownership model for things like vehicles, etc. - are broadly “good” and have been promoted and supported outside of a specifically degrowth context already, which speaks to their appeal but also their pitfalls. Implementing all these measures and more has to carry the explicit intention of improving human and ecological welfare, GDP be damned, and has to be tied explicitly to a commitment to reducing growth and capping profits; otherwise, the trap I see is attempting to enact some of these measures while keeping the capitalist edifice intact - which, as Hickel acknowledges, would spur a new ‘fix’ in which some other domain or market is forced open for exploitation so that growth can continue.

This is obviously at odds with degrowth and it isn’t anything degrowth advocates don’t know, but it seems naïve to envision states whose existence and operation are so inextricable from capitalism being capable of doing such reforms to the degree and with the ideological shift necessary. It would be suicide. Which I’d welcome, but just saying we need to tackle corruption and have more real democracy so that governments can serve people’s actual needs does not convince me that these policies could be sincerely and radically adopted by any state that exists today.

The book seems to walk a line between “degrowth is very radical since it would require ditching the demand for economic growth and probably most of the profit motive itself, which is a huge mindset and ideological shift - if not to socialism per se then to post-capitalism” and also “degrowth isn’t that radical/outlandish since what it takes is all these commonsense reforms that people already want anyway”. Sometimes the degrowth policy package sounds a lot like just welfare-state capitalism, except with resource and energy consumption dramatically scaled back, and without the economic growth imperative. So… no longer capitalism as such, but still using many of the master’s tools to retrofit the master’s house.

In principle, a world exists in which wealthy countries consume far less and the rest of the world is freer and not (or at least less) exploited. In principle, degrowth measures could help us realize that world. Saying it’s not a revolutionary process might keep some readers from being scared off, etc, but I’m left wondering then: where does the force come from to make these changes happen? Are wealthy countries and individuals and corporations going to just agree to resource caps and wealth caps and redistribution? The argument that degrowth is a kind of decolonization and requires the demise of the colonial and capitalist view of people and nature is compelling to me, but that seems to conflict with the idea that degrowth can be implemented as a set of reforms to the systems that exist now, without the messiness of revolution and without somehow being co-opted by capitalism or packaged as ‘green growth’ (which Hickel makes clear would be bad and is bullshit). The ideological shift and end to growth is the big ask here - without that, the reforms are just rearranging deck chairs on the titanic, or maybe on the lawn of the master’s house, if you will.