The problem is that seeking growth at all costs allows the accumulation of economic and political power. The people in charge do not distinguish between personal success and a better world, and therefore see no difference between economic growth and a better world.
Where they call plutocracy democracy and democracy is basically plutocracy
It also funds everyone's retirement. People start revolting pretty quickly when they learn they get paid almost nothing and they have to rely on a magic money making machine in the stock market to live out their twilight years.
Sounds like a good argument for government pensions. Thank you, comrade!
Anything that allows people to retire and doesn't require unsustainable GDP growth I'm happy with LOL.
but what of the shareholders?
/s
This is the biggest problem with economical growth.
All the FAANG or whatever their called these days can hit 1000% growth tomorrow, and suddenly, our economical growth skyrockets.
But that doesn't mean anything for the average person. At all.
The constant need for growth really bothers me. I live in a rural area. People move here because it's natural and quiet and cost of living is low. Then they complain that there is no Target and no Chik Fila and not enough jobs. The board of supervisors is full of developers. Once they finish building out the county we will be just like every other suburban hell.
Not just the constant need for that sort of growth. In our late-stage capitalist society, companies are expected to make more profit than last year every single year. As if that is somehow sustainable.
Exactly, that is a ridiculous, anti-consumer and anti-environment standard.
Apple has made record profits of $X billion dollars this quarter. However, that is only $3 billion more than last year same quarter.
You're right, Greg. One has to wonder: will Apple be bankrupt next year?
Working for a Fortune 500 and hearing executives talk is surreal. They straight up say things like "if you're not growing, you're failing". No thought at all as to how that's supposed to work in the long run. The post-pandemic surge in profits doesn't help; companies that usually don't get 15-20% profit margins suddenly saw that, and the expectation of shareholders is that they can keep doing that forever. That's insane.
Conversely, I'm also active in my local makerspace. We've grown massively in less than 10 years, and deliberately stopped taking new members for a few months because our volunteers were getting burned out. When we reopened, we kept the new member signups intentionally limited so certain areas (woodshop, mainly) would be able to absorb turnover without driving the trainers too hard. We still have net growth, but way slower than we were before. We're far from failing, and the MBAs running Fortune 500s can go fuck themselves.
And then they will leave for a more idyllic life in the country because it's so noisy.
I'm pretty sure the large open field behind my house, which used to be full of trees, is going to be turned into another gated neighborhood full of cookie cutter houses. And I just know someone is going to be close to my back yard, and they are going to whine about my wife's chickens, especially since one of them is a rooster.
So they will piss and moan and try to make us get rid of the rooster. And then they will probably get a small dog that yaps all night.
Pasco County Florida by any chance?
No, not FL. Judging by driving around the US it's happening all over. Walmarts and apartments and McDonalds everywhere you go. Many are fairly new and right next to rural land. No sidewalks or public transportation, just sprawl into rural areas.
The constant need for growth won't go away. As long as the population grows, economic output needs to grow. All those people need food, shelter, clothing, entertainment, random crap, work, etc.
Yes, in the Western World a lot of it is a distribution problem, but even if we solved that you still can't expect the rest of the world to just settle for lower standards of living than Europe and North America. They won't. And they shouldn't.
Destroy capitalism.
Got it.
Capitalism has one positive, and that's the notion of competition leading to the best outcome as they try to win over consumers.
We've lost that though with how unfettered it's become in general. Companies merge and conspire, eliminating competition.
It's become more of a competition as to who can fool and subsequently fuck over the consumers more.
Exactly. We've let them become way too powerful. They shouldn't be able to do this.
Competition doesn't lead to innovation in improving people's lives, but company profits. See: enshittification.
I see that as a consequence of the absurd monopolies we have. The best product should be what's the most popular, and enshittification is counter to that. It tanks the product quality, and in a market with lots of competitors, it would be punished.
It is one of the consequences of monopolies, but monopolies are a consequence of economic competition.
The "winner" gets the losers stuff and customers (mergers for example), making the winner bigger and more able to manipulate the market to their benefit.
When there are few enough companies profits can be chased without consideration for anything else (planned obsolescence, shipping jobs outside the country, lay-offs, etc.)
So, like you said except in a for profit market, monopolies are inevitable.
In the absence of regulation, absolutely. If we had more stringent anti trust legislation though it might be possible to avoid.
The best product should not be what's most popular in Capitalism, what's profitable to produce is what's most profitable. With tons of competition, you just have competing levels of automation, corner cutting, and exploitation.
Competition and markets in general are the cause of enshittification.
That is a good point actually.
Yep, Marx predicted this actually. A huge portion of Marx's literature is even more relevant today than ever before.
This is how capitalism has always worked.
When companies compete, eventually some of them lose. This means they go out of business.
The remaining companies become more powerful.
That's a fair point actually. Competition can only exist if there's an influx of new companies that's roughly the number of them going out of business.
Even then though there's an issue, because the companies which have been around the longest will have all the necessary equipment, which may be really expensive.
I'm not sure how we address this, but it's clear the government needs to step in.
"Best outcome" covers for a lot. The "best" coffee is still grown in the global south and shipped using grossly polluting methods. The "best" computer will eventually be obsolete e-waste with minimal recycling value. The "best" EV is still reliant on car-centric infrastructure that is strangling cities.
What is "best" is highly variable, and competition cannot possibly cover all possibilities of what is best.
lol, pizza economics sounds much better than doughnut economics
That looks... a lot... like the Greendale Community College flag.
Billionares:
"Fuck more!"
How can we expect those lines to keep going up without a steady supply of fresh recruits for the grinder.
“Lol. Um, what.”
capitalists
If your only goal is that most people can live decently and reduce exploitation, abuse, and such, yeah, sure.
But if you just want to amass money, then, no.
A choice was made.
Economic growth is fine to a point. Problem is measuring economic growth through the arbitrary price of a small group of companies using a market system designed for gambling rather than long-term investing. Better is to base it on the amount of goods exchanged across all levels of society. When the top has all the money and increases their stock prices by buying and selling their own stocks, and the rest can't afford to participate in the economy beyond necessities, that's not a good economy.
Unpopular opinion: If we ended fossil fuel use immediately a lot of people would die and the entire economy would collapse. People would starve because stores wouldn't be stocked. People would freeze to death because they wouldn't be able to heat their homes. Looting and violence would soon follow.
The only people who would likely be ok are the ultra wealthy.
Change takes time and right now there are no alternatives that can immediately absorb the extra load from cutting off fossil fuels.
I don't think anyone is seriously advocating for stopping fossil fuels cold turkey.
The truly unpopular opinion is the one you're pretending is popular, people aren't advocating for immediate replacement without building up green energy and replacing it entirely.
I hate this elitist sentiment. 😒
Strong "i got mine so fuck you" type of mentality.
A degrowth society has to be an equitable society. Otherwise your criticism is entirely valid.
We are going to have a degrowth system regardless of any policy decisions, as the current growth system is burning through critical resources and destroying the environment. We can either plan for this, or we can have an unplanned existential civilizational crisis.
Degrowth for the west, let the rest of the world suffer yeaaaaaa. Everyone knows only the west matters anyways.
By equitable I meant 'equitable for everyone' not equitable for only the people of the core of the empire.
I mean we are saying the same thing.... i am just saying that thinking this way is pretty elitist. There are developing african and asian countries that will soon surpass the US and EU in population. Im sure they will have the same mindset though.
If you don't think corporations and governments in Africa have the same idea that there should be endless growth, I suggest you read up on them.
My last like 5 posts on this have been sarcastic. I think its incorrect to think that environmental policy starts and stops with the west. I also think its unrealistic to think a developing country doesnt aspire to become just as waste hungry.
Yes? If we applied degrowth to places that don't have anything, they would die en masse.
It's too late for sentiments, my friend. We are not the winners of this game, but we might all be losers if we don't reduce our habits of reckless consumption.
Yes, i have the same sentiment. I have been calling for everyone to accept higher taxes for years. Garnish wages, let the extreme wealth gap grow wider. If everyone is poor then we dont have to worry about what shiny thing to buy as long as we can get that dog meat on the table.
you kids need to eat more acid.
SO TRUE! My malnutrition living in central america has stunted my growth but if I lived on the plentiful acid you provide then some day my progeny can grow big and strong like yourself.
staying fed has always been a problem in central and south america. you can't grow big crops without wiping out large swaths of rain forest. stop cutting down rain forests. stop following catholic traditions that encourage large families. ya'll should be having way less kids. the ecosystem just can't support large populations. you'd be better off going back to living in small units dependent on hunting and fishing.
sorry bro. that's just how life works. you really don't want what america has. cherish what you have.
financial equality is so much more important than a living planet /s
The problem is that seeking growth at all costs allows the accumulation of economic and political power. The people in charge do not distinguish between personal success and a better world, and therefore see no difference between economic growth and a better world.
Where they call plutocracy democracy and democracy is basically plutocracy
It also funds everyone's retirement. People start revolting pretty quickly when they learn they get paid almost nothing and they have to rely on a magic money making machine in the stock market to live out their twilight years.
Sounds like a good argument for government pensions. Thank you, comrade!
Anything that allows people to retire and doesn't require unsustainable GDP growth I'm happy with LOL.
/s
This is the biggest problem with economical growth.
All the FAANG or whatever their called these days can hit 1000% growth tomorrow, and suddenly, our economical growth skyrockets.
But that doesn't mean anything for the average person. At all.
The constant need for growth really bothers me. I live in a rural area. People move here because it's natural and quiet and cost of living is low. Then they complain that there is no Target and no Chik Fila and not enough jobs. The board of supervisors is full of developers. Once they finish building out the county we will be just like every other suburban hell.
Not just the constant need for that sort of growth. In our late-stage capitalist society, companies are expected to make more profit than last year every single year. As if that is somehow sustainable.
Exactly, that is a ridiculous, anti-consumer and anti-environment standard.
Working for a Fortune 500 and hearing executives talk is surreal. They straight up say things like "if you're not growing, you're failing". No thought at all as to how that's supposed to work in the long run. The post-pandemic surge in profits doesn't help; companies that usually don't get 15-20% profit margins suddenly saw that, and the expectation of shareholders is that they can keep doing that forever. That's insane.
Conversely, I'm also active in my local makerspace. We've grown massively in less than 10 years, and deliberately stopped taking new members for a few months because our volunteers were getting burned out. When we reopened, we kept the new member signups intentionally limited so certain areas (woodshop, mainly) would be able to absorb turnover without driving the trainers too hard. We still have net growth, but way slower than we were before. We're far from failing, and the MBAs running Fortune 500s can go fuck themselves.
And then they will leave for a more idyllic life in the country because it's so noisy.
I'm pretty sure the large open field behind my house, which used to be full of trees, is going to be turned into another gated neighborhood full of cookie cutter houses. And I just know someone is going to be close to my back yard, and they are going to whine about my wife's chickens, especially since one of them is a rooster.
So they will piss and moan and try to make us get rid of the rooster. And then they will probably get a small dog that yaps all night.
Pasco County Florida by any chance?
No, not FL. Judging by driving around the US it's happening all over. Walmarts and apartments and McDonalds everywhere you go. Many are fairly new and right next to rural land. No sidewalks or public transportation, just sprawl into rural areas.
The constant need for growth won't go away. As long as the population grows, economic output needs to grow. All those people need food, shelter, clothing, entertainment, random crap, work, etc.
Yes, in the Western World a lot of it is a distribution problem, but even if we solved that you still can't expect the rest of the world to just settle for lower standards of living than Europe and North America. They won't. And they shouldn't.
Destroy capitalism.
Got it.
Capitalism has one positive, and that's the notion of competition leading to the best outcome as they try to win over consumers.
We've lost that though with how unfettered it's become in general. Companies merge and conspire, eliminating competition.
It's become more of a competition as to who can fool and subsequently fuck over the consumers more.
Exactly. We've let them become way too powerful. They shouldn't be able to do this.
Competition doesn't lead to innovation in improving people's lives, but company profits. See: enshittification.
I see that as a consequence of the absurd monopolies we have. The best product should be what's the most popular, and enshittification is counter to that. It tanks the product quality, and in a market with lots of competitors, it would be punished.
It is one of the consequences of monopolies, but monopolies are a consequence of economic competition.
The "winner" gets the losers stuff and customers (mergers for example), making the winner bigger and more able to manipulate the market to their benefit.
When there are few enough companies profits can be chased without consideration for anything else (planned obsolescence, shipping jobs outside the country, lay-offs, etc.)
So, like you said except in a for profit market, monopolies are inevitable.
In the absence of regulation, absolutely. If we had more stringent anti trust legislation though it might be possible to avoid.
The best product should not be what's most popular in Capitalism, what's profitable to produce is what's most profitable. With tons of competition, you just have competing levels of automation, corner cutting, and exploitation.
Competition and markets in general are the cause of enshittification.
That is a good point actually.
Yep, Marx predicted this actually. A huge portion of Marx's literature is even more relevant today than ever before.
This is how capitalism has always worked.
When companies compete, eventually some of them lose. This means they go out of business.
The remaining companies become more powerful.
That's a fair point actually. Competition can only exist if there's an influx of new companies that's roughly the number of them going out of business.
Even then though there's an issue, because the companies which have been around the longest will have all the necessary equipment, which may be really expensive.
I'm not sure how we address this, but it's clear the government needs to step in.
"Best outcome" covers for a lot. The "best" coffee is still grown in the global south and shipped using grossly polluting methods. The "best" computer will eventually be obsolete e-waste with minimal recycling value. The "best" EV is still reliant on car-centric infrastructure that is strangling cities.
What is "best" is highly variable, and competition cannot possibly cover all possibilities of what is best.
for context
Thank you for the pizza.
lol, pizza economics sounds much better than doughnut economics
That looks... a lot... like the Greendale Community College flag.
Billionares:
"Fuck more!"
How can we expect those lines to keep going up without a steady supply of fresh recruits for the grinder.
“Lol. Um, what.”
If your only goal is that most people can live decently and reduce exploitation, abuse, and such, yeah, sure.
But if you just want to amass money, then, no.
A choice was made.
Economic growth is fine to a point. Problem is measuring economic growth through the arbitrary price of a small group of companies using a market system designed for gambling rather than long-term investing. Better is to base it on the amount of goods exchanged across all levels of society. When the top has all the money and increases their stock prices by buying and selling their own stocks, and the rest can't afford to participate in the economy beyond necessities, that's not a good economy.
Unpopular opinion: If we ended fossil fuel use immediately a lot of people would die and the entire economy would collapse. People would starve because stores wouldn't be stocked. People would freeze to death because they wouldn't be able to heat their homes. Looting and violence would soon follow.
The only people who would likely be ok are the ultra wealthy.
Change takes time and right now there are no alternatives that can immediately absorb the extra load from cutting off fossil fuels.
I don't think anyone is seriously advocating for stopping fossil fuels cold turkey.
The truly unpopular opinion is the one you're pretending is popular, people aren't advocating for immediate replacement without building up green energy and replacing it entirely.
I hate this elitist sentiment. 😒
Strong "i got mine so fuck you" type of mentality.
A degrowth society has to be an equitable society. Otherwise your criticism is entirely valid.
We are going to have a degrowth system regardless of any policy decisions, as the current growth system is burning through critical resources and destroying the environment. We can either plan for this, or we can have an unplanned existential civilizational crisis.
Degrowth for the west, let the rest of the world suffer yeaaaaaa. Everyone knows only the west matters anyways.
By equitable I meant 'equitable for everyone' not equitable for only the people of the core of the empire.
I mean we are saying the same thing.... i am just saying that thinking this way is pretty elitist. There are developing african and asian countries that will soon surpass the US and EU in population. Im sure they will have the same mindset though.
If you don't think corporations and governments in Africa have the same idea that there should be endless growth, I suggest you read up on them.
My last like 5 posts on this have been sarcastic. I think its incorrect to think that environmental policy starts and stops with the west. I also think its unrealistic to think a developing country doesnt aspire to become just as waste hungry.
Yes? If we applied degrowth to places that don't have anything, they would die en masse.
It's too late for sentiments, my friend. We are not the winners of this game, but we might all be losers if we don't reduce our habits of reckless consumption.
Yes, i have the same sentiment. I have been calling for everyone to accept higher taxes for years. Garnish wages, let the extreme wealth gap grow wider. If everyone is poor then we dont have to worry about what shiny thing to buy as long as we can get that dog meat on the table.
you kids need to eat more acid.
SO TRUE! My malnutrition living in central america has stunted my growth but if I lived on the plentiful acid you provide then some day my progeny can grow big and strong like yourself.
staying fed has always been a problem in central and south america. you can't grow big crops without wiping out large swaths of rain forest. stop cutting down rain forests. stop following catholic traditions that encourage large families. ya'll should be having way less kids. the ecosystem just can't support large populations. you'd be better off going back to living in small units dependent on hunting and fishing.
sorry bro. that's just how life works. you really don't want what america has. cherish what you have.
financial equality is so much more important than a living planet /s