{"id":29345,"date":"2018-01-03T10:01:42","date_gmt":"2018-01-03T15:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=29345"},"modified":"2018-01-03T10:01:42","modified_gmt":"2018-01-03T15:01:42","slug":"de-growth-is-feasible-people-want-a-new-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=29345","title":{"rendered":"De-Growth is Feasible: People Want a New Economy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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DE-GROWTH IS FEASIBLE: PEOPLE WANT A NEW ECONOMY<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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Branko Milanovic has written a response<\/a> to my argument<\/a>.\u00a0 As I read it, I was struck by two things \u2013 both quite significant.<\/p>\n

First, Branko now seems to accept the science on how \u201cgreen growth\u201d is not a thing, and has backed off his assumption that endless growth is (a) possible, and (b) something we should promote.\u00a0 Or at least he has chosen not to defend his earlier claims on this matter.\u00a0 This is quite a shift.<\/p>\n

Second, Branko does not insist that growth is necessary <\/em>in rich nations.\u00a0 In fact, he seems to agree that we can maintain well-being in rich nations while reducing material consumption.\u00a0 And he accepts the notion that we can accomplish this by shifting to a different kind of economy, along the lines of my suggestions.\u00a0 \u201cI do not think that this program is illogical,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

So far, then, we\u2019re on the same page.<\/p>\n

But Branko doubles down on one bit of his earlier argument: that degrowth is not politically feasible.\u00a0 \u201cIt is just so enormous, outside of anything that we normally can expect to implement, that it verges, I am afraid, on absurdity,\u201d he writes.\u00a0 He claims that people are so penetrated by the ideology of competitive consumerism that they would never voluntarily walk away from the system.\u00a0 So it will be impossible to put degrowth into practice in a democracy.<\/p>\n

I do not disagree with Branko that the task is enormous; I have complete empathy with this perspective.\u00a0 Indeed, it is the single greatest problem of our century \u2013 how to enable human flourishing while reducing emissions and material throughput \u2013 and it demands our total focus.\u00a0 But let me offer three thoughts that give me hope.<\/p>\n

1. People are not just consumption bots.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Branko advances a dystopic vision of people who identify totally with the extrinsic values of competitive consumerism and growth.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DE-GROWTH IS FEASIBLE: PEOPLE WANT A NEW ECONOMY Branko Milanovic has written a response to my argument.\u00a0 As I read it, I was struck by two things \u2013 both quite significant. First, Branko now seems to accept the science on how \u201cgreen growth\u201d is not a thing, and has backed off his assumption that endless […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,7],"tags":[161,162,203,204,4595,391],"class_list":["post-29345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-survival-2","tag-consumerism","tag-consumption","tag-degrowth","tag-democracy","tag-endless-growth","tag-growth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29345"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29346,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29345\/revisions\/29346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}