{"id":40736,"date":"2018-11-20T08:20:18","date_gmt":"2018-11-20T13:20:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=40736"},"modified":"2018-11-20T08:20:18","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T13:20:18","slug":"degrowth-as-a-concrete-utopia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=40736","title":{"rendered":"Degrowth as a concrete utopia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Degrowth as a concrete utopia<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Economic growth can\u2019t reduce inequalities; it merely postpones confronting exploitation. Espa\u00f1ol<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cMy Visit to the Mountain Homestead.\u201d Credit: Flickr\/Eli Duke<\/a>. CC BY 2.0<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The emergence of interest in degrowth can be traced back to the 1st International Degrowth Conference organized in Paris in 2008. At this conference, degrowth was defined as a \u201cvoluntary transition towards a just, participatory, and ecologically sustainable society,\u201d so challenging the dogma of economic growth. Another five international conferences were organized between 2010 and 2018, with the latest in Malmo <\/a>in August.<\/p>\n

This year also saw the publication of Giorgos Kallis\u2019 landmark book\u00a0Degrowth<\/a><\/em>,<\/a>which\u00a0opens with three bold statements. First, the\u00a0global economy should slow down to avert the destruction of Earth\u2019s life support systems, because a higher rate of production and consumption will run parallel to higher rates of damage to the environment.\u00a0Hence,\u00a0we should extract, produce and consume\u00a0less<\/em>, and we should do it all\u00a0differently<\/em>. Since growth-based economies collapse without growth we have to establish a radically different economic system and way of living in order to prosper in the future.<\/p>\n

Second, economic growth is no longer desirable. An increasing share of GDP growth is devoted to\u00a0\u2018defensive expenditure,\u2019 meaning the costs people face as a result of environmental externalities such as pollution. Hence, growth (at least in rich countries)\u00a0has become \u201cun-economic:\u201d its benefits no longer exceed its costs.<\/p>\n

Third, growth is always based on exploitation, because it is driven by investment that, in turn, depends on surplus. If capitalists or governments paid for the real value of work then they would have no surplus and there would be no growth. Hence, growth cannot reduce inequalities; it merely postpones confronting exploitation.<\/p>\n

The growth paradigm.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Degrowth as a concrete utopia Economic growth can\u2019t reduce inequalities; it merely postpones confronting exploitation. Espa\u00f1ol \u201cMy Visit to the Mountain Homestead.\u201d Credit: Flickr\/Eli Duke. CC BY 2.0. The emergence of interest in degrowth can be traced back to the 1st International Degrowth Conference organized in Paris in 2008. At this conference, degrowth was defined […]<\/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":[2,4,7],"tags":[203,240,1224,353,391,10696,23094,769,8504],"class_list":["post-40736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-degrowth","tag-economic-growth","tag-exploitation","tag-gdp","tag-growth","tag-open-democracy","tag-riccardo-mastini","tag-sustainability","tag-utopia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40736","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=40736"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40737,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40736\/revisions\/40737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}