Literally just that, I am tired of hearing about how China is doing green development. I really wanna hear some degrowth voices because I personally don't think drowning in consumer goods is a way I want to imagine a better life.

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[–] 22 points 1 week ago* (8 children)

Some Upstream episodes touch on that, specifically the ones with Jason Hickel

But also I want to note that the development of the underdeveloped world is necessary for equitable degrowth. You can’t build communism without the development of the means of production

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 1 week ago (7 children)

    That's true however America doesn't need that and Americans fucking want even more, there's something sickening in American mindset that they have essentially eaten the world yet want more and now drool over China because it can save them from consequences of having eaten the world without reducing their consumption.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 week ago* (4 children)

    you have to build transit and infrastructure to take cars off the road, we can't magically move into dense urban housing that either doesn't exist or is being hoarded so nobody can afford it. degrowth doesn't mean you don't make anything while degrowthing.

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 1 week ago (3 children)

    You're getting me wrong, I don't mean infrastructure or housing. I mean consumer goods, more and more chips, more and more computers, more than ever needed. Useless gadgets.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (2 children)

    ah, that's fair.

    unless there's another leap in efficiency we're past the point of replacing a pentium 2 with new compute that's more capable and uses less electricity.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 week ago*

    To solve this you have to abolish capitalism. We can quibble over the need to pathologize Americans, but the important point is that this so-called pathology simply reflects the logic of value production and capitalism more broadly.

    Capitalism is essentially the production of surplus-value. This can never ever change so long as we have capitalism. Degrowth is incompatible with the requirement to expand value. Our relationship with nature is extremely fucked (obviously) and the only way to fix that is with careful, conscious management and wind-down of the global economy. That is possible only in a society capable of conscious and planned economy, an economy designed for production of use-value instead of value, and that necessarily means socialism.

    It should also not be forgotten that the world economy is predicated on the US as a major consumer of the exports which other countries, including China, rely upon to drive their own economies. Making matters worse is not only must all countries increase value over time, they need much of that value in the form of US Dollars. The world economy is not ready for a disruption in the flow of US Dollars.

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