MrMakabar

@MrMakabar@slrpnk.net

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MrMakabar,

The crazy part is that Dieter Rams philosophy was a huge inspiration for the iPhone and other Apple products of that era.

MrMakabar,

Metrics is one problem. However UBI solves another very real problem. When you shrink GDP, you reduce the material wealth available of the group. UBI makes sure everybody has a certain minimal standard of material wellbeing, so cutting GDP does not hurt the poor, but only the rich. This is one of the differences between degrowing an economy and a recession.

MrMakabar,

UBI means everybody gets a certain amount of money no questions asked. It does not mean wage work is illegal. In fact most actual plans presume a payment, which is just about enough to cover the basics. So if you want more, you have to work for it. The big advantages is that people are not forced into jobs they hate and it allows everybody to take more risks in terms of say art, starting new companies or working as an independent contractor.

MrMakabar,

I disagree that we should try to replace GDP with one metric. The world is too complicated for that. What we should do instead is look at multiple metrics and have targets for each of those metrics. Doughnut economics is a pretty decent framework for that. It uses consumption limits in form of cliamte change, chemical pollution, biodiversity, land use, water consumption and so forth on one hand and on the other site targets like food security, life expectancy, equality(GINI, but also race and gender), energy, water access and so forth. This is much better as it can be much more easily adapted to changing dangers and the situation. Water is for example much less of a problem for a country like Norway, then for say Iraq. So they would focus on different metrics.

MrMakabar,

Most living things stop growing at a point or do so much slower. There are systems which do not, like cancer for example. However killing the system you feed off is a bad strategy, if you only have a single one.

MrMakabar,

It is mainly a podcast interviewing Rebecca Adamson.

The term "degrowth" as political suicide?

I am a degrowther, but people keep telling me it’s hard to create media communications campaigns for degrowth and that advocating for it is “political suicide.” As if endless cancerous growth isn’t political suicide already. I’m told people want growth and we should use a different name for degrowth and that we should...

MrMakabar,

Donut economics is maybe a better term for what degrowth wants to achieve. Namely that would be limiting enviromental impact to stay within planetary boundaries while providing a good quality of life for everybody. Other terms are wellbeing economy and so forth trying to grow different more diverse indicators. That is certainly an improvment over using basically only GDP.

As for talking about growth, the key has to be to frame it in a different way. Instead of calling for lower consumption, call for less work instead. Obviously less work leads to lower production, which means lower consumption. However it shows a direct practical advantage which everybody feels directly in their life. In practical terms that would be calls for earlier retirment, shorter work weeks, more vacation time and so forth. That really falls into the problematic framing of the enviromental footprint and consumption. Obviously that is part of the problem, but it pretends that consumers have all the power, when in fact production is mostly controlled by capitalists.

Speaking of capitalists, we always see these statistics comparing countries and then blaiming the wealthy countries for destroying the enviroment. However the much indicator of enviromental damage caused by an individual is their income, rather then their country of origin. That is to say an Indian billionaire is worse for the enviroment then a French mechanic. Obviously wealthy countries have more rich people. However when you have 1% of the global population responsible for 16% of emissions, we know were to start. That is btw more then the share of emissions of the US at 14.6% and a bit more then twice as much as the EUs at 7.9% in 2019, for 77 million people. The top 10% are responsible for 50% of global emissions. Besides some micro nations not country has a majority of its population being a member of the global 10%.

MrMakabar,

Especially technological investments can very much mean a higher population as well. Say we find a way to easily cure cancer for example. That means people live longer and that means a higher population.

MrMakabar,

Economic models are bad at predicting the exact time of a recession, but basically all economist can agree that we will have a recession in the future. We had enough of them in the past.

However the point in the article is that we live on a planet with limited resources and resource consumption and the size of the economy are linked. So the idea is that we run out of resources. A good example of that is climate change. We have a limited somewhat save carbon budget and are on the edge of moving past it. This is why we see a massive heat wave in India right now, for example. That heat wave is really bad for the economy. This is one of the ways civilizations have collapsed in the past.

SUVs made up 20% of global emissions growth and 55% of car sales globally in 2023 (slrpnk.net)

This is just insane. Not only are cars themself mostly unnecessary, if the right infrastructure is provided, but SUVs also use more resources to run and be produced then small cars, without any advantage over them. So an obvious waste, which could easily be cut to reduce emissions....

MrMakabar,

Unlikely. Germany most likely is not going to recognice Palestine for a long time.

MrMakabar,

Foreign policy needs consensus. So the EU can not force Germany to do anything in terms of foreign policy.

MrMakabar,

If only Germany would not be willing to recognice Palestine, then this might happen, but that is not the case. France and Italy the two next most powerfull countries do not recognice Palestine either.

Germany is usually fairly happy with the current state of the EU. The things Germany wants to change are usually also supported by Spain and that means blackmail is harder. The only exaption to that is finance. However Spain is not going to let billions go to waste to have Palestine recogniced. That is just more of a symbol, rather then massivly important.

Also Germany leaving the EU would cause some massive problems in other EU countries as well. They would hardly be cheering for it.

MrMakabar,

Spain has grown faster then Germany for most of the last decade(besides 2020). Out of PIIGS Portugal and Ireland also have done pretty well. Greece got hit hard and Italys economy has problems since the 90s(aka not a EU/Euro problem).

Also Norway is not an EU member.

MrMakabar,

Correct on a per capita bases Portugal has been growing much much faster then Germany. The simple truth it that Germany is not benefiting from austerity either. What should happen is that the German government massively increases spending. This would turn Germany from a net exporter, to a net importer. That allows the PIIGS to export products to Germany paying down the debt, but it also stimulates the economy. Germany profits from the increased spending as well.

The simple truth is that German life expectancy is declining since a couple of years(being below Spain, Italy and Portugal btw). Median wealth of Italy, Spain and Portugal is higher then that of Germany, which is only slightly higher then that of Greece. Real wages in Germany have gone up by 3.8% over the last decade(not annually but the entire decade).

The only ones who really profit from this austerity are the super rich. Other then that it is as bad a policy for Germany as it is for Italy, Portugal, Spain or Greece.

MrMakabar,

Building alternatives to capitalism is not just about eroding it, but also abut developing a working alternative to capitalism, which can be scaled up in case of a revolution. A lot of people just look at the bad parts of capitalism and forget that there are even worse options. Revolutions just change the balance between already existing forces in a country. So without a working alternative, they just end up looking like the old system with different branding. There are a lot of “socialist” countries like that in history.

The other part of it, is to increase the anti capitalist movements power. Basically people believe you, when they see that what you do is working for them. This article explains this fairly well.

Other then that we can implement degrowth ideas within a capitalist framework. EU emissions trading for example is massively neoliberal in its approach, but it is also a clear way of limiting environmental damage by limiting fossil fuel consumption. Also things like UBI are clearly possible, as most Nordic countries already have social welfare systems, which are more limited, but certainly have some similarities.

MrMakabar,

Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

MrMakabar,

E-Books are a thing, as are libraries, which allow you to borrow a book and return it. You also have the option of buying books second hand and then sell it again or give it away. That is really one of the key parts of degrowth. As soon as you share things, you need less things as a group. Hence the impact is much lower.

Besides a paperback book has a climate impact of 1kg of CO2. The average US American emits 4.6t per year just by driving their car. The impact of reading books is a complete joke against that and again no libraries, no second hand or anything else to reduce the impact.

Also books are really incredibly usefull resources. They are much better at actually explaining more complex ideas, then shorter articles.

So please do not just presume, somebody is going out to buy something. For the most part the big choices an individual can make on personal consumption are housing, transport and diet.

MrMakabar,

If you tried to post a picture. You do so by putting a ! in front of the link like:

%5Bi.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/%E2%80%A6/e47.png%5D(https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/330/819/e47.png)

Then you get:

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/330/819/e47.png

Hope that helps, if not ignore it.

MrMakabar,

The problem with that is that Bejing makes it very clear that declaring independence would lead to an invasion of Taiwan. So for a long time most Taiwanese rather did want to keep the current basically independent status quo. However support for unification was low since Taiwan became a democracy. Since the Hong Kong protests and the extraction bill polls for independence show a majority supporting it though.

Also Palestine has a seat on the table, just no vote, as a observer of the UN without being a member.

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