While I don’t want to perpetuate the ‘capitalism sucks’ argument, I want to spend some time on degrowth.
Pretty funny that the spell checkers keep correcting ‘degrowth’ to ‘regrowth’. See? This idea is manifested in everything.
Because of capitalism, humans have become obsessed with growth. Mostly in the financial sense.
The way our global economy is set up, growth is an essential requirement. Maybe THE MOST essential requirement.
When we create money we create debt. The debt is the growth. If a bank prints $100, they charge you $105 and have thus created both debt and new money. The problem is, this kicks the can down the road infinitely.
And infinity is something we can’t really grasp. And the problem is, we still OWE the debt and can be called on it at any time. In effect, infinity does not really exist. Otherwise, we could postpone it, well, infinitely.
And maybe we can, but there are no examples of this happening in nature. Which causes me concern.
If you listened to or watched any of my ‘Acid Test’ episodes, you’ll know that I am fairly obsessed with looking to nature to help us answer questions. In this case, we looked AWAY from nature.
The only example I can think of in nature where growth can be seemingly infinite is CANCER. And I’m fairly certain we can all agree that is a bad thing.
So our economy, in essence, is unnatural. Growth for growth’s sake, or any system requiring near-infinite growth does not agree with anything nature has ever accomplished nor tried to.
It ain’t right.
So the concept of degrowth was introduced in the past 50 years to suggest an alternative. And the problem is, no one wants to give up their stuff.
And the crazy thing?
The only reason we came to love that stuff is because we have been brainwashed that growth is essential. We HAVE to buy more stuff to ‘keep the economy going’.
Enjoy, listen, watch, and share. Thanks.