Thanks for this, Pieter. You pointed to a real challenge - voluntary elite degrowth is structurally near-impossible without changing the payoff structure itself. That change would require political power that elites are strongly incentivized to prevent others from accumulating. It's a recursive trap.
And even though personal degrowth tactics free up resources that will just get absorbed elsewhere under the current model, possibly through continued elite consumption where the floor is set by positional competition, I still advocate for it. The entire architecture of modern consumer capitalism banks on debt, low savings rates, overall financial precarity. Consuming less allows regular people to build reserves, resist manipulation and avoid debt. That is people power, the power of sufficiency!
It's also worth noting the role that the monetary system plays.
Money is credit, and credit is often misallocated for unproductive or downright destructive purposes, such as war.
There is also a systemic shortage and artificial scarcity of state-sanctioned money because it is improperly issued on the basis of interest-bearing debt. Total aggregate debt (principal plus interest) is more than the total amount of money in existence. And compound interest causes debt to grow exponentially. This contributes to unsustainable economic growth.
State-sanctioned fiat money is not a benign medium of exchange or a reliable store of value. It is an instrument of control that is designed to extract value and to further concentrate wealth and power.
If we want things to change then we have to reform the monetary and financial system or build alternative exchange systems with new units of account, and interest-free credit should be allocated for productive purposes within ecological limitations.
This is indeed a beneficial angle to degrowth I hadn’t thought of.
I also like the caution over the different ways degrowth can manifest - solutions are rarely singular or simple. I would add the need for slowing down and building in redundancy to the anti-colonial approach as just two of the pool of antidotes to the peril of global trade and a runaway capitalist economy you could mention.
Thanks for this, Pieter. You pointed to a real challenge - voluntary elite degrowth is structurally near-impossible without changing the payoff structure itself. That change would require political power that elites are strongly incentivized to prevent others from accumulating. It's a recursive trap.
And even though personal degrowth tactics free up resources that will just get absorbed elsewhere under the current model, possibly through continued elite consumption where the floor is set by positional competition, I still advocate for it. The entire architecture of modern consumer capitalism banks on debt, low savings rates, overall financial precarity. Consuming less allows regular people to build reserves, resist manipulation and avoid debt. That is people power, the power of sufficiency!
It's also worth noting the role that the monetary system plays.
Money is credit, and credit is often misallocated for unproductive or downright destructive purposes, such as war.
There is also a systemic shortage and artificial scarcity of state-sanctioned money because it is improperly issued on the basis of interest-bearing debt. Total aggregate debt (principal plus interest) is more than the total amount of money in existence. And compound interest causes debt to grow exponentially. This contributes to unsustainable economic growth.
State-sanctioned fiat money is not a benign medium of exchange or a reliable store of value. It is an instrument of control that is designed to extract value and to further concentrate wealth and power.
If we want things to change then we have to reform the monetary and financial system or build alternative exchange systems with new units of account, and interest-free credit should be allocated for productive purposes within ecological limitations.
This is indeed a beneficial angle to degrowth I hadn’t thought of.
I also like the caution over the different ways degrowth can manifest - solutions are rarely singular or simple. I would add the need for slowing down and building in redundancy to the anti-colonial approach as just two of the pool of antidotes to the peril of global trade and a runaway capitalist economy you could mention.