Degrowth you say? Hmmmm...
Since this Nature article on Degrowth has been making the rounds, and since some people can’t seem to be bothered to actually read it much less engage with it using nuance, I guess I’ll have to do it 😂
I explored a bit of this on Twitter, but felt it worth expanding.
tl;dr
The timeline to abundance seems so short to me that I find “degrowth” a largely moot topic. I don’t think we need to roll everything back, stop all production, and shrink our population. That’s absurd.
At the same time, I think we should optimize our systems wherever we can, because that is part of how we gain abundance. This requires asking good questions, proposing solutions, running tests, and not sitting back and hoping it all just works out.
Now, nuance time!
It’s clear to me that, while this article uses the word “degrowth”, that’s not what it’s actually talking about (for the most part; it is to some degree). As with so many things, we need to sift the wheat from the chaff; no tossing the baby out with the bathwater.
It’s very clear that degrowth is a trigger word for a lot of folks, which the Wikipedia article amusingly calls out as the first in the list of criticisms:
It also happens to be what I think of as a loaded word. While it has a dictionary meaning (reduce production and consumption to preserve resources and the environment), it also seems to have multiple colloquial meanings and applications.
At the same time, the whole Degrowth <-> Growth spectrum can be visualized along multiple axes:
Production
Population
Land / Resource Usage
Technology
Knowledge
Clearly unchecked growth in 1-3 would be problematic (especially without lockstep growth in 4 and 5), and the Nature article clearly isn’t arguing for backtracking on all fronts!
From my perspective, our civilization seems to be pulling in too many directions at once. And if we could just focus our efforts and pull together in one direction, we could accomplish far more and far faster in a way that is amazing for humanity as a whole. That was a big part of why I wrote my most recent book, The Grand Redesign.
Now, all of that said, let’s look at the key points from the article one-by-one. I left out explicit calls for more research, and focused on specific calls for change.
The excerpts from the article are in bold, and my comments are in italics:
Wealthy economies should abandon growth of gross domestic product (GDP) as a goal. I agree with this for numerous reasons, not least of which is that I firmly believe we’re on the cusp of developing AI and robotics so capable (including AGI likely within 2-3 years) that we’ll be technologically able to fully automate all jobs humans currently do by 2030 at the latest. In such a scenario, money will largely be useless, and thus GDP will be a useless metric.
Wealthy economies should scale down destructive and unnecessary forms of production to reduce energy and material use. While this is a large basket of things, and determining what qualifies as destructive and unnecessary is a whole thing, I read this as “we should work on making our production more effective and efficient while mitigating long-term risks,” which I can fully get behind. Our tribe should be Humanity, and our village is the planet we all share. As such, we should be better stewards.
Wealthy economies should focus economic activity around securing human needs and well-being. No argument from me here. We’ve been playing zero-sum games for a long ass time, and we should focus our technology on raising the floor for everyone. Our clear goal should be to make sure everyone on the planet has Maslow’s bottom two tiers completely taken care of, with nothing required from folks to have that. This IS possible now, and will be easy soon.
Reduce less-necessary production. This means scaling down destructive sectors such as:
Fossil fuels. Zero argument here, and this is already shrinking as a share of all energy production. We should be focusing on nuclear (fission and fusion) and solar for the most part. While fossil fuels still have a role to play for a time, they should absolutely be deprioritized as soon as feasible, regardless of the financial interests behind it.
Mass-produced meat and dairy. Worth noting that we use ~80% of farm land for livestock, yet it generates just ~20% of our calories. This is extremely inefficient. Also our livestock production process is itself bad for the animals, bad for the environment, and thanks to hormones and pesticides and feed, bad for consumers. This entire space needs a rework.
Fast fashion. No argument from me, I find most of the fashion world stupid as fuck, populated by a bunch of frivolous, status seeking, mimetic monkeys playing dress-up. Good quality clothing can and should last for many years, and in some cases a lifetime.
Advertising. I’m a marketer by trade, and I completely agree with this. This enormous industry exists to persuade and manipulate people into spending money primarily on garbage they don’t need and don’t really want in the name of greed and growth. This is not a net-good for humanity.
Cars. Again, I don’t disagree. I went more than a decade without a car, and it was no loss. I own one 20 year old car now, and barely use it even though I live in a rural area. We should be investing far more in walkable cities, high speed rail, subways, streetcars, and other forms of public transit. Of the cars we keep, they should be self-driving, and on-demand, not (for the most part) owned. A huge portion of land use and resources go into supporting personal vehicles, and it is massively wasteful.
Aviation, including private jets. Not sure I actually agree with this one. The entire aviation industry accounts for just 2% of global emissions, and steps are constantly being taken to reduce this. Being a globally connected civilization, and being able to get out of your bubble and experience other places and cultures, is wildly beneficial.
End the planned obsolescence of products. 100% agreed with this. Product categories that are technologically stable should all be built with BIFL (Buy It For Life) in mind. Planned obsolescence is pure greed.
Lengthen their (product) lifespans. Agreed. Build things to last. It’s an easy cost-benefit analysis for most things.
Reduce the purchasing power of the rich. This is going to happen naturally as automation takes over. When money becomes worthless, the rich will no longer be rich. The floor for everyone will be raised, and the ceiling will (temporarily) be reduced.
Improve public services. It is necessary to ensure universal access to:
High-quality health care
Education
Housing
Transportation
Internet
Renewable energy
Nutritious food.
I agree with all of these without reservation. I’ve argued repeatedly for Universal Basic Services (basic meaning fundamental, not low quality), but against UBI. We can and should use technology and automation to drive the costs of these down to zero or close enough.
Introduce a green jobs guarantee. This would train and mobilize labor around urgent social and ecological objectives, such as installing renewables, insulating buildings, regenerating ecosystems and improving social care. A program of this type would end unemployment and ensure a just transition out of jobs for workers in declining industries or ‘sunset sectors’, such as those contingent on fossil fuels. Again, I think automation will very quickly make this a moot point, but for the next 5-10 years this is probably a very good idea. We should always have been better supporting retraining all along.
It could be paired with a universal income policy. Because I believe A. that money will soon be going away, and B. that universal income doesn’t solve (and in some ways exacerbates) a set of perverse incentives, this is a bad idea. Universal Basic Services is a much better idea and creates a more positive sum incentive stack. See https://thegrandredesign.substack.com/p/millions-of-jobs-going-away-universal-basic-income-isnt-answer
Reduce working time. Again, due to automation this is going to happen anyway, but agreed that we should already be doing this. Most while collar jobs can be done effectively in 15-20 hours/week if you remove inefficiencies, and AI will drop this further. This could be achieved by:
Lowering the retirement age. The retirement age goes up, not down, mainly because of the unsustainability of Medicare and social security (and the equivalent in other countries). That will be solved with automation, so again, this should happen naturally.
Encouraging part-time working or adopting a four-day working week. I agree with this for now, there would be no negatives as long as total pay was the same.
These measures would lower carbon emissions and free people to engage in care and other welfare-improving activities. This is probably (mostly) accurate. I’d want to see more research and data though.
They would also stabilize employment as less-necessary production declines. Disagree. A company needing to reduce employment is about money savings, not time savings, and unless the reduction in hours worked is lock-step with the reduction in costs via automation, a company reducing hours will probably just cut into wages.
Enable sustainable development. This requires:
Canceling unfair and unpayable debts of low- and middle-income countries. This is, for now, a big can of worms. On the one hand, I kind of want to see a Biblical-style debt jubilee. I think we could make it work, and it would be interesting to try. But this is a massively multivariate thing, and until money is moot I have no clue how this would play out in reality. Worth modeling out though.
Curbing unequal exchange in international trade. This strikes me as something that would result in a Cobra Effect, so probably not. I think we could probably pay more fairly in some cases, but any increase in price at the bottom increases prices at the top, which changes consumption patterns, so paying more per item could result in less money overall. We should however make sure we pay a base price that incentivizes continued, voluntary production.
Creating conditions for productive capacity to be reoriented towards achieving social objectives. Generally agreed, and it’s greed that prevents this now. We have the resources already to raise the floor for everyone, and we don’t do it because the fucks at the top are Scrooge McDuck levels of greedy.
Remove dependencies on growth. Economies today depend on growth in several ways. Welfare is often funded by tax revenues. Private pension providers rely on stock-market growth for financial returns. Firms cite projected growth to attract investors. Researchers need to identify and address such ‘growth dependencies’ on a sector-by-sector basis. 100% agreed. Every space that is playing a game of musical chairs like this is going to flame out spectacularly when the music stops, and it WILL stop, soon. Again, automation (AI + robotics) is going to completely restructure our economies, and it’s going to be a relatively fast changeover. We should be prepping for this right the fuck now.
The ‘fiduciary duty’ of company directors needs to be changed. I generally agree, and am in the camp that most companies should probably be pushed to operate as B Corps. But I can see exceptions, and I’m sure there would be unintended consequences here, so would prefer to see this more carefully modeled out and tested.
Instead of prioritizing the short-term financial interests of shareholders, companies should prioritize social and environmental benefits and take social and ecological costs into account. Same note as above.
Sectors such as social care and pensions need secure funding mechanisms for public providers, and better regulation and dismantling of perverse financial incentives for private providers. Agreed. These are operated as Ponzi schemes and littered with leeches. I can’t believe, particularly in the US, that we haven’t cracked down on the bullshit in the healthcare system…talk about a wretched hive of scum and villainy. It’s truly awful…”top down control is bad mmmkay, the market will regulate itself” my lily white ass. It is more accurate to say the market might reach a detente…that’s not great.
New forms of financing will be needed to fund public services without growth. Yep, it’s called AI, robotics, automation, and universal basic services. Raw resources, compute, and energy will be what matters.
Governments must stop subsidies for fossil-fuel extraction. Agreed. We should probably stop most subsidies, period, except in R&D.
They should tax ecologically damaging industries such as air travel and meat production. Raising taxes on an industry will just lead to raised prices, which becomes a vicious cycle…but if your goal is to discourage a thing, this could result in that. This is probably not the correct answer though. It would likely be better to focus on creating cheaper, better alternatives, or on reducing the inefficiencies in the existing systems.
Wealth taxes can also be used to increase public resources and reduce inequality. Mixed feelings. I do generally believe the wealthy should pay more taxes than the poor or middle-class, but they already do…and again, I also think automation will very soon make this a moot point. I also hate how inefficiently governments use tax money, and how many greedy leeches are attached to the government money tit. I think using technology to lower the cost of things for everyone effectively increases public resources and reduces inequality.
Governments that issue their own currency can use this power to finance social and ecological objectives. Printing money to pay bills seems to pretty clearly trigger inflation, so without a complete reworking of the entire financial system, this is probably not a great idea. And yet again, automation will eliminate money and make this moot.
Inflationary risks must be managed, if increased demand outstrips the productive capacity of the economy. Good luck short-term. I see no way to print print print and spend spend spend with zero repercussions unless you control the entire system of production and distribution, including setting fixed prices, and we’re not remotely there yet…though China could *maybe* pull that off.
Earmarking currency for public services reduces cost-of-living inflation. Does it really? Not sure I believe that, but open to data making the case if available.
A degrowth strategy can also reduce demand for material goods. Well, yes, sort of. If you reduce the number of options, that’s a natural byproduct. But it doesn’t really change underlying demand, as folks may still want what they can no longer get…not optimal.
Through progressive taxation. Again, gonna be a moot point awfully soon.
By encouraging shared and collaborative consumption. This is a perfectly good idea across many areas, from cars to tools. So many of the things we buy/own are vastly underutilized.
Incentivizing renovation and repair. Agreed, which is why right to repair matters and planned obsolescence sucks. Extending the service life of something, as long as it can be done safely, seems wise to me.
Supporting community-based services. Agreed. This could mean a lot of things, but things handled at a local level will have better information and know better how to allocate resources.
Reshape provisioning systems. No country currently meets the basic needs of its residents sustainably. I’d wager this is only true if you take current levels for everything and fail to account for improvements in efficiency, reduction in costs, and technological advancements. Looking at farming for example, and the percentage of people, hours, and land needed to provide having dropped more than an order of magnitude in the last century seems like a good case in point.
Housing. Alternative approaches include public or cooperative housing, and a financial system that prioritizes housing as a basic need rather than as an opportunity for profit. Agreed. Everyone should be able to have a home, and homes should probably not be an appreciating asset, nor an asset to be leveraged. Affordable housing is something automation and universal basics should work to provide. The housing space is also one of the greediest, most misaligned incentive spaces we have in the US. Most of the resistance here is greed-centric (people don’t want their home values, often their single largest asset, and also often leveraged, to decline). Japan seems to have handled housing far better than the US, and we should learn from that.
Additional Thoughts (no article excerpts):
There is zero question that as a society, both in the US and globally, we overproduce in many areas, our production is highly inefficient in many areas, and greed functions like a horde of leeches sucking vitality up and down the production line. The tiny few have vastly more than the many, and that does not a stable society make.
There is also zero question that we should be making concerted efforts to find and fix these inefficiencies, and to remove greedy leeches wherever they are found.
This seems like a no-brainer to me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
At the same time, I firmly believe that many of our problems can be solved by improving our existing technology, and inventing new technologies. In this way, I don’t believe in some sort of fixed carrying capacity for our planet per se, but rather a technologically modulated sliding capacity.
Degrowth is not some magical path forward, but some aspects of the idea space ARE worth considering even if you have a beef with the broad concept.
Again, the example of the shift in the ratio of people and land to food production over the last century is a good example; with the right technological advances, we can do much more with much less, and that I think is at the heart of this article.
Humans seem to possess a powerful attachment to momentum and complacency. Don’t rock the boat, leave well enough alone, blah blah blah.
However, we have a few very unusual things playing out right now that are going to change the equation:
Artificial Intelligence
Robotics
Declining Birth Rates
Longevity Research
Engineered Evolution
AI alone has the potential to not only vastly improve our efficiencies across the board, but to expand our science and technology in massive ways very quickly. The timeline for this is incredibly short…I think we’ll see stunning advances in this space in the next 2-3 years, and for sure in the next decade, to the point that it will transform every facet of our society almost beyond recognition.
Tightly coupled to AI is robotics, which are now advancing almost as fast, and will serve as the housing for embodied AI operating in our physical space.
Between AI and robots, virtually every human job we have today (and many if not all of the new ones we create) will be doable by machines, in most cases better and cheaper than any human, this decade. THIS DECADE. Mark my words.
Now, just as these technologies are coming online, we also see a trend in declining birth rates in most developed countries. Silly fearmongers like Musk aside, this is not actually a bad thing. There was a time when the only way to grow the human pie was to produce more humans, and certain Ponzi-esque aspects of our financial systems relied on population growth (robbing Peter to pay Paul), but we’re about to enter a period where that isn’t remotely the case.
The times, they are a changing.
Next, we are seeing some pretty wild advances in the longevity research space, with multiple methods of both turning back the aging clock and extending lifespan already in the wild, and rapidly improving. There is a very, very real chance that anyone roughly 60 or younger today, who takes good care of themselves, will never die.
This is no longer a fantasy, but very likely a not too distant reality. This dramatically changes things.
So, even with declining birth rates, we may also see declining death rates, so population growth may well continue unabated, and may even continue to increase. TBD.
Last but not least, we have the overall trend of engineered evolution (of which longevity is but one part). Through advances in tech like CRISPR, protein folding research, molecular design, and more, we are learning how to tweak ourselves for the better, taking nature’s slow process and speeding it up.
Operating with hardware and software that is 50,000 years out of date, when technology is accelerating so rapidly, is no bueno, and the only way to close that gap is to take charge of our evolution.
I’ve already written previously about where I think things are going.
And about where I think things SHOULD go.
I’d bet very good money this is how things play out, if we don’t fuck it up. We have an amazing opportunity space opening before us.
Granted, I don’t believe in some magical Utopia in the same way I don’t believe in happiness as a final, permanent state—there will always be problems to solve; mo tech, mo problems—but we can systematically raise the level from which we’re solving the problem, and the toolset at our disposal to solve them.
But, and this is key, I most definitely don’t think we should just grow grow grow the human population on this planet, nor do I believe we should just expand out into the universe like hungry locusts to feed our seemingly insatiable hunger for more.
Fewer people = more resources to go around regardless of our level of efficiency or our occupied territory, and while I don’t think we should take any steps to forcibly reduce our population (yuck), neither do I believe we should just continue to sprawl unchecked (aka cancer).
I DO think we should find ways to incentivize a shift to a smaller civilization in terms of physical headcount, but I suspect physical headcount will also soon be a moot point as we evolve into something more, so don’t consider this a pressing need.
All of that said, until we actually change some of our fundamental zero-sum natures, I don’t think we should be expanding very far beyond our pale blue dot. I don’t believe we have some inherent right to just expand out into the cosmos and take what we want, even if our innate arrogance and sense of superiority make us think we do…and I think it very likely that we’d run into trouble out there if we try it.
We need to fix our shit, and shift from zero-sum to non-zero-sum as fast as we can. Then maybe we can grow outwards a bit, as positive sum players, and not locusts.
Last but not least, one of the biggest mistakes I see people make regarding the future is modeling the future based on the pace of the past. Thinking “what got us here will get us there” and “this time will look like last time”—no.
Nope nope nope.
Sure, some things may be the same (scientific process, seeking better explanatory theories), and some may be similar (always gonna need energy and compute), but some are going to WILDLY diverge from the past, especially now with the aforementioned technologies in play.
It’s safe to assume the future is going to be far weirder than you can imagine, and will arrive far faster than you think.
Buckle the fuck up 😁
—
So, to wrap it all up:
The timeline to abundance seems so short to me that I find “degrowth” a largely moot topic. I don’t think we need to roll everything back, stop all production, and shrink our population. That’s absurd.
At the same time, I think we should optimize our systems wherever we can, because that is part of how we gain abundance. This requires asking good questions, proposing solutions, running tests, and not sitting back and hoping it all just works out.
I think AI and robotics will eliminate money and jobs and usher in true abundance, if we make the transition effectively. BIG if.
Making the transition effectively means metaphorically neutering the greedy and power hungry…those at the top of the leaderboard in the current “game” don’t want the game to change, and we can’t permit that sort of stasis to continue. New era, new game.
Everyone deserves to have the bottom two rungs of Maslow’s hierarchy taken care of, through no effort of their own, since they exist through no fault of their own. I think this is a goal we should rally behind.
While “the market will regulate itself” is true in one narrow sense, that regulation is VERY often neither efficient nor effective, and frequently far from optimal. And a HUGE part of this supposed self-regulation actually comes down to propaganda and mimesis…optimizing for the suppliers, not so much the consumers.
People arguing against top-down system design are somehow forgetting that it plays a major role in many parts of our societies, and it does work, in many times many ways…so long as you focus on the incentive stack! And also that bottom-up and top-down design can serve not as opposites, but as cooperative parts of a feedback loop. Hypothesis (top down) → Test (bottom up) → Refine (top down) → Re-test (bottom up). This is actually how markets regulate, not just one or the other. Feedback loops fucking matter!
And there you have it. My (way more than) two cents on the Nature article and degrowth in general and what I think is going to play out.
Thoughts?