Opinion of the degrowth movement

[Foucaulf]

Obviously this is the sort of movement that most people will react with visceral horror to– growth has been the engine of civilization since basically forever about three centuries ago, and asking people to voluntarily give that up will be read as nihilistic.

Just a correction; some economic historians like to talk about "Hockey Stick Growth," in which per-capital national product growth only rocketed in Europe with the Industrial Revolution.

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I don't know much about Jevons's Paradox - it seems one of those economic trends people tend to dismiss, especially as energy sources are developed totally different in nature from fossil fuels. I will say that the policies these activists impose are rather ambiguous and staid - "localization," limiting the finance sector and so forth. It all seems to me like an ideology from people trying to maintain their assets and social position, hoping to insure it from growth and recession, as well as telling others poorer to learn to love living in relative scarcity. I find that regressive in a less discussed manner.

(God, I hope I don't sound like AggregateDemand there)

[Foucaulf]

Returning back to this:

The lesson that these people should learn is that there are non-economic human needs, love, friendship, community, narrative, a sense of purpose.  Unfortunately, too many of us are too afraid to wade into these societal issues because they're afraid of the man-made divisions we create for ourselves ...  For example, I think the obsession with race and gender on the left is a major symptom of this problem.

I'm pretty sure activists and poor people fall in love, have friends and find a sense of purpose (why would they spend time being activists otherwise)? The problem is whether you belief you find those things with the help of a market economy or in spite of a market economy. For those who believe in the latter, their logic is something like growth in the market economy only accumulates wealth into a group of people with views and preferences incommensurably different from yours. Why would you want to pour your wealth and time into the system?

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Something I've come to accept is that "the market" is also an abstraction, and not a natural way of viewing things. Herbert Simon had a nice allegory about it:

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If you're a Jew living in the heart of NYC, where independent businesses are plenty and competitive, the abstraction of the market seems more sensible. If you grew up in an exurb whose economy centres either on commuter rail or the Wal-Mart that moved into town, competitive markets would make less sense to you. And if that's the only flavour of capitalism you have known, isn't it plausible that you would call for something different?