Is there a reason the argument is not framed as long term vs short term planning? Climate change will ruin the rich global north, not just the south. That won't help GDP. I find the moral argument less compelling because it's hard enough trying to get people to vote in their own interest in the face of a partisan press, never mind voting to reduce their actual wealth
The obviously ridiculous thing about the Milanovic argument is that people everywhere, in all societies, are often willing to accept tremendous material risk / sacrifice in pursuit of non-material things.
Caring for children and family, engaging in political activism, making art and building things, serving in the military, a hundred other activities. Sure, you can argue about which things count as “moral” concerns, and which have “good” consequences, but the point is that people are intrinsically interested in much more than maximizing their material position.
Part of the point of “degrowth” talk, in my opinion, is to legitimize and promote the value of individual restraint (not “abstinence”) regarding material acquisition. The point is that it should be one of our values, one thing among many.
Yes, there's tension there, but so what? Duty to family and community is in tension with the desire for individual freedom, but we recognize there’s a complex balance to be struck between the two. Yet for some reason, we have a problem with the idea of balancing the desire for greater material wealth (which is, yes, absolutely a core human value) with a sense of restraint and modesty regarding that wealth. This dichotomy of Greed is Good capitalism vs. self-abnegating "asceticism” is nonsense.
Growth=resource use x productivity. It's a kind of a three-way chicken-egg-chick-problem: Which came first? Production used to grow more or less in line with population, sometimes lagging (Malthus!) and sometimes growing ahead and enabling more population growth. You can well argue that fossil fuels allowed us to break the cycle by jump-starting productivity, thus enabling a bigger share of our brainpower to be dedicated to STEM and thus increasing productivity innovations that in techno-utopian scenarios allow us to "fix" climate change á la Bill Gates. But turning the cycle backwards is not simple and might well result in a crash rather than managed degrowth. Economists and policy makers have proven themselves incapable of understanding and achieving managed growth, why should they be any better at degrowth?
Is there a reason the argument is not framed as long term vs short term planning? Climate change will ruin the rich global north, not just the south. That won't help GDP. I find the moral argument less compelling because it's hard enough trying to get people to vote in their own interest in the face of a partisan press, never mind voting to reduce their actual wealth
The obviously ridiculous thing about the Milanovic argument is that people everywhere, in all societies, are often willing to accept tremendous material risk / sacrifice in pursuit of non-material things.
Caring for children and family, engaging in political activism, making art and building things, serving in the military, a hundred other activities. Sure, you can argue about which things count as “moral” concerns, and which have “good” consequences, but the point is that people are intrinsically interested in much more than maximizing their material position.
Part of the point of “degrowth” talk, in my opinion, is to legitimize and promote the value of individual restraint (not “abstinence”) regarding material acquisition. The point is that it should be one of our values, one thing among many.
Yes, there's tension there, but so what? Duty to family and community is in tension with the desire for individual freedom, but we recognize there’s a complex balance to be struck between the two. Yet for some reason, we have a problem with the idea of balancing the desire for greater material wealth (which is, yes, absolutely a core human value) with a sense of restraint and modesty regarding that wealth. This dichotomy of Greed is Good capitalism vs. self-abnegating "asceticism” is nonsense.
Growth=resource use x productivity. It's a kind of a three-way chicken-egg-chick-problem: Which came first? Production used to grow more or less in line with population, sometimes lagging (Malthus!) and sometimes growing ahead and enabling more population growth. You can well argue that fossil fuels allowed us to break the cycle by jump-starting productivity, thus enabling a bigger share of our brainpower to be dedicated to STEM and thus increasing productivity innovations that in techno-utopian scenarios allow us to "fix" climate change á la Bill Gates. But turning the cycle backwards is not simple and might well result in a crash rather than managed degrowth. Economists and policy makers have proven themselves incapable of understanding and achieving managed growth, why should they be any better at degrowth?