Degrowth with Andrew, Part 2

This episode will continue in that conversation talking about what is essential for the growth. As I discussed in the previous episode, the growth is about striving for self determined life and dignity for all. It means an economy in a society that can sustain the natural basis of life.

It means reduction of production and consumption the globe on the north and the liberation on the one sided Western paradigm of development, so that the Global South can explore their own, our own, self determined pace of social organization. The growth means an extension of democratic decision making to

allow for real political participation. The growth means that social changes organized and oriented towards sufficiency and self sufficiency and ecological sustainability, rather than the pursuits of a line grew up a pursuit of economic growth, regardless of its impact on people planet. Ad growth, of course, advocates for the creation of open, connected, and localized economies. There are several steps that need to be taken in order to achieve a D growth society. Achieve a D growth will to

de grow. For one, I think that, as Jason Hickel advocates in his book Less is More, we absolutely need to put an end to the practice of planned obsolescence, whether it be in household appliances and tools and furniture and computers. We need to shift away from this idea of products being produced to break down in a certain

timeline and require replacement. Um. I reasonally have witnessed a lot of older technologies that continued to last to this day before because they were invented before this will practice a planets lessons really keen about. Yeah, but my family we have a microwave that is like a decade older than I am and it still works fine. Wow. Yeah, And I mean in my own lifetime, I've had to

purchase multiple microwaves, so it's it's ridiculous. Yeah, That's always one of the things that I always thought like there was a real sort of like this is how you this is how you appeal to conservative people with this is just like, hey, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna bring back like nineteen sixties microwaves where everything is a dial and it doesn't break every Yeah, because I think, yeah, I think what's what's missing in the conversation about team

growth is a lot of people like that they assume because they react with now that everybody else will, you know, they kind of project their own reaction to others. But I think political spectrum aside um or political chart or how are you gonna um map out the unmappable UM. I think that people generally, as I was discussing the previous episode, want a good life, and that requires qualitative

changes far more than it requires quantitative changes. Of course, there are places where quantitative changes are needed to make some things accessible to that population. UM. But we already overproduce a lot of different things UM, and a lot of overproduction is completely necessary because it is based and planned obs lessons in order to increase profits, and so

that needs to once that is discarded. I think people have will will best be able to access that quality of life because we look at a lot of the sudden expenses that people have to deal with. You know, you've fridge suddenly breaking down, your stove suddenly breaking down, in my careave for your toolster suddenly breaking now, and or you wash the machine. Um. I think in this year alone, have had to fix the washing machine three

or four times because it's just constantly breaks down. And when instead we can save that those resources, see if that time, see that energy, see that money. Um, just producing quality for the foodst time, you know, put an end to those deliberate manufacturing decisions and developing long lasting modular products that can reduce our you know, material and energy use worldwide. I think in a lot of cases, we don't necessarily need more innovation. You know, I don't

think we really need like a smart fridge. I think we just need a fridge that works for decades without breaking down constantly. Yeah, And like so much of the stuff that's sort of like nominally is informat like it is supposed to be. Innovation is just how how how can we make this product in such a way that we can sell consumer data about you from it like we don't need to do that. We can simply not, we can simply not, we can simply not exactly exactly.

And speaking of things that we can simply not, we can simply not assault our senses constantly with advertisis And because advertising just continues to see this poopers of generating social divisions, highlighting class divisions, and manipulating people into consuming stuff they don't need. As a card carrying member of Generations Z, I have not I do not typically watch

much TV. UM. I used to watch TV because I'm the older gen Z contin gent, but with the rise of streaming services UM, which I do not use, yoho hoo, is I have to say about that? UM, I have not watched much TV. UM. But there's a certain reality shoes that I enjoy, like the Amazing Race UM, and so those sense to be showing on TV. I like Jeopardy. I like to watch Jeopardy and the constant deeply unfunny, irritating, annoying, loud,

flashy barrage of commercials quite aggravating. UM. Honestly, the golden age of crucials being funny. It was a long time ago and now it's just suits. One of the things that I mentioned that in UM, in the episode that we had done on the Commons. One of the things that I one of the positions I held even before I was an anarchist, was my opposition to the advertising

industry to advertise it. I can't stand advertising. Everybody walk, everybody, screw everything you watch and listen to it's also going to sell you something. Um. I would love to be able to go outside and not see ads all the time. I would love to use a screw to the incident

out seeing ads all the time. UM. And so getting really advertising industry, getting rid of all these ads are just pushing us to consume one and more um, and oftentimes just promoting a lot of really harmful societal ideas, you know, um, body images, use and alcoholism and a lot of our worst practices and a lot of really terrible things of being promoted through ads. And so yeah,

tear it down and watch consumerism perish. When you think about really history the advertise industry and how it came about. As a mass communication student, UM, that's something that I

would have spend some time looking into. Advertising really came about in response to you know, this need that people had, really that that that that companies had to get people to consume because in a lot of cases, you know, people would buy something and a newer model would come out and they would really pay attention to it because already have the thing. I don't need to get another thing. Um. But you know, you can't run a profitable business that wey.

So they basically used advertising to push people to consume more, and so we need to get rid of the advertising industry. Another stuff we can take to us the growth is to shift from ownership to use the fruct um. Use of fruct is something that Marie booked Chin Social Ecologists talks a lot about um in his book The Ecology of Freedom, and it's essentially the freedom of individuals or groups in a community to access and use, but not destroy,

common resources to supply their needs. The term use of fruct comes from Roman property law, I believe, which would include use us the right to use. Sorry, unfortunately I did not take Latin yeah practice. It's just the right to enjoy the fruit of one's property and abuse us, which is the right to destroy one's property. So use us fruct us and abuse us um, and so use of fractice really the combination of the first two principles.

Right to access and use and enjoy the fruit of um commonly held property without you the right to destroy

it UM so everyone can supply their needs. So instead of and I mean two libraries already a concept that they exists around the world, rather than a hundred people in a community each individually order an electric drill, UM, one person or rather one library can host or three or four electric drills and effectively serve everyone's need for a drill when they need it, because unless they're carpenter or really into arts and crafts, you probably don't need

an electric drill all the time. Another thing that we're really helping or pushed towards the RUTH will be getting rid of car dependency, because the consumption of vehicles, the mainstendence of vehicles, the maintenance of the infrastructure of vehicles, use all of those things requires a lot of resources, you know, concrete and oil and gas and metals and great earth minerals. And rather than forcing everyone to produce these things we could consume those things, we can instead

shift towards walkable model for our urban environments. UM so that people who do need to use vehicles in rural settings, for example, can use them, and you can use them without causing unnecessarily unnecessary harm contributing to unnecessary harm superfluous

harm on the planet. UM. Getting rid of car dependency would also mean that fewer people would need vehicles, and the vehicles that the few vehicles that we do produce UM can be shaped in common to serve needs that cannot be filled by like bikes or you know, probably transportation systems. Another element of deep growth would really be the reduction of our energy material use through the transformation of our agriculture systems. It is true that we currently

produce enough food for I believe ten billion people. A lot of that food is wasted. UM. A lot of food doesn't reach people. UM. It's really an issue of allocation and not necessary production. But at the same time that production is extremely harmful. UM. It relies on a lot of damaging chemicals, relies on the stripping of our top soils, relies on the overuse of antibiotics, relies on

the abuse of animals. UM. The way that we currently feed the world is deeply unequal, extremely inefficient, environmentally degrading, and energy wasting we cannot continue to treat our farms like factories. We need to find we used to feed ourselves densely and compatibly with the amount and the living world.

Scaling down to localized proma culture can help. CHANI based agricultural systems, community supported agriculture, urban gardens, aquaponics, cultured meats, aquacultures, and exploring other more traditional forms of food raising will need to be the route that we take. Already, we are killing our soils, We are running out to the fossil fuels that UM the agricultural industry relies on. And if we continue along the trajectory, we have a big

storm coming. We have probably the greatest famine the plant has ever seen on its way. If we do not aim to build food autonomy, aim to rewild our ecologies aimed to reconfigure our consumption patterns or food production and consumption patterns two seequester more carbon to allocate two more people, to produce healthier foods um and to really to recover the earth. Another important stuff we can take in the growth would be to get rid of what scale down

to an especially destructive industries. There is, of course, agriculture. There's um the fossil fuels industry, the arms industry, private jet industry, the automobile industry, the airline industries. All of these industries must either be slimmed down or gotten rid of um because as the pandemic has showing, very few of the jobs that are currently undertaken around the world are truly essential to maintain in the bare bones of life. And of course we do need to reconfigure the way

that we live. The ways of life you don't have to reflect ecological limits. But even with that reconfiguration, I think we knew what industries needed and what on UM. I always find it strange, This is, I guess a tangent. I always find it strange that politicians are celebrated for bracken about creating new jobs, when in reality, I believe and really the vision was in the twentieth century that we would reach a point where fewer and fewer people needed to work, and that we need to work for

less time um. And so that really is part of the aim of the growth. Reviving that pursuit, reviving that cool because we have reached the point where we can um scale on the amount of time each posson has to work skill only amounts of jobs and an't necessary. Um. If you've read Bullshit Jobs by David Greable, you'll see

that a lot of particularly service economy jobs ah practically worthless. Um. And I actually saw kind of funny video talking about how at this point office culture is more of a religion. Yeah that's so good. Yeah, so that going and going around making the surrounds on Twitter, that was really funny. Um. But yeah, we just move around a bunch of people move around and wunt numbers. If you've seen, um, the

show Succession, that Succession Severance, do you see the show's sufferance. Um, it's it's pretty much like an our slash anti work type show. UM. And so I think one more people are coming too, the realization that hey, this kind of sucks, the fact that we have to work this much, so we need to reduce the amount of time we work, um, the type of work between to change type of work we do. So it's a quantitative and qualitative shift and something I spoke about in my view on anti work

or post work, whatever you want to call it. These changes, these steps to skal on total energy use, can be taken by a broad range of organizations. Groups, mass movements, popular assemblies, unions, cooperatives, not waiting for the state, but going beyond it. I think we've seen by now. I think if you have not seen right now, it needs open your eyes. The state is not doing enough or some cases not doing anything at all, to respond to these cry sees, and we need to take it into

our own hands to do so. UM. I have a video in store UM for December that as one of my patron's jokes, might have the alphabet agencies after me. But there are a lot of different actions that we can take UM to integrate the growth, to move towards a decro society, to de grow our economies, a combination of acts of confrontation and non cooperation and prefiguration in

some degrowth challenges. The dominant growth imperative it's in the name it is intentionally servers of in its title because it requires us to think about how we can collectively organize the restructuring of all economy and the downscale of energy and resource use worldwide. The transition back into balance with the living will in a safe, just an equitable way. The growth means striving for a selftitude, life and dignity

and abundance for all. The growth of mean liberating ourselves not just from the ways that the growth imperative has shaped our technologies. Education the growth who require that we not just liberate ourselves from the ways that the growth imperative has shaved our technologies and institutions, but it demands that we also reconsider education our cultural norms and values,

or identities or mindsets or relationships. It will be a massive shift with anarchists called social revolution um, but it's one that is worthwhile. As some de growth advocates would see, it's de growth by choice or the growth by force?

What's the use of de growth here? Has being used slightly differently, the growth by choice being like I described, collectively organized, democratically managed restructure of the economy to bring into bounce the living will in a safe, just nequitable way um, whereas de growth by force is more so a combination of austerity and apocalypse. So up to you,

all powers, all powers of the people. So there's there's a Japanese Marxist named Khe Saito who's been writing like a bunch of stuff recently, who basically like he's been probably the biggest voice of the growth in Japan, and his book Capital on the Antipascene is finally getting translated into English pretty soon, and so yeah, check that out

when it comes out. His stuff is really good and he like basically has revived both Marxism and d growth in Japan after Marxism is kind of like enclosure after a bunch of weird fairy Wait we we don't need to get into the story of the claps of the Japanese Left. But yeah, that that that's coming. I'll check that out. Yeah, yeah, I'm looking forward to that book when it comes out. Yeah, me too. If you want to check out my videos on this topic and others,

just go to YouTube dot com slash androidsm. You can also follow me on Twitter um while Twitter still exists, on discloss and Drew and she could potentially even support on Patreon, feature dot com slash st true as it Peace. It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone Media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

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