Degrowth is the Answer

Problem is, not many people know the question.

Photo by Aaron Sebastian on Unsplash

The question is: “What is a way of organizing our societies and economies that puts people and our environment first in an attempt to stop and reverse the economic and ecological damage that is steadily progressing toward the collapse of our civilization?”

Go ahead and ask a friend that question and report back on the strange looks you get.

It was good to take time off during the holidays and do a whole lot of nothing. I hope most of you had nice and relaxing end of 2024 and beginning of 2025. Now that I’m relaxed and refreshed, let me get back to complaining about the world and hair-brained schemes about how to fix it.

America is in a bad place.

It’s not just America that is in a bad place, but all of humanity. But I’m an American, and I spent the end of last year calling America a Long-Con, a Protection Racket and a Class War, so I should probably put a bow on those thoughts and see if there is any way out of our current situation.

It’s been a few weeks since my last essay, so let’s review:

A long con is an elaborate confidence game that develops in several stages over an extended period of time wherein the con man or swindler gains the victim’s trust, often bypassing small profits with the goal of reaping a much larger payout in the final maneuver:

The key to pulling off a long con is giving your marks the illusion of control while you and your team manipulate their choices.

That sounds like America.

America has become a confidence game that developed over an extended period of time wherein those in power gained the victim’s trust, through representative democracy, which is now owned by the wealthy and corporations. Slowly, over the past fifty years, laws have been written, court precedence set, and lobbying dollars flowed to ensure that America serves corporations and the wealthy before it serves America’s citizens.

America is a protection racket. Our leaders tell us the equivalent of “That’s a nice economy you’ve got there; it would be a shame if anything happened to it.” The implication is that we should count our lucky stars that we live in the greatest economy the world has ever known, and if we stop killing ourselves to make that economy work, it could all go away, and wouldn’t we be sorry.

We are killing ourselves so the 1% can steal $50 Trillion from us over the past 50 years.

America is a Class War. As I noted previously, a 2020 study by the RAND Corporation put the first-ever price tag on how much income inequality costs American workers. The bill is $50 trillion. According to the study, $50 trillion has been diverted from working Americans to the wealthiest 1% since 1975. If that isn’t an act of aggression by one class against another, I don’t know what is.

Degrowth is the answer.

You had to know I was going to say that, right?

If we take the degrowth path, that means we as a nation recognize the long con for what it is and are taking steps to stop being conned. If we take the degrowth path, we walk away from the worship of GDP and the religion of growth at all costs. We could confront the protection racket in the same way. It wouldn’t be a shame if something happened to the economy. The threat of “That’s a nice economy you have there, it’d be a shame if anything happened to it,” is laughable. We don’t want that economy, it’s killing us. Choosing the degrowth path would mean declaring an end to the class war and taking real action to end it.

What would this look like?

• Ending rule by corporations and oligarchs who now control our government and economy

• Stepping away from a growth for growth’s sake economy that focuses on GDP as the way we measure success.

• Fixing the tax system so that it is adequately progressive, which will help rebuild the middle class.

Easy right? Those three things are indeed big changes that won’t happen tomorrow. The Powell memo was written over 50 years ago. It took about ten years of action before it bore any legislative fruit, and now 50 years later it has helped create the America we see today.

Most people don’t know what degrowth is and have never heard of it. Yet the policies that would lead us to a post-growth world (four-day work week, universal basic income, universal basic services, progressive taxation, and many others) are very popular. The more people know about a post-growth world, the more they tend to like it. So, let’s spread the word.

If we want America to reach anything near its full potential, where it serves people first, and not profit first, we have to start acting. I’ve got a project I’m working on (with the help of some others) that I hope will help. I’ll talk more about it in due time, when it becomes an official entity and the work, we are doing starts seeing the light of day.

I’ve been talking to people in the degrowth, post-growth world for years now. I see the momentum building of everyday people, and large media outlets, and large financial institutions mentioning degrowth out loud and wondering if there might just be something to the idea.

You will continue to see more discussion about degrowth in the coming weeks, months and years - and not just from me. There are many more people than there were a year ago talking about degrowth, and many who are degrowth curious. I encourage you to reach out to them and further this conversation.

Let us know if you are working on anything degrowth related, or searching for like-minded people in your area. Share any details in the comments section and ask for help if you need it.