Wouldn't it be revolutionary if it were to come to pass! What is remarkable is that this is all written, in beautiful detail, in so many places, but none of it implemented, EVER.
Despite my rusted on pessimism about the world, I am grateful you keep drawing our attention the fact there is a clear path to follow. The thinking has been done. We just have to start the journey. We can tweak it as we go.
The wealthy are not going to just give up the control of government that they've worked hard to purchase. As long as the highest form of so-called "democracy" is "voting," nothing is going to change.
Voting is short-term oriented. While the Club of Rome is asking for 3% to 4% to ameliorate our damage to the very habitat that allows us to live, your average voter is going to say, "I can't afford 3% to 4% more!" And the moneyed interests are all to willing to promote that message.
Right now, in Canada, the servants of the moneyed interest are screaming "AXE THE TAX!" about a carbon tax that is re-distributed to the lowest 50% of wage-earners. And they're sucking it up, the fools! Then, after the moneyed interests get elected, they'll say, "Hey, what happened to that $1,800 check I used to get every year?"
What I didn't see on that list was anything about social engineering. How will these changes be accepted by rich and poor alike?
Voting won't get us there. What is needed is sortition, or government office by random selection, similar to jury duty. That is much closer to "government by the people." Then, we need an ethic common in certain indigenous people: hold a big party every year, where those who are doing the best are expected to give it all away.
I just don't see the sort of societal changes necessary happening in a practical time-window. Government is just too big and too easily subverted and perverted. Instead, such changes will have to wait for post-crash times.
Rather, I think small groups of consenting people could do this at the community level. These small groups will have to be self-supporting in the larger scheme, and egalitarian from within.
But these "communities" are not the communities that Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates live in.
In a world of declining energy resources, things are about to re-localize. If your community feeds itself and keeps a low profile, Elon, Mark, and Bill won't even know you exist, once the electricity goes out.
Would a universal basic dividend tied to resource extraction actually incentivise the public even more to support business as usual vs degrowth?
You would maybe have to have a system where the dividend increased over time, and was multiplied by a factor representing the actual sustainability of extracting resources.
So if an industry was a big polluter they paid ever increasing dividends then multiplied further. Whilst regenerative activities had their pay outs cut right down maybe even to 0 if fully 100% sustainable. Extra money in the pot past a set dividend per citizen amount could be dedicated to grants for nature restoration and the transformation of industry to less impact or lower scale. (Eg Pay for sunk costs of oil rigs)
The high costs to polluters would be represented in higher prices of their product, and disincentivise purchase vs regenerative options. The cap on universal citizen dividend would prevent a positive connection between extraction and income, and discourage consumerism. Whilst a set layed out increase of the dividend over time (beyond inflation that the cap is in line with) but which probably eventually levels out, would provide the resources to finance broader global redistribution as well- which could also be set as an automatic part of the system.
You pollute, you pay, people don’t benefit MORE from pollution, that money goes to regeneration, sunk costs to prevent the pollution regardless and increasingly larger proportions end up being transferred from wealthy to poor.
I don’t think this would ever get implemented as a globally agreed system - but if poorer countries (or blocks of) that would immediately benefit adopted their own versions of the model which prevented resource extraction at their own detriment, and wealthy countries did so based on pressure from their citizens and each other and a need to deal with the sunk costs of former governments, it might be possible to have many interlocking models that worked for each country, making places more or less desirable to live and do business.
I’m sure I’ve not just come up with this... and I’m sure I’m missing a lot of the picture. But something like it would make political economics actually interesting to citizens and revolutionary to status quo.
Wouldn't it be revolutionary if it were to come to pass! What is remarkable is that this is all written, in beautiful detail, in so many places, but none of it implemented, EVER.
Despite my rusted on pessimism about the world, I am grateful you keep drawing our attention the fact there is a clear path to follow. The thinking has been done. We just have to start the journey. We can tweak it as we go.
Nice platitudes. I give them 0.005% chance.
The wealthy are not going to just give up the control of government that they've worked hard to purchase. As long as the highest form of so-called "democracy" is "voting," nothing is going to change.
Voting is short-term oriented. While the Club of Rome is asking for 3% to 4% to ameliorate our damage to the very habitat that allows us to live, your average voter is going to say, "I can't afford 3% to 4% more!" And the moneyed interests are all to willing to promote that message.
Right now, in Canada, the servants of the moneyed interest are screaming "AXE THE TAX!" about a carbon tax that is re-distributed to the lowest 50% of wage-earners. And they're sucking it up, the fools! Then, after the moneyed interests get elected, they'll say, "Hey, what happened to that $1,800 check I used to get every year?"
What I didn't see on that list was anything about social engineering. How will these changes be accepted by rich and poor alike?
Voting won't get us there. What is needed is sortition, or government office by random selection, similar to jury duty. That is much closer to "government by the people." Then, we need an ethic common in certain indigenous people: hold a big party every year, where those who are doing the best are expected to give it all away.
I just don't see the sort of societal changes necessary happening in a practical time-window. Government is just too big and too easily subverted and perverted. Instead, such changes will have to wait for post-crash times.
Rather, I think small groups of consenting people could do this at the community level. These small groups will have to be self-supporting in the larger scheme, and egalitarian from within.
But these "communities" are not the communities that Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates live in.
In a world of declining energy resources, things are about to re-localize. If your community feeds itself and keeps a low profile, Elon, Mark, and Bill won't even know you exist, once the electricity goes out.
For those who dabble in Biblical, Plane or Flat earth, here is a summation that you might get a kick out of:
https://soberchristiangentlemanpodcast.substack.com/p/s1-listener-question-biblical-cosmology
Would a universal basic dividend tied to resource extraction actually incentivise the public even more to support business as usual vs degrowth?
You would maybe have to have a system where the dividend increased over time, and was multiplied by a factor representing the actual sustainability of extracting resources.
So if an industry was a big polluter they paid ever increasing dividends then multiplied further. Whilst regenerative activities had their pay outs cut right down maybe even to 0 if fully 100% sustainable. Extra money in the pot past a set dividend per citizen amount could be dedicated to grants for nature restoration and the transformation of industry to less impact or lower scale. (Eg Pay for sunk costs of oil rigs)
The high costs to polluters would be represented in higher prices of their product, and disincentivise purchase vs regenerative options. The cap on universal citizen dividend would prevent a positive connection between extraction and income, and discourage consumerism. Whilst a set layed out increase of the dividend over time (beyond inflation that the cap is in line with) but which probably eventually levels out, would provide the resources to finance broader global redistribution as well- which could also be set as an automatic part of the system.
You pollute, you pay, people don’t benefit MORE from pollution, that money goes to regeneration, sunk costs to prevent the pollution regardless and increasingly larger proportions end up being transferred from wealthy to poor.
I don’t think this would ever get implemented as a globally agreed system - but if poorer countries (or blocks of) that would immediately benefit adopted their own versions of the model which prevented resource extraction at their own detriment, and wealthy countries did so based on pressure from their citizens and each other and a need to deal with the sunk costs of former governments, it might be possible to have many interlocking models that worked for each country, making places more or less desirable to live and do business.
I’m sure I’ve not just come up with this... and I’m sure I’m missing a lot of the picture. But something like it would make political economics actually interesting to citizens and revolutionary to status quo.
🤞🏼🏄🏼♀️🌏