Photo by Miguel Henriques on Unsplash
One of the nice things about starting this blog is the little community that is growing around it. I’ve met a lot of great folks here, and I hope some others have met each other through this space.
It is even better when you come across some great writing from a friend that means you can take a break from writing for a day. The below is from Kirk Hall. You can find him on Degrowth - Join the Revolution over on Facebook. He is also here on Substack, but doesn’t post.
So, take this as a warning, if you say something brilliant in the comments section of one of my essays, I might just steal it - with permission of course.
Kirk’s thoughts came from the Degrowth Needs Teambuilding essay from last week, specifically about the exogenous shocks that would be needed for Degrowth to take off, and why no leader (at least today) would dare to do so.
Enjoy.
What shock would be big enough for Degrowth to take hold?
The only shock big enough would be for a first-mover nation (or preferably a small group of countries) to introduce Degrowth. That would send shockwaves around the world. The genie would be out of the bottle. The myth of indefinite growth would be shattered. It would be a rough ride; stock markets and currencies would crash (unfortunate but unavoidable).
Degrowth would be front page news. People with influence would finally say out loud "of course you can't have infinite growth on a finite planet, and of course the middle class and rich must lose wealth, and of course our whole way of life must change"
And no country will have the courage to be a first-mover unless Degrowth becomes a household word, understood by many.
And, just in case you imagine I don't know the difficulties for a first-mover nation. (Matt’s “answers in italics).
Here’s a list of reasons why politicians are unlikely to tell the truth about the crisis and implement a vast range of Degrowth policies. The list is in roughly descending order, although it will vary according to which politician and which country.
1. Knowledge that the changes needed are massive and need to be implemented much faster than would normally happen with our current system of gradual incremental change.
True. Degrowth isn’t simply a policy shift, but also an economic one, and a cultural one. Unless implemented through fiat, those changes are slow to take hold. Those changes can happen fast (moving from horse and buggy to automobile in about a decade) but they usually don’t. So, get started. Prominent people in positions of power talking openly about degrowth as an answer would help.
2. Justified fear that even mentioning Degrowth and the massive, urgent changes needed would send the right-wing media into a frenzy of hatred.
They are always in a frenzy. This wouldn’t change that. Don’t worry that your good idea might be disliked by someone with a megaphone. Good ideas will find fertile soil to grow in.
3. Knowledge that the chances are virtually zero that they could get most countries to act together.
Collapse is coming. But we have some say in just how bad that will be. Take the reins as much as you can.
4. Extreme difficulty to get even a small group of first-mover nations together.
True, but as things collapse, people will be looking to see what ideas other than the current system are out there. Get the word out as early and often as you can. Degrowth has to have already gained purchase when the shit really hits the fan. Don’t expect wild success, but prepare for modest success.
5. Justified fear of being the first-mover nation and no other nations following or not following quickly enough. The following reasons are why politicians don’t act as a sole first-mover nation.
True. Politicians don’t lead; they follow. I argue that the “movement” has to have clear support from below before a politician will raise his/her head above the parapet.
6. Justified fear of capital flight.
Same answer as previous. But I think capital will likely already have flown by the time we get to a degrowth path.
7. Justified fear of a stock market crash.
I think the exogenous shock(s) will have already taken care of this. Also, although the stats say that nearly everyone is invested in the stock market, most of us that do have little invested. The answer would to be to introduce degrowth related policy reforms such as jobs guarantee, universal healthcare, and a well-being economy as “compliments” to the enormous piles of gold we are encouraged to sit on. I don’t know that any politician will be skilled enough to sell that. So, degrowth would likely be more palatable after a crash with no recovery in sight. The “new deal” came many years into the great depression.
8. Justified fear of losing their job. In other words, justified fear that, after announcing the massive changes, they would be incapable of convincing the electorate to vote them back into office.
Tough. You are elected to lead. Do so.
9. Losing their job means losing their power.
Tough. You are elected to lead. Do so. You would eventually have statues dedicated to you and schools named after you - if you are into that kind of thing.
10. Justified fear that if politicians were unable to convince voters of the need for Degrowth, and the need for rapid drastic action, then the imposition of such action could vastly reduce the chances of Degrowth being implemented in the future.
I disagree here. Degrowth would be a trial balloon. Back to the great depression example. New deal ideas didn’t just spring up from FDR’s head after years of the great depression. They were kicking around before then. They just became politically acceptable after other “fixes” failed.
11. Justified fear of reprisals from their corporate backers.
Tough. You are elected to lead. Do so.
12. Justified fear of a bank run.
If you are a politician suggesting these changes, you should probably communicate that they won’t all happen next Tuesday, but will be phased in over reasonable period. But in the end if banks are going to panic - they are going to panic. FDIC insurance limits in the US are $250,000, so most people would be fine. Similar programs exist in most other countries.
13. Justified fear of being sued under international ISDS agreements (Investor-state dispute settlement).
“Go ahead and sue me for saving your children’s future. I dare you”. - Theoretical brave politician.
14. Justified fear of recession/depression caused by all of the above.
These ideas need to be normalized up through the grass roots to mitigate this, but economic disruption is going to happen.
15. Justified fear of social unrest.
These ideas need to be normalized up through the grass roots to mitigate this, but social unrest is going to happen.
16. Justified fear of losing potential military support from their allies.
I don’t know about that. Most wars are an argument over resources. If you tell your neighbors, you need less resources from now on, they should worry about internal revolutions as a threat - not you.
17. Justified fear of military invasion.
By whom? The US? The public appetite for that is near zero. I don’t think such adventurism would be tolerated for long. But I could be wrong.
18. Justified fear of an inability to plan in secret. The massive changes would need consultation with many legal and other experts. The chances of leaks are almost 100%.
Leaks are to be expected. So be open about the process. This won’t be easy, but collapse will be worse.
If you want to know what a speech from a politician actually openly talking about these things would look like, you can look here: The Speech We Need to Hear from Our Leaders
Thank you again, Kirk. None of these items are that surprising, but it helps to have them articulated in order to know the challenge better. What do you think? Can we get past any of these hurdles? Does the courage exist to do so? Do you have any solutions to any of them?
I agree with all your italicized responses (but note your spelling error--one takes the reins, as opposed to the reign of a king).
In Kirk's preamble I see the extremely common--virtually universal--conflation of a country, its politicians and its people. These are three separate things, and we need the clarity on this to talk about possibilities. Let us please drop the pretense that a politician is concerned about pleasing voters, or the good of the country. In the US certainly, and largely elsewhere as well, politicians are concerned about pleasing their funders, so they can stay in office. The interests of their funders are generally directly athwart the interests of the people--but this is not a problem for politicians, as voters don't pay much attention, the media covers issues in the ways pleasing to ITS funders (advertisers mainly), so the politician need only posture appropriately in election years to get reelected, as long as s/he has given the funders what they want so the campaign cash keeps coming. The Price and Gilens study blew a hole in the notion that politicians must give the people what they want.
I also agree that we won't get any change of policy, no matter how desperately needed, until a crisis comes. And that when that crisis does come--inevitably and probably soon--what happens will be strongly influenced by "the ideas that are lying around." So lots of yapping about degrowth (and the other needed changes) now, is what the doctor ordered. My only suggestion to amplify it is to note that, to influence the public...and thus their so-called leaders...you need to DEPICT the world we could have after changes are implemented, rather than merely talking about it, in dry academic language. So, fiction--ideally a movie, as so many people don't read, but a novel could work too. I think this is what Kim Stanley Robinson did for climate change in Ministry for the Future...depicted HOW a world that took responsible action to curb climate change could come about. It indeed starts with a crisis, and it covers many years, with plenty of pushback--in other words, it's realistic.
Thanks for an interesting interview.
The issue I can’t get past with the need for living within the boundaries of sustainable resource use is only slightly hinted at in point 17. Any group willing to sacrifice future sustainability for immediate gain through accelerated resource consumption will out compete any sustainable neighbor, and then simply leverage their own advantage in power derived from the extra resources they are consuming to forcibly take their sustainable neighbor’s carefully managed ‘future resources’ as their own runs out.
Additionally, as we have seen, much of the pollution and waste produced by unsustainable resource consumption isn’t limited to one area - even if one group opts to abuse the environment everyone suffers.
The only way I can see to prevent this is to have some higher level arbiter, which would need to be supported by resource use that is at least as unsustainable as the potential aggressors they’d need to keep in check, and we’d quickly be right back where we are now, until the symptoms of unsustainable resource use force everyone to live within the limits of the consequences of having no resources left to exploit, which is the exact scenario degrowth is attempting to protect us from.
As far as I can tell this problem scales from the individual with a nice garden being robbed by his neighbor with more bullets than food to the small ‘eco-village’ that gets overtaken by an adjacent group that opts to invest more in guns and less in ‘permaculture’ up to the national level as exemplified by colonialism in previous centuries.
What am I missing that would solve this central problem to everyone collectively deciding to ‘do the right thing’?