Yesterday, I got a text message from my mobile network operator. The message contained a link to an article titled “The minimalist’s guide” and detailed the steps we could — and should — all take to live neater, more modest lives by getting rid of things such as old clothes and electronics, donating books we won’t read again, and, apparently, deleting old emails to save on cloud space (and emissions).
Dietary control what/what not to eat, fasting, abstinence, self-denial, foregoing material comforts, contemplation to enrich the spirit, rituals, only one source for all you need to know, obedience to higher authority - I think that’s called religion.
Could we partition part of the world for the unshaven, sandal wearing, yogurt eaters to live in ? Maybe try it for a generation or until, presumedly, they die out due to lack of warmth, medicine and a lack of purpose in life.
I don’t think MOST people are stupid. It’s just most people are too specialized in their busy lives to find the hours it takes to critically think through what a small number of powerful elites are doing. The first step in breaking that loop is to not think people are stupid. Most of them are good. They’re just busy.
Thank you. I've caught myself thinking the same but it's unfair, really. Most people just don't have the time and energy to question things like the degrowth push. It's not their fault, really, it's the way we are, too caught up in our own lives to worry about the bigger picture, which is why when the real picture hits us head-on we're very surprised.
True, but smart people recognize this and don't become advocates before doing both-side analysis. I often tell people with whom I'm arguing/discussing that if they don't understand my viewpoint, their opinion has little value in my eyes.
Evidently the spreadsheet jockeys that work for the bobbleheads in Brussels think everything can simply be dialed back. Hey, what if we cut everything in our spreadsheet by 10%, why not 20%, do I hear 50%? Everything works together. Maybe not perfectly, but together. The critical thinking skills in Brussels, if there are any, are along the lines of Zombies. Their plans for world domination will result in a version of "The Walking Dead." If they would designate a city for a renewables only pilot project, they would get some real good data on how fast people can dial back virtually everything. 🤘😎🤘
They sure ain't interested in Degrowth when it comes to military misadventures. Killing & maiming hundreds of thousands of young people who carry a huge unrealized energy & material investment of society, now unrealized. Vast amounts of material in buildings destroyed. Extremely high material & energy containing military hardware destroyed almost as soon as it is built.
And blowing up a huge pipeline infrastructure is no problem for them either. Vast material & energy resources wasted.
Just these 2 things are far more material & energy resource wastage than all their "minimalization" crap combined.
Add the factor of diversity, inclusion, equity (DIE) as opposed to merit-based hiring in, for example, airplane manufacturing, and people who value their lives will certainly stop travelling.
Degrowther: We can do it creating a resource based economy not based on GDP but on quality of life of different indicators. I do not support decreasing the GDP but replacing materials and methods to achieve sustainability. That can be done through regulation and socialization of resources.
Skeptic: Right, and who gets to decide what is a good quality of life? You're just hiding the tyrannical authority behind a sciency term.
Degrowther: By negotiations and agreement between nations, in our case EU. This is a way possible open to discussion.
Skeptic: Nations deciding quality of life is also another term for tyrannical authority.
Last I checked, I am the final authority on my quality of life.
Try to hide behind sciency sounding glitter all you want, you're a vicious authoritarian claiming it's for "your own good."
Energy is the economy (GDP), it has also had a bearing on population growth, look at any graph with all these on and you’ll find they’re in lockstep. Apart from Degrowth there’s also (and maybe others) the Circular Economy and “The Great Simplification” (TGS), of which its aims are to prepare for a reduction in FREE FINITE Flammable Fossils, in particular Oil, and probably the first to become difficult to obtain Diesel. TGS’s object is in preparing for this reduction in energy “to bend not break”. But irrespective of what happens to energy consumption whether it rises or falls humanity’s baked its cake, it’s overshot Gaia’s ability in oh so many ways to recycle and replenish. Humanity is screwed, doomed, f%*ked. The planet is heating up, there’s PFAS (forever chemicals) and microplastics (Oil based plastic) in the rainwater everywhere. Watersheds, rivers and oceans have become sewage tailings ponds for anything humanity can’t and won’t deal with. We are destroying forest at an unprecedented rate, displacing wild animals, replacing ancient forest’s mature trees with food and fuel cash crops only viable with use of Oil based fertilisers and pest and fungicides. The extinction rate of wild animals and insects is off the scale replaced with larger numbers of domesticated food animals and pets. Storm and tempest, floods, heat waves, heat domes and fires, social unrest and wars are just a symptom of what we (humanity) have set in motion, there’s nothing we can do, so just enjoy the ride, party and consume to your desire, Gaia will be the one to call time and it may not be that far off🤔
I would normally suggest hiding under your bed, but I think under your Fainting Couch would be far easier in your case, since you're already reposed there.
Sorry if the thought of human extinction upsets you. it won’t be a falling over the cliff scenario, we’ll not for a while, but it is in motion it just takes time to build up sufficient momentum to become really, really, scary, but the signs are all there. I only touched on the easy ecological issues that came to mind, but there’s enough in my original comment to check out my claims.
As for hiding under a “Fainting Couch” or anything else for that matter it would be a pointless waste of time, hiding isn’t going to stop human extinction, so accept that it’s happening, enjoy life, get outdoors, help as many people as possibly enjoy theirs, drink be merry and party at every opportunity like there’s no tomorrow, because eventually there won’t be a tomorrow.
You might like to lookup Prof. Eliot Jacobson’s - climatecasino - Watching the World Go Bye - “On Being a “Doomer”🤔
I’ve never said the World will end, well not unless it’s hit by an out of the blue large enough asteroid) but at some point it will end, but humanity’s will be a lot sooner. There’re Doomers and Doomers, like “The end of word is neigh” Doomers. Some Doomers might act like weather forecasters who can provide you with the most accurate predicted weather forecast ever, but that’s all it is a forecast. I’ve never said or written a date, or predicted one. There are some Doomers like Prof. Eliot Jacobson, (who I follow), who are able to take verified measurement data and project and model it, tracking it over time presenting data on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis, putting it out in the public domain for anyone to challenge, on his site “climatecasino - Watching the World Go Bye - Climate Casino” you can place a bet on what the climate is most likely to do. There’s also for systems ecology, Doomer: Lyle Lewis, a former endangered species biologist with the US Department of Interior; his latest book, “Racing To Extinction- Why humanity will soon vanish”🤔
Some 250 years ago a handful of bright people looked at the society they lived in and saw a problem of over regulation. They penned a document stating both that none were born subservient to another; that each human being was born with the rights to life, liberty, and were allowed to pursue happiness. The American Declaration of Independence was not written for some people, it is a declaration for all people, something this generation no longer know.
Both liberty and the pursuit of happiness have been trashed by the ‘more equal than others’ green crowd with most of them liking spotted owls and frogs more than human beings. Seems to me a bit more resentment on our part would be welcomed. Complacency when everyone want to stir your pie has been costly.
As with all of these ideas that are put forth as for our own good, they will be so much more believable to the masses when they lead by example. So, let's see the degrowthers give up all the perks of their current life, their iPhones, their iPads , their morning latte and their heat and air conditioning. I won't hold my breath
I'd love to hive off a section of the planet - say, the size of California - and open it up for a "de-growth" project—no trade with the outside world. Let them pursue their anti-industrial agenda with each other and survive according to their own economic principles and ethics. Who among the "de-growthers" would even volunteer to colonize such a land? I submit none because they don't want a better world; they want to destroy ours.
It amazes me how many of these unintended consequences of ideas like "degrowth" are almost completely ignored. For example, no one ever discusses the loss of revenue to the government if everyone drives an electric vehicle. Most of what we pay for gasoline and diesel is tax (state, federal, sales tax, plus severance taxes and other taxes collected before the gas pump). Texas recently added a fee to the registration of electric vehicles to make up for this, but I don't know of any other places that have done this. Eventually they will have to if they want to maintain roads. Electric vehicles will get even more expensive once they pay equally.
Likewise, when the current US administration decided to nearly halt oil and gas leasing, no one discussed the fact that 50% of those initial lease fees were paid to states (New Mexico alone took in $487 million in one lease sale in 2018), and that most states that get these monies use them to pay for their education systems, or other essential services. The US government still counts oil and gas revenues from royalties and lease fees as its second largest source of income. If wind and solar can't support themselves now, how will they function with the added burden of replacing revenue lost from oil and gas that they are intended to replace? In many governments around the world, the majority of their revenue comes from the sale of oil and gas. Are we okay with bankrupting Nigeria? Libya? Iraq? Azerbaijan? Angola? Congo? How many wars will be fought over this hardship? I guess the people that have almost nothing will continue to have nothing, or less of nothing, and enjoy the fact that they are the leaders in degrowth (even though they missed out on the growth to begin with).
Has anyone wondered how much land values would go down if we needed less food? We replaced 10% of all gasoline and 5-20% of all diesel with fuel made from corn and soybeans in the USA, so farmers now depend on the gasoline and diesel markets as much as the oil industry. If we stop using gasoline and diesel, will farmers be forced to grow fewer crops? Even more bemusing, large amounts of carbon credits are planned for when those corn ethanol facilities begin to capture the carbon dioxide they generate, so eventually degrowth becomes a problem for carbon credit markets. And how much tax revenue from property taxes would be lost to local governments when that happened, or would they assume that taxes would stay the same while the property lost value? The government is largely funded by the very systems that government policies supporting "no growth" or "transition" would decimate. Now I for one would be happy to see government employment rolls reduced due to lower tax revenues, but those government workers will find it difficult when they realize they have been hung by their own policy ropes.
"Well, that would mean that a number of companies would be making a lot less money."
And that, friend and neighbors, is what the entire "Green" movement is about, IE: Replacing Capitalism with Socialism/Communism/Same thing.
Some of the more arrogant Greens are getting bold enough to admit this prime focus openly, and I thank them for doing so.
Now, if we can just get the voters to wake the heck up to this truth before the Technocrats decide to suspend Our Democracies™ in order to "save" them.
Dietary control what/what not to eat, fasting, abstinence, self-denial, foregoing material comforts, contemplation to enrich the spirit, rituals, only one source for all you need to know, obedience to higher authority - I think that’s called religion.
Calling it a religion in this case is too kind. More of a Satanic Cult than a Religion.
Could we partition part of the world for the unshaven, sandal wearing, yogurt eaters to live in ? Maybe try it for a generation or until, presumedly, they die out due to lack of warmth, medicine and a lack of purpose in life.
I like this idea!
Correction: "almond yogurt eaters" they are opposed to cow's milk.
Or maybe the unshaven will inherit the earth, or what's left of it. You never know!
I love the way you write. Fits in with my world view that most people are stupid.
Most are not stupid. A lot of stupid people is still a problem however.
Read https://bonpote.com/en/the-5-basic-laws-of-human-stupidity/.
I don’t think MOST people are stupid. It’s just most people are too specialized in their busy lives to find the hours it takes to critically think through what a small number of powerful elites are doing. The first step in breaking that loop is to not think people are stupid. Most of them are good. They’re just busy.
Thank you. I've caught myself thinking the same but it's unfair, really. Most people just don't have the time and energy to question things like the degrowth push. It's not their fault, really, it's the way we are, too caught up in our own lives to worry about the bigger picture, which is why when the real picture hits us head-on we're very surprised.
True, but smart people recognize this and don't become advocates before doing both-side analysis. I often tell people with whom I'm arguing/discussing that if they don't understand my viewpoint, their opinion has little value in my eyes.
Irina, your perspective and commentary on the “minimalist” nonsense is spot on, as usual. Well written!
Thank you!
The Paradox of Thrift. John Maynard Keynes.
Evidently the spreadsheet jockeys that work for the bobbleheads in Brussels think everything can simply be dialed back. Hey, what if we cut everything in our spreadsheet by 10%, why not 20%, do I hear 50%? Everything works together. Maybe not perfectly, but together. The critical thinking skills in Brussels, if there are any, are along the lines of Zombies. Their plans for world domination will result in a version of "The Walking Dead." If they would designate a city for a renewables only pilot project, they would get some real good data on how fast people can dial back virtually everything. 🤘😎🤘
They sure ain't interested in Degrowth when it comes to military misadventures. Killing & maiming hundreds of thousands of young people who carry a huge unrealized energy & material investment of society, now unrealized. Vast amounts of material in buildings destroyed. Extremely high material & energy containing military hardware destroyed almost as soon as it is built.
And blowing up a huge pipeline infrastructure is no problem for them either. Vast material & energy resources wasted.
Just these 2 things are far more material & energy resource wastage than all their "minimalization" crap combined.
But what about the pandemic? The resultant depop fits into their degrowth scenario. Billions less useless consumers, less consumption requirements.
As I like to complain, this is not the zombie apocalypse we TWD fans wanted. We want real zombies. They're so much easier to deal with. :D
Add the factor of diversity, inclusion, equity (DIE) as opposed to merit-based hiring in, for example, airplane manufacturing, and people who value their lives will certainly stop travelling.
Good point. Productive inefficiency due to DEI & CRT are a superb way to waste vast amounts of material & energy resources.
Excellent point.
How can a degrowth strategy compete with growth strategy?
Only when it is forced upon us from above, namely by the Globalitarian Misanthropists who are Malthusian Parasites.
Hard to maintain control when you have no resources as a result of degrowth policies.
They're yet to realise this.
"Degrowth for thee, but not for me." Those In Charge (TIC)
Typical conversation with a degrowther:
Degrowther: We can do it creating a resource based economy not based on GDP but on quality of life of different indicators. I do not support decreasing the GDP but replacing materials and methods to achieve sustainability. That can be done through regulation and socialization of resources.
Skeptic: Right, and who gets to decide what is a good quality of life? You're just hiding the tyrannical authority behind a sciency term.
Degrowther: By negotiations and agreement between nations, in our case EU. This is a way possible open to discussion.
Skeptic: Nations deciding quality of life is also another term for tyrannical authority.
Last I checked, I am the final authority on my quality of life.
Try to hide behind sciency sounding glitter all you want, you're a vicious authoritarian claiming it's for "your own good."
It's not for your own good, Jeff, it's for "The Greater Good":
We need you to stay in your home for a couple of weeks. It's for the greater good.
We need you to close your business just for a short time. It's for the greater good.
We need you to stay home just a little bit longer than two weeks. It's, it's for the greater good.
We need you to wear this on your face. It's for the greater good.
We need you to wear two of these on your face. It's for the greater good.
We need you to inject this into your body. It's for the greater good.
We need you to spend the holidays alone. It's for the greater good.
You must inject this into your body. If you want to feed your family, it's for the greater good.
We need you to stop eating that. It's not good for the environment. It's for the greater good.
We need you to stop driving your car and flying. It's for the greater good.
We need you to stop heating your home so often. It's for the greater good.
We need you to stop saying that It's hurting some people's feelings. This is for the greater good.
We need you to stop having children. It's not good for the planet. This is for the greater good.
We need you to stop talking about your faith. It's offending people. This is for the greater good.
We need to separate you from your children because you're not complying. This is for the greater good.
We need to hold you in a facility for a little while. For not cooperating. This is for the greater good.
Always remember, this is for the greater good, Citizen.....
Energy is the economy (GDP), it has also had a bearing on population growth, look at any graph with all these on and you’ll find they’re in lockstep. Apart from Degrowth there’s also (and maybe others) the Circular Economy and “The Great Simplification” (TGS), of which its aims are to prepare for a reduction in FREE FINITE Flammable Fossils, in particular Oil, and probably the first to become difficult to obtain Diesel. TGS’s object is in preparing for this reduction in energy “to bend not break”. But irrespective of what happens to energy consumption whether it rises or falls humanity’s baked its cake, it’s overshot Gaia’s ability in oh so many ways to recycle and replenish. Humanity is screwed, doomed, f%*ked. The planet is heating up, there’s PFAS (forever chemicals) and microplastics (Oil based plastic) in the rainwater everywhere. Watersheds, rivers and oceans have become sewage tailings ponds for anything humanity can’t and won’t deal with. We are destroying forest at an unprecedented rate, displacing wild animals, replacing ancient forest’s mature trees with food and fuel cash crops only viable with use of Oil based fertilisers and pest and fungicides. The extinction rate of wild animals and insects is off the scale replaced with larger numbers of domesticated food animals and pets. Storm and tempest, floods, heat waves, heat domes and fires, social unrest and wars are just a symptom of what we (humanity) have set in motion, there’s nothing we can do, so just enjoy the ride, party and consume to your desire, Gaia will be the one to call time and it may not be that far off🤔
"Humanity is screwed, doomed, f%*ked. "
I would normally suggest hiding under your bed, but I think under your Fainting Couch would be far easier in your case, since you're already reposed there.
Sorry if the thought of human extinction upsets you. it won’t be a falling over the cliff scenario, we’ll not for a while, but it is in motion it just takes time to build up sufficient momentum to become really, really, scary, but the signs are all there. I only touched on the easy ecological issues that came to mind, but there’s enough in my original comment to check out my claims.
As for hiding under a “Fainting Couch” or anything else for that matter it would be a pointless waste of time, hiding isn’t going to stop human extinction, so accept that it’s happening, enjoy life, get outdoors, help as many people as possibly enjoy theirs, drink be merry and party at every opportunity like there’s no tomorrow, because eventually there won’t be a tomorrow.
You might like to lookup Prof. Eliot Jacobson’s - climatecasino - Watching the World Go Bye - “On Being a “Doomer”🤔
"... because eventually there won’t be a tomorrow."
You "Doomers" have been telling us that world was going to burn up every 10 years since Jim Hansen's 1988 Congressional kabuki-hearing.
Welcome to the 36th Anniversary of the end of the world.
I’ve never said the World will end, well not unless it’s hit by an out of the blue large enough asteroid) but at some point it will end, but humanity’s will be a lot sooner. There’re Doomers and Doomers, like “The end of word is neigh” Doomers. Some Doomers might act like weather forecasters who can provide you with the most accurate predicted weather forecast ever, but that’s all it is a forecast. I’ve never said or written a date, or predicted one. There are some Doomers like Prof. Eliot Jacobson, (who I follow), who are able to take verified measurement data and project and model it, tracking it over time presenting data on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis, putting it out in the public domain for anyone to challenge, on his site “climatecasino - Watching the World Go Bye - Climate Casino” you can place a bet on what the climate is most likely to do. There’s also for systems ecology, Doomer: Lyle Lewis, a former endangered species biologist with the US Department of Interior; his latest book, “Racing To Extinction- Why humanity will soon vanish”🤔
Some 250 years ago a handful of bright people looked at the society they lived in and saw a problem of over regulation. They penned a document stating both that none were born subservient to another; that each human being was born with the rights to life, liberty, and were allowed to pursue happiness. The American Declaration of Independence was not written for some people, it is a declaration for all people, something this generation no longer know.
Both liberty and the pursuit of happiness have been trashed by the ‘more equal than others’ green crowd with most of them liking spotted owls and frogs more than human beings. Seems to me a bit more resentment on our part would be welcomed. Complacency when everyone want to stir your pie has been costly.
As with all of these ideas that are put forth as for our own good, they will be so much more believable to the masses when they lead by example. So, let's see the degrowthers give up all the perks of their current life, their iPhones, their iPads , their morning latte and their heat and air conditioning. I won't hold my breath
I'd love to hive off a section of the planet - say, the size of California - and open it up for a "de-growth" project—no trade with the outside world. Let them pursue their anti-industrial agenda with each other and survive according to their own economic principles and ethics. Who among the "de-growthers" would even volunteer to colonize such a land? I submit none because they don't want a better world; they want to destroy ours.
Well, they won't even do that for 100% wind/solar/hydrogen, so...
Second order effects was never these idiot’s strong suit.
It amazes me how many of these unintended consequences of ideas like "degrowth" are almost completely ignored. For example, no one ever discusses the loss of revenue to the government if everyone drives an electric vehicle. Most of what we pay for gasoline and diesel is tax (state, federal, sales tax, plus severance taxes and other taxes collected before the gas pump). Texas recently added a fee to the registration of electric vehicles to make up for this, but I don't know of any other places that have done this. Eventually they will have to if they want to maintain roads. Electric vehicles will get even more expensive once they pay equally.
Likewise, when the current US administration decided to nearly halt oil and gas leasing, no one discussed the fact that 50% of those initial lease fees were paid to states (New Mexico alone took in $487 million in one lease sale in 2018), and that most states that get these monies use them to pay for their education systems, or other essential services. The US government still counts oil and gas revenues from royalties and lease fees as its second largest source of income. If wind and solar can't support themselves now, how will they function with the added burden of replacing revenue lost from oil and gas that they are intended to replace? In many governments around the world, the majority of their revenue comes from the sale of oil and gas. Are we okay with bankrupting Nigeria? Libya? Iraq? Azerbaijan? Angola? Congo? How many wars will be fought over this hardship? I guess the people that have almost nothing will continue to have nothing, or less of nothing, and enjoy the fact that they are the leaders in degrowth (even though they missed out on the growth to begin with).
Has anyone wondered how much land values would go down if we needed less food? We replaced 10% of all gasoline and 5-20% of all diesel with fuel made from corn and soybeans in the USA, so farmers now depend on the gasoline and diesel markets as much as the oil industry. If we stop using gasoline and diesel, will farmers be forced to grow fewer crops? Even more bemusing, large amounts of carbon credits are planned for when those corn ethanol facilities begin to capture the carbon dioxide they generate, so eventually degrowth becomes a problem for carbon credit markets. And how much tax revenue from property taxes would be lost to local governments when that happened, or would they assume that taxes would stay the same while the property lost value? The government is largely funded by the very systems that government policies supporting "no growth" or "transition" would decimate. Now I for one would be happy to see government employment rolls reduced due to lower tax revenues, but those government workers will find it difficult when they realize they have been hung by their own policy ropes.
"Well, that would mean that a number of companies would be making a lot less money."
And that, friend and neighbors, is what the entire "Green" movement is about, IE: Replacing Capitalism with Socialism/Communism/Same thing.
Some of the more arrogant Greens are getting bold enough to admit this prime focus openly, and I thank them for doing so.
Now, if we can just get the voters to wake the heck up to this truth before the Technocrats decide to suspend Our Democracies™ in order to "save" them.
But just for a little while, they promise.....