• Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 year ago

    degrowth doesn’t mean worse quality of life, in many instances it very much increases quality of life.

    would you not prefer to work half as much as you do? we can have that with degrowth.

    • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Maybe I’m misunderstanding degrowth. Is it trying to decrease GDP? How does it do that? Or is it moreso increased worker rights and protections with decreased GDP growth as a byproduct? Because I’m all for the second version.

      • kmaismith@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        IMO Degrowth would have to start with finding better, less destructive metrics than GDP to measure and plan economic prosperity with

      • SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social
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        1 year ago

        I believe that the intent is to shift focus away from material goods, since we have long passed the point of diminishing returns on increasing material wealth increasing individual well-being, and focusing on things that actually do improve it, which our system overall neglects. That would be things like meaningful work, community, art, leisure, et cetera. In short, the things that make us happy, but which GDP doesn’t measure.

        • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          That makes sense. Those activities are still adding value, but not usually taken into account in economic metrics.

      • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 year ago

        at least to my understanding degrowth is about not doing things that are ultimately not actually productive for our quality of life, the prime example being the clothing industry which churns out more clothes than we would ever need every year and literally just throws it in the garbage, going so far as cutting things up just so people won’t fish it out of the container and wear it without paying.

        There are a ton of things like that, which basically only serve to enrich the already wealthy, and if we stop doing that shit and just give people what they need to live regardless of if they have an employment, we can all enjoy life more while also being more sustainable.

        The solarpunk movement shows one take on what degrowth can look like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solarpunk

    • rchive@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, but if everyone decreases work, you get less production and less stuff, and then increased poverty. It’s easy to say more stuff isn’t always better from the comfort of the Internet, but the truth is that abundance of material production is responsible for the relative extreme wealth we do have today.

      • masquenox@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        you get less production and less stuff

        Not really.

        then increased poverty.

        You mean the poverty we already have thanks to capitalism?

        • rchive@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Yes, really.

          And poverty is many many times lower today than it was a few hundred years ago before capitalism. Even entertaining the idea that it’s not is completely insane. Capitalism correlates extremely strongly with low poverty country to country within a single time period, as well. 2023, for example.

          • masquenox@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            No. Not really.

            And poverty is many many times lower

            Did you come up with this galaxy-brained tripe before or after considering the crushing 3rd world poverty that sustains global capitalism?

            Capitalism correlates

            According to whom, Clyde? Capitalists?

            • rchive@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              If your argument is basically just conspiracy theory, than I don’t know what to tell you.

              • JamesFire@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                You’re not proving anything, just stating vague and baseless claims, and concluding they mean what you want them to mean.

                They’re responding to such meaningless bullshit in an entirely appropriate way. If you want a discussion, you need to have something to discuss.

              • masquenox@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Capitalism is a conspiracy theory now?

                Hold on… I need to fetch the popcorn. Your little right-wing logic pretzel is about to go full Chernobyl.