1637 sats \ 2 replies \ @elvismercury 18 Nov 2023 \ on: Accelerationism, Decelerationism, and Bitcoin bitcoin
This is a great post and an important issue to dig into.
Here's an attempt to steelman the degrowth people, who overlap greatly with the deceleration people -- I don't think they can reasonably be treated separately, given the forces at play. Note that this isn't a definitive steelman, because I think this is a big tent group. But it's one particular type of steelman.
The capitalist system, whose most foundational (or perhaps only) axiom is that profit must be produced above all else, is doing great harm to the world because its basis in economic calculation renders invisible things that are non-economic, or that poorly fit into a property rights paradigm.
For instance, when a beautiful drive has been ruined for hundreds of millions of person-hours, this loss is unseen. What is seen is the advertising revenue. The suffering of billions of creatures in the factory farm system is also unseen -- it's worth nothing. The only relevant factor to the system is the profit that can be realized by selling chickens. The turmoil that climate change will wreak on billions of people, most of them poor, is likewise irrelevant. Even property ownership, in this case, won't protect their interests.
For all these reasons, the system must be reformed or changed; since this system is a natural expression of the pursuit of profit and growth, and an expression of technology, we need a new set of foundational assumptions, and we need to turn back the dial on the state of civilization, including its attitudes toward growth and technology.
I think some may argue this, for sure:
we need to turn back the dial on the state of civilization, including its attitudes toward growth and technology.
But I think others in this group are suggesting:
as a consequence of
- using oil and warming the planet, or
- using plastic for everything and having low sperm counts, low population growth, or
- using chemical fertilizers and producing food with no nutritional value, and chemical pesticides and killing insect populations which are base for so much of our natural ecosystems, etc etc
we will experience the impacts of not accounting for all inputs and be forced to evolve, so let's consider alternatives now.
I think there is a difference between these two positions.
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Good steelman
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