5d ago

Genuine question - is degrowth compatible with human nature?

Degrowth is a noble ideal to strive for, and it would certainly mitigate a lot of our current problems if implemented. However, I fear that it is an ideal that can be adopted by the few but not the many. Growth, progress and personal ambition are inherent human traits - it may not be the case for all people, but it is certainly evident in today's society and many societies that have come before. In my opinion, we need solutions and frameworks that most (if not all) personalities can exist within. I worry degrowth is wishful thinking, and would love to hear your thoughts.

All of that said - I believe it is a very worthwhile thought exercise and even if all degrowth principles cannot be implemented, some can and that is what matters.

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I think most people are operating within the framework given to them. That framework is composed of material and philosophical values, and this is what determines how someone pursues growth, progress and personal ambition.
Take for example the potlatch societies on the pacific coast. This will be an awful summary of those societies, but my understanding is that people accumulated food and possessions. They then held a potlatch event where they gave all their stuff away. The more stuff you gave away, the more successful you were, the more you were liked and valued. (Again that's my basic understanding, could be very wrong).
How would an ambitious person behave in a potlatch society? They would probably go through cycles of accumulation/potlatch to increase their social standing. What would be the billionaire equivalent in a potlatch society? Maybe a village chief that held such extravagant potlatches that they are now fully supported by their community, maybe to the point they're a burden? I doubt such a thing could happen in a potlatch society, but it's a funny idea.
Basically the idea I'm trying to convey is that people are operating within the framework given to them, and their potentially toxic traits could be expressed differently under different frameworks. Our current system promotes unlimited accumulation and selfishness, so we have idiots like Musk and Trump doing their thing. They probably wouldn't do very well in another type of society, assuming they didn't change their behavior.
So how do we change our framework so we stop valuing what we're currently collectively valuing? Do most people actually value what's being encouraged by the framework? If so, why? If no, why is the framework persisting?
- This is interesting and thought-provoking, thanks. I must admit I share the obvious skepticism of OP about the potential for cultural change but my skepticism has definitely softened in recent years as I've learned about historical anecdotes like yours. Clearly humans are a just a species of ape so there there are some limits on how much we can bend our minds into new shapes, but culture does seem fairly flexible, maybe more than I once thought.
  BTW, personally I'd make a distinction between the pathologies of Trump and Musk. The former is certainly cartoonishly obsessed with "accumulation and selfishness". But for Musk and a few of the other tech barons, like Zuckerberg with his hoodies and identical T-shirts, relative wealth does not seem to be what interests them at all, it's more of a messianic obsession with expansion and colonization, i.e. the opposite of zero-sum. Transhumanism, basically. For me the issue with that vision that it's clearly utopian and disconnected from reality and it's distracting us from solving problems right here and now. Just my personal take.
  
  If I remember correctly someone else in this thread mentioned The Dawn of Everything. I'm sure you'd like it if you haven't read/listened to it yet. It's about periods of history where there weren't kings and what life might have been like during those periods.
  Ugh those tech barons. It seems like they're drunk with power and and high on their desire to make their imagined futures a reality. The problem is they don't seem to care what the rest of us think, and will gladly subvert democracy to impose their "utopian" visions on the masses. Their absurd levels of wealth and power are likely corrupting their utopian ideas as well. I'd go as far to say that they are the current problem, more than a distraction. This shit never ends.
  It'd be fine to have a national/global discussion about the ideas these guys have. Their ideas can't be completely bad, there must be some good bits, but the way they're working behind the scenes with Trump and especially Vance (Musk, Thiel, Andressen, Horotwitz, Armstrong, and Sacks) really ruins any trust I could possibly have in their ideas.
  
  The Dawn of Everything. I’m sure you’d like it if you haven’t read/listened to it yet
  Yes I have heard of it. Personally I'm uneasy with the fashionable practice of going straight to the revisionism without first being sure to understand what's being revised. And I've also had my fill of 700-page social-science books whose thesis could easily fit in a pamphlet, but again that's just my take. The authors are credible and respected, I know that.
  Their ideas can’t be completely bad, there must be some good bits, but the way they’re working behind the scenes with Trump and especially Vance (Musk, Thiel, Andressen, Horotwitz, Armstrong, and Sacks) really ruins any trust I could possibly have in their ideas.
  Completely agree. I listened to Andreessen talking to Ross Douthat on the NYT podcast recently. The smugness level and self-satisfaction was though the roof, it was the sound of literal sneering. Awful, made Bannon seem like a nice warm guy by comparison.
- I am unfamiliar with the potlatch system, so please forgive me if I am misunderstanding it, but I would guess that the fact it is no longer around and capitalism is proves that it is not a viable long term solution that humans would gravitate towards.
  I fear that eventually someone in the system would think "those people who are giving away their stuff are gaining social approval, sure, but at the end of the day I have all of my resources and can use them to accumulate more, and then social approval will be irrelevant because I will own all of the wealth"
  
  Well, you've got to keep in mind that Native American societies (like Communist ones btw) faced constant cultural and physical genocide from Capitalists wherever the two systems touched. This is exactly like the "well, Communism lost so Capitalism is better" argument, when Capitalism was violently enforced (in favor of dictatorships, against democracy) wherever Communist revolutions took place.
  
  For your first point, yes, I doubt such a system could coexist alongside a more powerful capitalist system.
  Second point, I think if you own all the wealth but are socially ostracized, what's the point of having all the wealth? A caveat to that is most of the wealth in a potlatch society was renewable and not very easy to hoard. Their primary food source was salmon, which can be preserved but not as easily or for as long as grain. In our society, it seems you could hoard a lot and that gives you power.

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