You went straight from "we don't have to lose anything" to "except of course for cars, lawns, pools and technology in general" apparently without noticing the contradiction. This is a good example of why degrowth advocates have no credibility and always come across as anti-civilization Amish wannabees.
There is no such thing as degrowth outside of recessions and wars. If you want to reduce your own consumption, do so! The rest of us who believe in material progress will increase ours to make up for it.
In fact, I feel like if we did things less capitalist, we'd be more comfortable. How about devices that last longer and don't force fashion on you? (I'm looking at apple removing headphone jack, changing the notch, glued batteries, etc)
Further, how about shared pools that can be more comfortable and without requiring maintenance from you? (Or do you hire someone to take care of it for you?) Same with lawns and cars. Why not parks and transit systems?
Where we live the parks are always safe and almost always clean. The same for the transit network.
There are plenty of apparently weathy places where that appears not to be the case.
Good for you, then don't bother with them. But you're in a tiny minority. The rest of us do in fact very much enjoy chilling out in a nice private pool surrounded by a big lawn on a warm sunny day, relaxing on an inflatable whilst listening to awesome music streamed to our AirPods whilst we drink chilled beer and wait for friends/family to drive over and join us for an epic grilling session.
Normal people don't like these things because we've been "manipulated" by "our system", get a grip. We like these things because they're extremely enjoyable perks of living in the modern world.
> I feel like if we did things less capitalist, we'd be more comfortable
Ah a watermelon, what an incredibly unexpected plot twist that's never been seen before. The green turns out to be skin-deep, and when you cut it open what's inside is bright red.
I moved from an area where I needed a car to an area where I don't and doing so increased my comfort. If areas like this were more accessible I think a lot of people would willingly degrowth and become more comfortable at the same time. Of course people shouldn't be forced to lose their car or move to a denser area if they don't want. And I like my gadgets but it is pretty ridiculous that their lifespans are artificially shortened to prop up profits. I have a computer from 1984 that still works, I would bet a huge amount of money none of the devices I buy today will work in 2062.
You say of course, but that's exactly what eco-warriors want. Notice how "picture" doesn't think of his fellow humans as fully real, thinking people with their own fully developed opinions. He thinks we're all manipulated into wanting things, and that only if "the system" wasn't "distracting" and "manipulating" us with gadgets and private pools we'd all realize the superiority of collective ownership.
This is a very dangerous attitude. If you don't respect other people's views, and if you think they're all a product of manipulation you definitely don't, then you won't have any compunction in overriding them by force. That's why the degrowth agenda is strongly associated with the road and runway glueing brigade: they don't care if an ambulance can't get past them and someone dies as a result, or if you can't get to work and lose your job. Your preference for petrol powered transport is merely a manipulation by the system and thus has no validity.
In practice, comfort is mostly a function of stuff. Yes there are aspects that aren't to do with stuff but they're things that are really hard to move the needle on: loving families, low corruption, stable government and so on. Once you've got those things it's much easier to raise standards of living with incrementally better stuff than incremental improvements in quality of government, for example.
I can't say I agree, this feels like a very uncharitable reading of his/her posts. Unless it was edited in after the fact they even said "You're absolutely free to believe either way, and I don't want anyone to force you to do anything."
While it would be insulting to call any individual person's preferences a result of brainwashing, I don't think it is a stretch to say that at a societal level preferences are shaped by mass-media and advertising. Improving access to and making people aware of less resource-intensive forms of comfort doesn't have to come from an authoritarian place. One of my major motivations for seeking out a more walkable area was urbanist YouTubers extolling the benefits. I suppose one could argue that things like bike lanes are hurting drivers but if a city's transit priorities stem from local politics and preferences I don't think it can be reasonably argued that making any particular transit method a priority is more authoritarian than another.
> In practice, comfort is mostly a function of stuff.
No question that it is a variable for most people but I'm not sure I buy that it is the most dominant one. All other variables being excluded, time to do what I want is at least as important for me as stuff (luckily I like my job so time/money aren't usually in conflict). And I think for many people "stuff" like cars and nice lawns aren't inherently drivers of comfort, but rather just possible reifications of goals like "pretty yard" or "fast/easy transit," both of which can be realized in less resource intensive ways. For the yard example, that might be a native garden or xeriscape (in some cases there are rules against these, which actually goes against freedom imo).
I don't personally believe people when they say that anyway, so I'd have taken the same stance even if the post had said that originally. Collectivists like that are never happy if people can make their own personal choices. That's why we now have government mandated phase-outs of liquid fuel vehicles on the horizon whether individuals like it or not. They campaign and bully until they get what they want, which as picture states very clearly is bans on anything convenient in favor of non-private property (n.b. they're fine with swimming pools as long as they're shared pools, and already admitted their actual motivation is dislike of capitalism not a belief that restricting golf will actually achieve anything).
If we don't degrow now, we are heading towards recessions and wars anyway. And not small ones: count billions of climate refugees... that's probably the end of democracy everywhere.
How do you propose to use much less energy without starving everyone? Where does the energy come from if not fossil fuels without conscripting people to be peasants? Does it matter if mass death is caused famine or "degrowth"?
That's the whole point: degrowth is about re-organizing society such that we don't starve. There are big efforts of planning for that in many places. Look at the "shift project" in France. It seems to me that the US are very, very, very far behind on that matter. The US seems to still be stuck on the Silicon Valley mindset ("they will save us with new technology"). But that's not representative of the rest of the world.
> Where does the energy come from if not fossil fuels without conscripting people to be peasants? Does it matter if mass death is caused famine or "degrowth"?
The idea of degrowth is that in order to avoid famines, we have to drastically reduce other stuff and reorganize society. Planes are not even a question there: planes will go away, because everyone agrees that we'd rather eat that fly. There are many decisions that are harder to make, though.
Those who don't believe in degrowth and instead think that "there will be a miracle technology that will save us" are just naive. Degrowth advocates are the ones who are actually trying to play with the cards they were dealt.
A good example or problem with degrowth is proclamation that things like planes won’t be possible. Aviation is 2% of emissions. There are lots of little things that they add up. Like concrete being 3%, but nobody says that have to give up concrete. The big ones are things like heating and cooling and transportation that are hard to give up.
The other problem is that we mostly know how to solve aviation. Hydrogen or liquid fuels should work, both produced from green energy. New technology but no miracles. We know how to do green electricity.
I agree with you that we need to change the world a lot. But it won’t work if impose suffering on people. Or do things that don’t work or don’t help.
Aviation came with oil, it will disappear with oil. It's not a problem of emissions per se, it's a problem of energy. Fossil fuels are not unlimited and we don't know how to completely replace them.
> The big ones are things like heating and cooling
We need to work hard on building isolation, obviously. And people need to live in smaller habitations.
> and transportation
We need more trains
> Hydrogen or liquid fuels should work, both produced from green energy.
Same thing: if you look at the numbers, we won't have enough green energy to produce enough hydrogen for aviation, even if technically we can make planes fly with hydrogen. We will have to choose where we use our hydrogen: for planes, or for steel and agriculture?
> But it won’t work if impose suffering on people.
Yep, we need to teach people and hope they accept to do what's needed to survive.
> Or do things that don’t work or don’t help.
Totally agreed here. Hoping for anything short of degrowth doesn't help. We need everything PLUS degrowth. And still, it will be hard because climate is already pretty messed up (with inertia) and biodiversity is looking bad.
And that's perfectly fine. I'm not forcing anybody to do anything. I just provide my opinion on what I believe is good info.
> watermelon
So it's a personal dig about how I'm communist? I'm not, I don't think either state organization or anarchy will fulfill the promise of socialism to achieve an egalitarian society. But I do recognize the benefit of "public goods" that the "socialists" bring to the table, like roads and hospitals. Communism has failed many times throughout history, but I certainly don't think laissez-faire capitalism is any good either.
If you are a die hard believer that capitalism will lead to the best outcome for people, then ignore anything I say. If you perhaps don't realize how strongly identifying with the name of an idea alone lead you to a narrow perspective of the world, I urge you to take some time to reflect on your own opinions.