Ben Franklin is said to have said “your rights end at the tip of your nose.” Boiled down to ones and zeros, brass tacks: balls on a brass monkey, what that means is while you certainly have the right to speak your mind, the right you do not have is to offend others while doing so. Pretty simple, really.
“Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.”
Even if your interpretation of Ben Franklin is correct – which I reject, especially absent any context – then I prefer Chomsky’s views over old Ben Franklin.
Giuliani did well not to trust the FBI, as well as lovely dudes like Phil Mudd. I hope it doesn’t cost him his life.
I’ll take “I don’t trust ANY of them for $1,000, Alex,” thank you very much.
Russia obviously wants you to side with Giuliani and the Clintons want you to side with Mudd.
The smart choice is to side with none of them and push Sanders to choose Greta as his running mate so when he dies of a heart attack while in office, she can become POTUS and push through legislation that requires ALL of these shitbirds to harvest watermelons the rest of their born days as 450 ppb bakes them back to the dust from whence they came.
Posted this as an off-topic a couple of threads back.
The September jobs report came out Friday. Seasonally unadjusted, as in what really happened, September is a month where, with the beginning of the school year, the private sector loses jobs and the public sector gains them. The result is a moderate increase in total jobs overall (called total nonfarm). I have been saying for months that 2019 is a bad year for jobs. The September data kicks it into the horrible category. So in the private sector (a major indicator of the strength of the economy), 618,000 jobs were lost. This is almost identical with the previous two years, and about 200,000 worse than the three years before that. The big story is in net job growth (Jan-Sept job creation minus the previous end of the year dropoff). Net private sector job creation so far for 2019 is 949,000. This compares to 1,889,000 in my benchmark year 2014 (a year of solid, not spectacular, growth), or 940,000 fewer.
Adding in the public sector (with this month’s big influx of school jobs) or total nonfarm, 362,000 jobs were gained in September, again similar to the last two years. But net job creation for the year is just 746,000, compared with 1,520,000 in 2014, or 774,000 fewer, or just 49% of what happened in 2014. Not to be overly technical, but this sucks. Seems like they can’t even create crap jobs anymore.
“Impeachment from the Annotated Constitution, Article II, Section 4, pp. 649-650:
The Convention came to its choice of words describing the grounds for impeachment after much deliberation, but the phrasing derived directly from the English practice. On June 2, 1787, the framers adopted a provision that the executive should “be removable on impeachment & conviction of mal-practice or neglect of duty. The Committee of Detail reported as grounds “Treason (or) Bribery or Corruption.” And the Committee of Eleven reduced the phrase to “Treason, or bribery.” On September 8, Mason objected to this limitation, observing that the term did not encompass all the conduct that should be grounds for removal; he therefore proposed to add “or maladministration” following “bribery.” Upon Madison’s objection that “[s]o vague a term will be equivalent to a tenure during pleasure of the Senate,” Mason suggested “other high crimes & misdemeanors,” which was adopted without further recorded debate.
The phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” in the context of impeachments has an ancient English history, first turning up in the impeachment of the Earl of Suffolk in 1388. Treason is defined in the Constitution. Bribery is not, but it had a clear common law meaning and is now well covered by statute. “High crimes and misdemeanors,” however, is an undefined and indefinite phrase, which, in England, had comprehended conduct not constituting indictable offenses. Use of the word “other” to link “high crimes and misdemeanors” with “treason” and “bribery” is arguably indicative of the types and seriousness of conduct encompassed by “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Similarly, the word “high” apparently carried with it a restrictive meaning.
Debate prior to adoption of the phrase and comments thereafter in the ratifying conventions were to the effect that the President (all the debate was in terms of the President) should be removable by impeachment for commissions or omissions in office which were not criminally cognizable. And in the First Congress’s “removal” debate, Madison maintained that the wanton dismissal of meritorious officers would be an act of maladministration which would render the President subject to impeachment. Other comments, especially in the ratifying conventions, tend toward a limitation of the term to criminal, perhaps gross criminal, behavior. The scope of the power has been the subject of continuing debate.”
There’s in interesting article titled “We Need a Fair Way to End Infinite Growth” by
Samuel Miller McDonald at Current Affairs. It makes the case that we have to de-grow the economy (to stop Global Warming) and that it will either be done in an egalitarian and equitable way or in a brutal facist way. I’m wondering what others think of it.
Here’s the penultimate paragraph, which summarizes the article pretty well:
“Economies have already stretched beyond what the planet can sustainably provide. With wells running dry, arable topsoil being depleted, and increasingly extreme climate disruption, the flow of these resources will inevitably slow and, in some cases, stop entirely. The question now is whether growth will reverse in a way that’s peaceful, equitable, and deliberate, or violently haphazard, the result of countless unrecoverable calamities that collapse civilization into states of fractured barbarity, just because rich people want to keep being rich while everyone else gets poorer. ”
I agree that degrowth will likely be forced on us some time in the future and that it could be done equitably or brutally. The problem is selling degrowth. I think it is too easy to only blame the rich for the growth problem. Middle-class people in the developed world and even some people in the developing world will have to tighten their belts as well. A degrowth program will require major lifestyle changes including far fewer consumer goods, fewer computers and assorted electronic gadgets, fewer automobiles, fewer airplane flights, far fewer deliveries, eating less meat, etc.
Currently, most people will not support a program that means giving up their big houses, multiple cars including more SUVs, frequent air travel, Amazon and other deliveries, multiple tech gadgets and other aspects of 21st century consumerism. This is why the left is promoting a kind of upgraded New Deal and in some cases even arguing for “luxury communism” which is even less sustainable.
I suspect that few left-wing leaders want to make a serious case for egalitarian degrowth because they know it will require more than just the very rich giving up their lifestyle. The stats on American consumerism (bigger and bigger houses, more people buying SUVs, more tech-toys, people eating more meat) shows that the country is not ready for a serious degrowth agenda and the same is true of most other rich nations and even developing countries like China where the new middle class wants to consume like us.
The fact that the far-right is trying to co-opt the environmental movement is very worrisome. Although I don’t think they will succeed in the short run for much the same reason why the degrowth left is not successful (people are addicted to consumerism and no politician can afford to run against consumerism), in a crisis scenario where the mainstream collapses there is the possibility that the far-right could win popular support with a program that blames minorities, immigrants and other outgroups for our problems. That is why the left needs to take degrowth seriously and ditch silly ideas like luxury communism where we are all living in a left-wing version of The Jetsons.
Even New Deal revivalism of the Bernie Sanders variety needs to be criticized because I don’t think we can have the type of consumer society we had post-World War II but upgraded for the much higher standards of the 21st century. Limits to economic growth and technological “progress” must be taken seriously if we are going to save humanity and the planet.
Keith, thanks for the article. Herman, your comments as always are insightful. The elephant in the room continues to be the staggering world population. Our planet cannot long support so many people. And, there is no easy short term way out of this mess.
@TenBears
What Ben Franklin actually said was words to the effect that, “Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.” Several different ways of phrasing it, but all meaning effectively the same thing, and far different than the quote you cited.
And free speech is most certainly not limited some silly prohibition against offending others. The idea is utterly absurd.
If you have not seen the Joker, you should totally go see it.
I saw the movie on Saturday, which made me realize why “mainstream media” critics in America – i.e., critics who work for the establishment newspapers like The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, etc. – absolute hate the movie. Pretty much every independent critics (like Jeremy Jahns and Chris Stuckmann on YouTube) love it, while every establishment critics (The NYT, WSJ, etc.) hate it. So its Rotten Tomatoes score falls between 60% to 70%, but IMO it is really a over 90% movie.
The Joker is a very political film, and it has strong, overt political messages that Ian Welsh would love. It is anti-capitalism, anti-elite, and anti-rich; and the movie does not hide its messages.
Perhaps the tweets from the documentary filmmaker Michael Moore would explain it nicely:
“On Wednesday night I attended the New York Film Festival and witnessed a cinematic masterpiece, the film that last month won the top prize as the Best Film of the Venice International Film Festival. It’s called ‘Joker’ — and all we Americans have heard about this movie is that we should fear it and stay away from it. We’ve been told it’s violent and sick and morally corrupt — an incitement and celebration of murder. We’ve been told that police will be at every screening this weekend in case of ‘trouble.’ Our country is in deep despair, our constitution is in shreds, a rogue maniac from Queens has access to the nuclear codes — but for some reason, it’s a movie we should be afraid of.”
“On Wednesday night I attended the New York Film Festival and witnessed a cinematic masterpiece, the film that last month won the top prize as the Best Film of the Venice International Film Festival. It’s called ‘Joker’ — and all we Americans have heard about this movie is that we should fear it and stay away from it. We’ve been told it’s violent and sick and morally corrupt — an incitement and celebration of murder. We’ve been told that police will be at every screening this weekend in case of ‘trouble.’ Our country is in deep despair, our constitution is in shreds, a rogue maniac from Queens has access to the nuclear codes — but for some reason, it’s a movie we should be afraid of.”
Let’s just say people (myself included) were clapping and applauding when the Joker killed, and everyone whom the Joker killed in the movie pretty much deserved to die and had it coming, (IMO.)
Currently, most people will not support a program that means giving up their big houses, multiple cars including more SUVs, frequent air travel, Amazon and other deliveries, multiple tech gadgets and other aspects of 21st century consumerism. This is why the left is promoting a kind of upgraded New Deal and in some cases even arguing for “luxury communism” which is even less sustainable.
Ah, but is this true in the case of the US? How about the rest of the (overly) developed world?
From my perspective out here in the wilderness of Central New Mexico, it seems that “de-growth” has been under way for quite a long time, certainly from the time of the Great Financial Implosion, and many would say since long before that.
Living simply and relatively lightly on the Earth has been a thing since before I was born, at least among some people, and consumerism, at least as it is often described, never had quite the universal levels of adoption that marketers would hope.
The Great Recession never ended for a lot of Americans, nor is it likely to for the rest of their (shortened) lives. That’s a form of “de-growth.” So is the declining life expectancy of all but the rich and well-connected in the US.
The hyper-consumerist lifestyle really seems to apply mostly to the upper 20%, and even there, it isn’t universal.
I’d say most people neither need nor want big houses, if they can get around without private vehicles they will, they’re not gadget obsessed or particularly burdened with electronics, they try to make things last and try not to waste, and if they’re smart they don’t fall for “get whatever you want delivered TODAY!” blandishments.
It isn’t the ordinary folks who are the chief roadblock to “de-growth”. They’ve been experiencing it for quite a long time. Green New Deal and other nascent socialist elements of re-thinking the future are intentionally sustainable, or at least conceived that way.
The chief roadblocks are to be found among the political class and their owners and sponsors.
Selling degrowth — The basic problem facing industrial societies as their productivity increased was maintaining demand. Once people have adequate means of life, they tend to stop acquiring. The solution in the early 20th c. was mass advertising, using the new psychological research to create desire. After WWII, which ended the Great Depression, the American government went all in for “military Keynesianism”; the Department of War was renamed the Department of Defense, a permanent standing army of a size to wage war at any time was funded, and the military-congressional-industrial complex began its lucrative run.
Without the constant barrage of advertising (estimates on the number of ads we see each day run up to 10,000. That’s almost certainly high, but the average American probably sees several thousand a day), the constant creation of desire would almost certainly falter. What human beings want after fulfillment of physical needs, is acceptance and status in a community. You wouldn’t know you need a big house with a dining room whose only function is to collect dust between vacuumings unless you were told that lack of one indicates your social failure. You wouldn’t know you needed to smoke if cigarette companies didn’t portray it as cool and high status. You wouldn’t know you needed opioids if you hadn’t been assured that they make your life better.
It’s not so much that we need to sell degrowth as we need to stop the selling of growth. Remember that the call for infinite growth is based on the assumption of infinite human desire for MORE.
Herman,
I agree that our consumer culture is a huge obstacle to de-growth and that the danger of the far-right taking advantage of a climate crisis to whip up popular support for purging the “impure” others is alarmingly real. I think we need to get the idea of “de-growth” and producing and consuming much much less out there. Get it on the table, so the idea is at least familiar. That way, when the big crunch comes and the climate emergency is finely real to everyone, at least the concept of purposefully consuming much less (and doing so egalitarianally) will not be totally new. that would at least give us a fighting chance.
Duterte has a neuromuscular disease? Pray it causes him such excruciating physical pain and psychemotional agony that he has only one wish in the world – the wish to die. And pray he spends 50 more years alive in that state and unable to die.
About de-growth: there are two conditions under which I will permit degrowth into my life.
Condition One: Everyone richer than me is taken down to my level. And if that is not enough to save the current conditions for life on earth to which we would wish to remain accustomed, then I can join everyone else who has been brought down to my level . . . in all doing even further down together.
And/Or . . . Condition Two: I and people in my similar situation can figure out how to degrow parts of our own daily lives and lifestyles in such a way as to degrade and attrit and shrink revenue streams going to the Black Hat Perpetrators above us on the food chain money chain. I would hope that people who think they have specific actionable information about how to do that would bring it here for others to see and consider and possibly act on.
Selling “de-growth” is the same as selling poverty. It will never happen and that’s why no one is seriously considering it. The so called Green New Deal is no exception. It’s a break from the deep state’s impeachment drivel but no more likely or interesting. Our society has spent so much effort propagandizing people they’ve all developed neurosis. Politicians are then forced to pander to these delusional groups of irrational idiots with irrational plans that are mostly just bat shit crazy. They are no more real than Obama reigning in the bankers or standing up for constitutional rights.
“De-growth” is happening right now with no benefit for the environment so there’s no way voters are going to accept more no matter the fairy tail promises. It’s a pipe dream and I’m surprised anyone would believe it was a viable option. So much political commentary is now just tilting at the wind mills of ones own pet issues.
What kind of person would go to the homeless or those living in poverty in this country and tell them they need to “downsize” their footprint for the good of “humanity”. A well-off ass who has no intention of suffering or pushing equality with their egalitarianism is my guess. A certain concern for the environment seems to be quite popular with mass shooters these days. Perhaps our indoctrination went too far?
Ten Bears
Ben Franklin is said to have said “your rights end at the tip of your nose.” Boiled down to ones and zeros, brass tacks: balls on a brass monkey, what that means is while you certainly have the right to speak your mind, the right you do not have is to offend others while doing so. Pretty simple, really.
metamars
Bah, humbug. Says Noam Chomsky:
“Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.”
Even if your interpretation of Ben Franklin is correct – which I reject, especially absent any context – then I prefer Chomsky’s views over old Ben Franklin.
metamars
Phil Mudd, former CIA dude, now CNN analyst, threatens Giuliani with a “shiv in his back”, pretending to speak on behalf of his Deep State buddies.
https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/tucker-cia-is-trying-to-take-out-trump-fox-news-video-oct-3-2019/
Giuliani did well not to trust the FBI, as well as lovely dudes like Phil Mudd. I hope it doesn’t cost him his life.
450.org
I’ll take “I don’t trust ANY of them for $1,000, Alex,” thank you very much.
Russia obviously wants you to side with Giuliani and the Clintons want you to side with Mudd.
The smart choice is to side with none of them and push Sanders to choose Greta as his running mate so when he dies of a heart attack while in office, she can become POTUS and push through legislation that requires ALL of these shitbirds to harvest watermelons the rest of their born days as 450 ppb bakes them back to the dust from whence they came.
Hugh
Posted this as an off-topic a couple of threads back.
The September jobs report came out Friday. Seasonally unadjusted, as in what really happened, September is a month where, with the beginning of the school year, the private sector loses jobs and the public sector gains them. The result is a moderate increase in total jobs overall (called total nonfarm). I have been saying for months that 2019 is a bad year for jobs. The September data kicks it into the horrible category. So in the private sector (a major indicator of the strength of the economy), 618,000 jobs were lost. This is almost identical with the previous two years, and about 200,000 worse than the three years before that. The big story is in net job growth (Jan-Sept job creation minus the previous end of the year dropoff). Net private sector job creation so far for 2019 is 949,000. This compares to 1,889,000 in my benchmark year 2014 (a year of solid, not spectacular, growth), or 940,000 fewer.
Adding in the public sector (with this month’s big influx of school jobs) or total nonfarm, 362,000 jobs were gained in September, again similar to the last two years. But net job creation for the year is just 746,000, compared with 1,520,000 in 2014, or 774,000 fewer, or just 49% of what happened in 2014. Not to be overly technical, but this sucks. Seems like they can’t even create crap jobs anymore.
Hugh
And just for general information:
“Impeachment from the Annotated Constitution, Article II, Section 4, pp. 649-650:
The Convention came to its choice of words describing the grounds for impeachment after much deliberation, but the phrasing derived directly from the English practice. On June 2, 1787, the framers adopted a provision that the executive should “be removable on impeachment & conviction of mal-practice or neglect of duty. The Committee of Detail reported as grounds “Treason (or) Bribery or Corruption.” And the Committee of Eleven reduced the phrase to “Treason, or bribery.” On September 8, Mason objected to this limitation, observing that the term did not encompass all the conduct that should be grounds for removal; he therefore proposed to add “or maladministration” following “bribery.” Upon Madison’s objection that “[s]o vague a term will be equivalent to a tenure during pleasure of the Senate,” Mason suggested “other high crimes & misdemeanors,” which was adopted without further recorded debate.
The phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” in the context of impeachments has an ancient English history, first turning up in the impeachment of the Earl of Suffolk in 1388. Treason is defined in the Constitution. Bribery is not, but it had a clear common law meaning and is now well covered by statute. “High crimes and misdemeanors,” however, is an undefined and indefinite phrase, which, in England, had comprehended conduct not constituting indictable offenses. Use of the word “other” to link “high crimes and misdemeanors” with “treason” and “bribery” is arguably indicative of the types and seriousness of conduct encompassed by “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Similarly, the word “high” apparently carried with it a restrictive meaning.
Debate prior to adoption of the phrase and comments thereafter in the ratifying conventions were to the effect that the President (all the debate was in terms of the President) should be removable by impeachment for commissions or omissions in office which were not criminally cognizable. And in the First Congress’s “removal” debate, Madison maintained that the wanton dismissal of meritorious officers would be an act of maladministration which would render the President subject to impeachment. Other comments, especially in the ratifying conventions, tend toward a limitation of the term to criminal, perhaps gross criminal, behavior. The scope of the power has been the subject of continuing debate.”
https://constitution.congress.gov/conan/essay/II.4.1/
Keith in Modesto
There’s in interesting article titled “We Need a Fair Way to End Infinite Growth” by
Samuel Miller McDonald at Current Affairs. It makes the case that we have to de-grow the economy (to stop Global Warming) and that it will either be done in an egalitarian and equitable way or in a brutal facist way. I’m wondering what others think of it.
Here’s the penultimate paragraph, which summarizes the article pretty well:
“Economies have already stretched beyond what the planet can sustainably provide. With wells running dry, arable topsoil being depleted, and increasingly extreme climate disruption, the flow of these resources will inevitably slow and, in some cases, stop entirely. The question now is whether growth will reverse in a way that’s peaceful, equitable, and deliberate, or violently haphazard, the result of countless unrecoverable calamities that collapse civilization into states of fractured barbarity, just because rich people want to keep being rich while everyone else gets poorer. ”
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/10/we-need-a-fair-way-to-end-infinite-growth
Herman
@Keith in Modesto,
I agree that degrowth will likely be forced on us some time in the future and that it could be done equitably or brutally. The problem is selling degrowth. I think it is too easy to only blame the rich for the growth problem. Middle-class people in the developed world and even some people in the developing world will have to tighten their belts as well. A degrowth program will require major lifestyle changes including far fewer consumer goods, fewer computers and assorted electronic gadgets, fewer automobiles, fewer airplane flights, far fewer deliveries, eating less meat, etc.
Currently, most people will not support a program that means giving up their big houses, multiple cars including more SUVs, frequent air travel, Amazon and other deliveries, multiple tech gadgets and other aspects of 21st century consumerism. This is why the left is promoting a kind of upgraded New Deal and in some cases even arguing for “luxury communism” which is even less sustainable.
I suspect that few left-wing leaders want to make a serious case for egalitarian degrowth because they know it will require more than just the very rich giving up their lifestyle. The stats on American consumerism (bigger and bigger houses, more people buying SUVs, more tech-toys, people eating more meat) shows that the country is not ready for a serious degrowth agenda and the same is true of most other rich nations and even developing countries like China where the new middle class wants to consume like us.
The fact that the far-right is trying to co-opt the environmental movement is very worrisome. Although I don’t think they will succeed in the short run for much the same reason why the degrowth left is not successful (people are addicted to consumerism and no politician can afford to run against consumerism), in a crisis scenario where the mainstream collapses there is the possibility that the far-right could win popular support with a program that blames minorities, immigrants and other outgroups for our problems. That is why the left needs to take degrowth seriously and ditch silly ideas like luxury communism where we are all living in a left-wing version of The Jetsons.
Even New Deal revivalism of the Bernie Sanders variety needs to be criticized because I don’t think we can have the type of consumer society we had post-World War II but upgraded for the much higher standards of the 21st century. Limits to economic growth and technological “progress” must be taken seriously if we are going to save humanity and the planet.
Dale
Keith, thanks for the article. Herman, your comments as always are insightful. The elephant in the room continues to be the staggering world population. Our planet cannot long support so many people. And, there is no easy short term way out of this mess.
Bill H
@TenBears
What Ben Franklin actually said was words to the effect that, “Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.” Several different ways of phrasing it, but all meaning effectively the same thing, and far different than the quote you cited.
And free speech is most certainly not limited some silly prohibition against offending others. The idea is utterly absurd.
Willy
Is there a verbal assault lawyer in the house?
KT Chong
If you have not seen the Joker, you should totally go see it.
I saw the movie on Saturday, which made me realize why “mainstream media” critics in America – i.e., critics who work for the establishment newspapers like The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, etc. – absolute hate the movie. Pretty much every independent critics (like Jeremy Jahns and Chris Stuckmann on YouTube) love it, while every establishment critics (The NYT, WSJ, etc.) hate it. So its Rotten Tomatoes score falls between 60% to 70%, but IMO it is really a over 90% movie.
The Joker is a very political film, and it has strong, overt political messages that Ian Welsh would love. It is anti-capitalism, anti-elite, and anti-rich; and the movie does not hide its messages.
Perhaps the tweets from the documentary filmmaker Michael Moore would explain it nicely:
“On Wednesday night I attended the New York Film Festival and witnessed a cinematic masterpiece, the film that last month won the top prize as the Best Film of the Venice International Film Festival. It’s called ‘Joker’ — and all we Americans have heard about this movie is that we should fear it and stay away from it. We’ve been told it’s violent and sick and morally corrupt — an incitement and celebration of murder. We’ve been told that police will be at every screening this weekend in case of ‘trouble.’ Our country is in deep despair, our constitution is in shreds, a rogue maniac from Queens has access to the nuclear codes — but for some reason, it’s a movie we should be afraid of.”
“On Wednesday night I attended the New York Film Festival and witnessed a cinematic masterpiece, the film that last month won the top prize as the Best Film of the Venice International Film Festival. It’s called ‘Joker’ — and all we Americans have heard about this movie is that we should fear it and stay away from it. We’ve been told it’s violent and sick and morally corrupt — an incitement and celebration of murder. We’ve been told that police will be at every screening this weekend in case of ‘trouble.’ Our country is in deep despair, our constitution is in shreds, a rogue maniac from Queens has access to the nuclear codes — but for some reason, it’s a movie we should be afraid of.”
Let’s just say people (myself included) were clapping and applauding when the Joker killed, and everyone whom the Joker killed in the movie pretty much deserved to die and had it coming, (IMO.)
Ché Pasa
Ah, but is this true in the case of the US? How about the rest of the (overly) developed world?
From my perspective out here in the wilderness of Central New Mexico, it seems that “de-growth” has been under way for quite a long time, certainly from the time of the Great Financial Implosion, and many would say since long before that.
Living simply and relatively lightly on the Earth has been a thing since before I was born, at least among some people, and consumerism, at least as it is often described, never had quite the universal levels of adoption that marketers would hope.
The Great Recession never ended for a lot of Americans, nor is it likely to for the rest of their (shortened) lives. That’s a form of “de-growth.” So is the declining life expectancy of all but the rich and well-connected in the US.
The hyper-consumerist lifestyle really seems to apply mostly to the upper 20%, and even there, it isn’t universal.
I’d say most people neither need nor want big houses, if they can get around without private vehicles they will, they’re not gadget obsessed or particularly burdened with electronics, they try to make things last and try not to waste, and if they’re smart they don’t fall for “get whatever you want delivered TODAY!” blandishments.
It isn’t the ordinary folks who are the chief roadblock to “de-growth”. They’ve been experiencing it for quite a long time. Green New Deal and other nascent socialist elements of re-thinking the future are intentionally sustainable, or at least conceived that way.
The chief roadblocks are to be found among the political class and their owners and sponsors.
Stirling S Newberry
“Philippine Leader Rodrigo Duterte Says He Has Neuromuscular Disease”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/06/world/asia/duterte-disease-philippines.html
Keith in Modesto
Bill H,
Thank you for the correction on the Benjamin Franklin quote. That was bothering me, but I didn’t have time to look it up. You put it very well.
nihil obstet
Selling degrowth — The basic problem facing industrial societies as their productivity increased was maintaining demand. Once people have adequate means of life, they tend to stop acquiring. The solution in the early 20th c. was mass advertising, using the new psychological research to create desire. After WWII, which ended the Great Depression, the American government went all in for “military Keynesianism”; the Department of War was renamed the Department of Defense, a permanent standing army of a size to wage war at any time was funded, and the military-congressional-industrial complex began its lucrative run.
Without the constant barrage of advertising (estimates on the number of ads we see each day run up to 10,000. That’s almost certainly high, but the average American probably sees several thousand a day), the constant creation of desire would almost certainly falter. What human beings want after fulfillment of physical needs, is acceptance and status in a community. You wouldn’t know you need a big house with a dining room whose only function is to collect dust between vacuumings unless you were told that lack of one indicates your social failure. You wouldn’t know you needed to smoke if cigarette companies didn’t portray it as cool and high status. You wouldn’t know you needed opioids if you hadn’t been assured that they make your life better.
It’s not so much that we need to sell degrowth as we need to stop the selling of growth. Remember that the call for infinite growth is based on the assumption of infinite human desire for MORE.
Keith in Modesto
Herman,
I agree that our consumer culture is a huge obstacle to de-growth and that the danger of the far-right taking advantage of a climate crisis to whip up popular support for purging the “impure” others is alarmingly real. I think we need to get the idea of “de-growth” and producing and consuming much much less out there. Get it on the table, so the idea is at least familiar. That way, when the big crunch comes and the climate emergency is finely real to everyone, at least the concept of purposefully consuming much less (and doing so egalitarianally) will not be totally new. that would at least give us a fighting chance.
different clue
Duterte has a neuromuscular disease? Pray it causes him such excruciating physical pain and psychemotional agony that he has only one wish in the world – the wish to die. And pray he spends 50 more years alive in that state and unable to die.
About de-growth: there are two conditions under which I will permit degrowth into my life.
Condition One: Everyone richer than me is taken down to my level. And if that is not enough to save the current conditions for life on earth to which we would wish to remain accustomed, then I can join everyone else who has been brought down to my level . . . in all doing even further down together.
And/Or . . . Condition Two: I and people in my similar situation can figure out how to degrow parts of our own daily lives and lifestyles in such a way as to degrade and attrit and shrink revenue streams going to the Black Hat Perpetrators above us on the food chain money chain. I would hope that people who think they have specific actionable information about how to do that would bring it here for others to see and consider and possibly act on.
ponderer
Selling “de-growth” is the same as selling poverty. It will never happen and that’s why no one is seriously considering it. The so called Green New Deal is no exception. It’s a break from the deep state’s impeachment drivel but no more likely or interesting. Our society has spent so much effort propagandizing people they’ve all developed neurosis. Politicians are then forced to pander to these delusional groups of irrational idiots with irrational plans that are mostly just bat shit crazy. They are no more real than Obama reigning in the bankers or standing up for constitutional rights.
“De-growth” is happening right now with no benefit for the environment so there’s no way voters are going to accept more no matter the fairy tail promises. It’s a pipe dream and I’m surprised anyone would believe it was a viable option. So much political commentary is now just tilting at the wind mills of ones own pet issues.
What kind of person would go to the homeless or those living in poverty in this country and tell them they need to “downsize” their footprint for the good of “humanity”. A well-off ass who has no intention of suffering or pushing equality with their egalitarianism is my guess. A certain concern for the environment seems to be quite popular with mass shooters these days. Perhaps our indoctrination went too far?
mago
Food and water folks, gotta know the basics around that. GFL