Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to it could happen here um
Speaker 1: the show where things happen people talk about it, Yes,
Speaker 1: in this present location. That's correct. Last episode we spoke
Speaker 1: about the concept of the growth and what it means
Speaker 1: to the growth, how the growth as a movement came about,
Speaker 1: what inspired the critique that the growth pushes, and what
Speaker 1: the growth means for those of us who live in
Speaker 1: the Global South, how we can go about imagining um
Speaker 1: new and different paths to a better life within ecological limits.
Speaker 1: This episode will continue in that conversation talking about what
Speaker 1: is essential for the growth. As I discussed in the
Speaker 1: previous episode, the growth is about striving for self determined
Speaker 1: life and dignity for all. It means an economy in
Speaker 1: a society that can sustain the natural basis of life.
Speaker 1: It means reduction of production and consumption the globe on
Speaker 1: the north and the liberation on the one sided Western
Speaker 1: paradigm of development, so that the Global South can explore
Speaker 1: their own, our own, self determined pace of social organization.
Speaker 1: The growth means an extension of democratic decision making to
Speaker 1: allow for real political participation. The growth means that social
Speaker 1: changes organized and oriented towards sufficiency and self sufficiency and
Speaker 1: ecological sustainability, rather than the pursuits of a line grew
Speaker 1: up a pursuit of economic growth, regardless of its impact
Speaker 1: on people planet. Ad growth, of course, advocates for the
Speaker 1: creation of open, connected, and localized economies. There are several
Speaker 1: steps that need to be taken in order to achieve
Speaker 1: a D growth society. Achieve a D growth will to
Speaker 1: de grow. For one, I think that, as Jason Hickel
Speaker 1: advocates in his book Less is More, we absolutely need
Speaker 1: to put an end to the practice of planned obsolescence,
Speaker 1: whether it be in household appliances and tools and furniture
Speaker 1: and computers. We need to shift away from this idea
Speaker 1: of products being produced to break down in a certain
Speaker 1: timeline and require replacement. Um. I reasonally have witnessed a
Speaker 1: lot of older technologies that continued to last to this
Speaker 1: day before because they were invented before this will practice
Speaker 1: a planets lessons really keen about. Yeah, but my family
Speaker 1: we have a microwave that is like a decade older
Speaker 1: than I am and it still works fine. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I mean in my own lifetime, I've had to
Speaker 1: purchase multiple microwaves, so it's it's ridiculous. Yeah, That's always
Speaker 1: one of the things that I always thought like there
Speaker 1: was a real sort of like this is how you
Speaker 1: this is how you appeal to conservative people with this
Speaker 1: is just like, hey, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna
Speaker 1: bring back like nineteen sixties microwaves where everything is a
Speaker 1: dial and it doesn't break every Yeah, because I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think what's what's missing in the conversation about team
Speaker 1: growth is a lot of people like that they assume
Speaker 1: because they react with now that everybody else will, you know,
Speaker 1: they kind of project their own reaction to others. But
Speaker 1: I think political spectrum aside um or political chart or
Speaker 1: how are you gonna um map out the unmappable UM.
Speaker 1: I think that people generally, as I was discussing the
Speaker 1: previous episode, want a good life, and that requires qualitative
Speaker 1: changes far more than it requires quantitative changes. Of course,
Speaker 1: there are places where quantitative changes are needed to make
Speaker 1: some things accessible to that population. UM. But we already
Speaker 1: overproduce a lot of different things UM, and a lot
Speaker 1: of overproduction is completely necessary because it is based and
Speaker 1: planned obs lessons in order to increase profits, and so
Speaker 1: that needs to once that is discarded. I think people
Speaker 1: have will will best be able to access that quality
Speaker 1: of life because we look at a lot of the
Speaker 1: sudden expenses that people have to deal with. You know,
Speaker 1: you've fridge suddenly breaking down, your stove suddenly breaking down,
Speaker 1: in my careave for your toolster suddenly breaking now, and
Speaker 1: or you wash the machine. Um. I think in this
Speaker 1: year alone, have had to fix the washing machine three
Speaker 1: or four times because it's just constantly breaks down. And
Speaker 1: when instead we can save that those resources, see if
Speaker 1: that time, see that energy, see that money. Um, just
Speaker 1: producing quality for the foodst time, you know, put an
Speaker 1: end to those deliberate manufacturing decisions and developing long lasting
Speaker 1: modular products that can reduce our you know, material and
Speaker 1: energy use worldwide. I think in a lot of cases,
Speaker 1: we don't necessarily need more innovation. You know, I don't
Speaker 1: think we really need like a smart fridge. I think
Speaker 1: we just need a fridge that works for decades without
Speaker 1: breaking down constantly. Yeah, And like so much of the
Speaker 1: stuff that's sort of like nominally is informat like it
Speaker 1: is supposed to be. Innovation is just how how how
Speaker 1: can we make this product in such a way that
Speaker 1: we can sell consumer data about you from it like
Speaker 1: we don't need to do that. We can simply not,
Speaker 1: we can simply not, we can simply not exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: And speaking of things that we can simply not, we
Speaker 1: can simply not assault our senses constantly with advertisis And
Speaker 1: because advertising just continues to see this poopers of generating
Speaker 1: social divisions, highlighting class divisions, and manipulating people into consuming
Speaker 1: stuff they don't need. As a card carrying member of
Speaker 1: Generations Z, I have not I do not typically watch
Speaker 1: much TV. UM. I used to watch TV because I'm
Speaker 1: the older gen Z contin gent, but with the rise
Speaker 1: of streaming services UM, which I do not use, yoho hoo,
Speaker 1: is I have to say about that? UM, I have
Speaker 1: not watched much TV. UM. But there's a certain reality
Speaker 1: shoes that I enjoy, like the Amazing Race UM, and
Speaker 1: so those sense to be showing on TV. I like Jeopardy.
Speaker 1: I like to watch Jeopardy and the constant deeply unfunny, irritating, annoying, loud,
Speaker 1: flashy barrage of commercials quite aggravating. UM. Honestly, the golden
Speaker 1: age of crucials being funny. It was a long time
Speaker 1: ago and now it's just suits. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I mentioned that in UM, in the episode that
Speaker 1: we had done on the Commons. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I one of the positions I held even before
Speaker 1: I was an anarchist, was my opposition to the advertising
Speaker 1: industry to advertise it. I can't stand advertising. Everybody walk, everybody,
Speaker 1: screw everything you watch and listen to it's also going
Speaker 1: to sell you something. Um. I would love to be
Speaker 1: able to go outside and not see ads all the time.
Speaker 1: I would love to use a screw to the incident
Speaker 1: out seeing ads all the time. UM. And so getting
Speaker 1: really advertising industry, getting rid of all these ads are
Speaker 1: just pushing us to consume one and more um, and
Speaker 1: oftentimes just promoting a lot of really harmful societal ideas,
Speaker 1: you know, um, body images, use and alcoholism and a
Speaker 1: lot of our worst practices and a lot of really
Speaker 1: terrible things of being promoted through ads. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: tear it down and watch consumerism perish. When you think
Speaker 1: about really history the advertise industry and how it came about.
Speaker 1: As a mass communication student, UM, that's something that I
Speaker 1: would have spend some time looking into. Advertising really came
Speaker 1: about in response to you know, this need that people had,
Speaker 1: really that that that that companies had to get people
Speaker 1: to consume because in a lot of cases, you know,
Speaker 1: people would buy something and a newer model would come
Speaker 1: out and they would really pay attention to it because
Speaker 1: already have the thing. I don't need to get another thing. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know, you can't run a profitable business that wey.
Speaker 1: So they basically used advertising to push people to consume more,
Speaker 1: and so we need to get rid of the advertising industry.
Speaker 1: Another stuff we can take to us the growth is
Speaker 1: to shift from ownership to use the fruct um. Use
Speaker 1: of fruct is something that Marie booked Chin Social Ecologists
Speaker 1: talks a lot about um in his book The Ecology
Speaker 1: of Freedom, and it's essentially the freedom of individuals or
Speaker 1: groups in a community to access and use, but not destroy,
Speaker 1: common resources to supply their needs. The term use of
Speaker 1: fruct comes from Roman property law, I believe, which would
Speaker 1: include use us the right to use. Sorry, unfortunately I
Speaker 1: did not take Latin yeah practice. It's just the right
Speaker 1: to enjoy the fruit of one's property and abuse us,
Speaker 1: which is the right to destroy one's property. So use
Speaker 1: us fruct us and abuse us um, and so use
Speaker 1: of fractice really the combination of the first two principles.
Speaker 1: Right to access and use and enjoy the fruit of
Speaker 1: um commonly held property without you the right to destroy
Speaker 1: it UM so everyone can supply their needs. So instead
Speaker 1: of and I mean two libraries already a concept that
Speaker 1: they exists around the world, rather than a hundred people
Speaker 1: in a community each individually order an electric drill, UM,
Speaker 1: one person or rather one library can host or three
Speaker 1: or four electric drills and effectively serve everyone's need for
Speaker 1: a drill when they need it, because unless they're carpenter
Speaker 1: or really into arts and crafts, you probably don't need
Speaker 1: an electric drill all the time. Another thing that we're
Speaker 1: really helping or pushed towards the RUTH will be getting
Speaker 1: rid of car dependency, because the consumption of vehicles, the
Speaker 1: mainstendence of vehicles, the maintenance of the infrastructure of vehicles,
Speaker 1: use all of those things requires a lot of resources,
Speaker 1: you know, concrete and oil and gas and metals and
Speaker 1: great earth minerals. And rather than forcing everyone to produce
Speaker 1: these things we could consume those things, we can instead
Speaker 1: shift towards walkable model for our urban environments. UM so
Speaker 1: that people who do need to use vehicles in rural settings,
Speaker 1: for example, can use them, and you can use them
Speaker 1: without causing unnecessarily unnecessary harm contributing to unnecessary harm superfluous
Speaker 1: harm on the planet. UM. Getting rid of car dependency
Speaker 1: would also mean that fewer people would need vehicles, and
Speaker 1: the vehicles that the few vehicles that we do produce
Speaker 1: UM can be shaped in common to serve needs that
Speaker 1: cannot be filled by like bikes or you know, probably
Speaker 1: transportation systems. Another element of deep growth would really be
Speaker 1: the reduction of our energy material use through the transformation
Speaker 1: of our agriculture systems. It is true that we currently
Speaker 1: produce enough food for I believe ten billion people. A
Speaker 1: lot of that food is wasted. UM. A lot of
Speaker 1: food doesn't reach people. UM. It's really an issue of
Speaker 1: allocation and not necessary production. But at the same time
Speaker 1: that production is extremely harmful. UM. It relies on a
Speaker 1: lot of damaging chemicals, relies on the stripping of our
Speaker 1: top soils, relies on the overuse of antibiotics, relies on
Speaker 1: the abuse of animals. UM. The way that we currently
Speaker 1: feed the world is deeply unequal, extremely inefficient, environmentally degrading,
Speaker 1: and energy wasting we cannot continue to treat our farms
Speaker 1: like factories. We need to find we used to feed
Speaker 1: ourselves densely and compatibly with the amount and the living world.
Speaker 1: Scaling down to localized proma culture can help. CHANI based
Speaker 1: agricultural systems, community supported agriculture, urban gardens, aquaponics, cultured meats, aquacultures,
Speaker 1: and exploring other more traditional forms of food raising will
Speaker 1: need to be the route that we take. Already, we
Speaker 1: are killing our soils, We are running out to the
Speaker 1: fossil fuels that UM the agricultural industry relies on. And
Speaker 1: if we continue along the trajectory, we have a big
Speaker 1: storm coming. We have probably the greatest famine the plant
Speaker 1: has ever seen on its way. If we do not
Speaker 1: aim to build food autonomy, aim to rewild our ecologies
Speaker 1: aimed to reconfigure our consumption patterns or food production and
Speaker 1: consumption patterns two seequester more carbon to allocate two more people,
Speaker 1: to produce healthier foods um and to really to recover
Speaker 1: the earth. Another important stuff we can take in the
Speaker 1: growth would be to get rid of what scale down
Speaker 1: to an especially destructive industries. There is, of course, agriculture.
Speaker 1: There's um the fossil fuels industry, the arms industry, private
Speaker 1: jet industry, the automobile industry, the airline industries. All of
Speaker 1: these industries must either be slimmed down or gotten rid
Speaker 1: of um because as the pandemic has showing, very few
Speaker 1: of the jobs that are currently undertaken around the world
Speaker 1: are truly essential to maintain in the bare bones of life.
Speaker 1: And of course we do need to reconfigure the way
Speaker 1: that we live. The ways of life you don't have
Speaker 1: to reflect ecological limits. But even with that reconfiguration, I
Speaker 1: think we knew what industries needed and what on UM.
Speaker 1: I always find it strange, This is, I guess a tangent.
Speaker 1: I always find it strange that politicians are celebrated for
Speaker 1: bracken about creating new jobs, when in reality, I believe
Speaker 1: and really the vision was in the twentieth century that
Speaker 1: we would reach a point where fewer and fewer people
Speaker 1: needed to work, and that we need to work for
Speaker 1: less time um. And so that really is part of
Speaker 1: the aim of the growth. Reviving that pursuit, reviving that
Speaker 1: cool because we have reached the point where we can
Speaker 1: um scale on the amount of time each posson has
Speaker 1: to work skill only amounts of jobs and an't necessary. Um.
Speaker 1: If you've read Bullshit Jobs by David Greable, you'll see
Speaker 1: that a lot of particularly service economy jobs ah practically worthless. Um.
Speaker 1: And I actually saw kind of funny video talking about
Speaker 1: how at this point office culture is more of a religion.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's so good. Yeah, so that going and going
Speaker 1: around making the surrounds on Twitter, that was really funny. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we just move around a bunch of people
Speaker 1: move around and wunt numbers. If you've seen, um, the
Speaker 1: show Succession, that Succession Severance, do you see the show's sufferance. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty much like an our slash anti work
Speaker 1: type show. UM. And so I think one more people
Speaker 1: are coming too, the realization that hey, this kind of sucks,
Speaker 1: the fact that we have to work this much, so
Speaker 1: we need to reduce the amount of time we work, um,
Speaker 1: the type of work between to change type of work
Speaker 1: we do. So it's a quantitative and qualitative shift and
Speaker 1: something I spoke about in my view on anti work
Speaker 1: or post work, whatever you want to call it. These changes,
Speaker 1: these steps to skal on total energy use, can be
Speaker 1: taken by a broad range of organizations. Groups, mass movements,
Speaker 1: popular assemblies, unions, cooperatives, not waiting for the state, but
Speaker 1: going beyond it. I think we've seen by now. I
Speaker 1: think if you have not seen right now, it needs
Speaker 1: open your eyes. The state is not doing enough or
Speaker 1: some cases not doing anything at all, to respond to
Speaker 1: these cry sees, and we need to take it into
Speaker 1: our own hands to do so. UM. I have a
Speaker 1: video in store UM for December that as one of
Speaker 1: my patron's jokes, might have the alphabet agencies after me.
Speaker 1: But there are a lot of different actions that we
Speaker 1: can take UM to integrate the growth, to move towards
Speaker 1: a decro society, to de grow our economies, a combination
Speaker 1: of acts of confrontation and non cooperation and prefiguration in
Speaker 1: some degrowth challenges. The dominant growth imperative it's in the
Speaker 1: name it is intentionally servers of in its title because
Speaker 1: it requires us to think about how we can collectively
Speaker 1: organize the restructuring of all economy and the downscale of
Speaker 1: energy and resource use worldwide. The transition back into balance
Speaker 1: with the living will in a safe, just an equitable way.
Speaker 1: The growth means striving for a selftitude, life and dignity
Speaker 1: and abundance for all. The growth of mean liberating ourselves
Speaker 1: not just from the ways that the growth imperative has
Speaker 1: shaped our technologies. Education the growth who require that we
Speaker 1: not just liberate ourselves from the ways that the growth
Speaker 1: imperative has shaved our technologies and institutions, but it demands
Speaker 1: that we also reconsider education our cultural norms and values,
Speaker 1: or identities or mindsets or relationships. It will be a
Speaker 1: massive shift with anarchists called social revolution um, but it's
Speaker 1: one that is worthwhile. As some de growth advocates would see,
Speaker 1: it's de growth by choice or the growth by force?
Speaker 1: What's the use of de growth here? Has being used
Speaker 1: slightly differently, the growth by choice being like I described,
Speaker 1: collectively organized, democratically managed restructure of the economy to bring
Speaker 1: into bounce the living will in a safe, just nequitable
Speaker 1: way um, whereas de growth by force is more so
Speaker 1: a combination of austerity and apocalypse. So up to you,
Speaker 1: all powers, all powers of the people. So there's there's
Speaker 1: a Japanese Marxist named Khe Saito who's been writing like
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff recently, who basically like he's been
Speaker 1: probably the biggest voice of the growth in Japan, and
Speaker 1: his book Capital on the Antipascene is finally getting translated
Speaker 1: into English pretty soon, and so yeah, check that out
Speaker 1: when it comes out. His stuff is really good and
Speaker 1: he like basically has revived both Marxism and d growth
Speaker 1: in Japan after Marxism is kind of like enclosure after
Speaker 1: a bunch of weird fairy Wait we we don't need
Speaker 1: to get into the story of the claps of the
Speaker 1: Japanese Left. But yeah, that that that's coming. I'll check
Speaker 1: that out. Yeah, yeah, I'm looking forward to that book
Speaker 1: when it comes out. Yeah, me too. If you want
Speaker 1: to check out my videos on this topic and others,
Speaker 1: just go to YouTube dot com slash androidsm. You can
Speaker 1: also follow me on Twitter um while Twitter still exists,
Speaker 1: on discloss and Drew and she could potentially even support
Speaker 1: on Patreon, feature dot com slash st true as it Peace.
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