Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Thoughts Podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Tracy Alloway and I'm Joe Wisenthal.
Speaker 1: Joe, what would you say the most fundamental tenant of
Speaker 1: economics is?
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Sorry, I started with the big question.
Speaker 2: I don't know, it's not fair. What do you say this?
Speaker 1: Well, it has to be growth, right, Like the whole
Speaker 1: point is to generate economic growth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean if you were saying, like, okay, like
Speaker 2: what Ultimately you can fight about how best to measure
Speaker 2: growth and there's like no one statistic that will ever
Speaker 2: give you the answer of like is this economy doing
Speaker 2: well or not? You can never reduce it that much.
Speaker 2: But on some level it does seem like the gauge
Speaker 2: of a successful policy, right is how much the economy grows?
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And I know there have been you kind of
Speaker 1: alluded to it just then there have been various attempts
Speaker 1: in time to gauge economic well being in slightly different ways.
Speaker 1: So I remember it didn't it was Bhutan.
Speaker 2: I think what happened to the happiness and you never
Speaker 2: hear about it?
Speaker 1: Is that not on the terminal? We need to look,
Speaker 1: we need to get it on there. If it's not
Speaker 1: but there is this fundamental question over what should be
Speaker 1: the goal of economics and ultimately the economy, and is
Speaker 1: it simply economic growth or could we be asking for
Speaker 1: something a little bit more right?
Speaker 2: And we're always like fighting about this implicitly, which is okay,
Speaker 2: Like should we trade growth for greater equality? Should we
Speaker 2: sacrifice some growth for more environmental sustainability? Perhaps? Like they
Speaker 2: are all these like should we trade growth for like
Speaker 2: better job quality or whatever? But if fundamentally growth itself
Speaker 2: is always taken for granted as being per se a good.
Speaker 1: Thing, absolutely, And I'm glad you mentioned the climate just then,
Speaker 1: because of course, when you think of economic growth, so
Speaker 1: much of it is tied into consumption, and if consumption
Speaker 1: is becoming a problem from an environmental perspective, then obviously
Speaker 1: you would want to reduce that, which would presumably be
Speaker 1: a hit to economic growth. So all of this is
Speaker 1: a way of saying that today we are going to
Speaker 1: explore something that's very, very different to traditional thinking around economics.
Speaker 1: We're going to be looking into something called the d
Speaker 1: growth movement.
Speaker 2: So does that mean GDP like the goals of shrinking?
Speaker 1: Yeah, negative GDP.
Speaker 2: All right, let's learn more about it.
Speaker 1: And we really do have the perfect guest. We're going
Speaker 1: to be speaking with Noel King. She is, of course,
Speaker 1: the host of Vox's daily news podcast Today Explained, and
Speaker 1: she's releasing a four part series called Blame Capitalism, and
Speaker 1: one of the episodes is all about this thing called
Speaker 1: the de growth movement. So let's check in with her. Noel,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on all thoughts.
Speaker 3: I'm a big fan you guys. Thanks for having me. Noel.
Speaker 1: Maybe just to begin with, you know, I sort of
Speaker 1: teased that we are going to be talking about the
Speaker 1: d growth movement, but what is this exactly?
Speaker 3: I will tell you what D growth is, but first
Speaker 3: I want to tell you that I have a good
Speaker 3: friend who just got back from vacation in Bhuta, and
Speaker 3: the first thing I asked her was is everyone super happy?
Speaker 3: And she's an economic supporter, so she got it immediately
Speaker 3: and she said, I didn't see a lot of homelessness,
Speaker 3: I didn't see a lot of poverty. People did seem happy,
Speaker 3: but I did see a lot of small farmers, like
Speaker 3: people who look like they are, you know, farming for
Speaker 3: a living and not going to do much better than that.
Speaker 3: So anyway, the happiness index is something I too, am
Speaker 3: really obsessed with when it comes to D growth. If
Speaker 3: you ask economists who believe in D growth who ascribed
Speaker 3: to it, what they're going to tell you is it's
Speaker 3: not a very well defined thing, and we really want
Speaker 3: to avoid terminology that scares people, and de growth is
Speaker 3: a word that scares people. But I did come across
Speaker 3: a very good definition. It's from the economic anthropologist Jason Hickel.
Speaker 3: He wrote a book in twenty twenty called Less is
Speaker 3: More that I've seen described as like the Bible of
Speaker 3: D growth. And here's what Jason Hickel says. He calls
Speaker 3: D growth quote a planned reduction of energy and resource
Speaker 3: use designed to bring the economy back into balance with
Speaker 3: the living world in a way that reduced is inequality
Speaker 3: and improves human well being. A lot of that sounds
Speaker 3: really good. I think the word that is almost designed
Speaker 3: or destined to trigger people in economics is planned, right,
Speaker 3: planning to shrink and who's going to be responsible for that?
Speaker 3: So that's that's what de growth is. It's saying we
Speaker 3: have gotten big enough and now is the time to
Speaker 3: get smaller. They're not calling for like a catastrophe like
Speaker 3: we saw during twenty twenty. I remember being on air
Speaker 3: when COVID hit and I remember saying, this is the
Speaker 3: worst you know, these are the worst jobs numbers since
Speaker 3: the Great Depression, and I could not believe those words
Speaker 3: were coming out of my mouth. I was like, this
Speaker 3: is a catastrophe. What Jason Hickel and other de growths
Speaker 3: would say is right, right, right, But that was entirely unplanned.
Speaker 3: We didn't expect COVID. The way to do this is
Speaker 3: take it in hand and make it happen deliberately.
Speaker 2: So it's interesting, like what strikes you is that you
Speaker 2: know this idea of planned and when I hear that,
Speaker 2: it's like, well, like, you know, we're actually one would
Speaker 2: argue that much of the world is embrace planning of
Speaker 2: some sort. In the US is increasing, it's sort of
Speaker 2: like active industrial policy, and China has seen extraordinary success
Speaker 2: and a sort of you know, big over the decade
Speaker 2: material standard of living with a large part of the
Speaker 2: economy on some level planned. To my mind, the question
Speaker 2: is why do we need less growth or less economic
Speaker 2: activity to bring the sort of ecosystem or environment into balance,
Speaker 2: Because some would say we can do both, right, we
Speaker 2: can have growth, but also we can find ways to
Speaker 2: decarbonize the economy, other ways that the growth can be
Speaker 2: more sustainable without just having less activity.
Speaker 3: And there are something like thirty three countries in the
Speaker 3: world now that have managed to do that, that have
Speaker 3: managed to decouple their growth from their carbon emissions. And
Speaker 3: this was a big story. I remember the economist drant
Speaker 3: a story in twenty twenty two and it was like, hey, guys,
Speaker 3: we haven't been making attention, but look at what's been
Speaker 3: going on. And I think that's actually kind of an
Speaker 3: extraordinary success. I think what Degrowthers would say is this,
Speaker 3: this is a belief that has a very interesting history. Right,
Speaker 3: So I'm going to take you back to the late
Speaker 3: nineteen sixties, Americans other people worldwide, Europeans have started becoming
Speaker 3: concerned about what is happening to the environment, and they
Speaker 3: start asking themselves questions like, what's going to happen if
Speaker 3: we just keep on this trajectory. This is also around
Speaker 3: the time that the Population Bomb the book comes out
Speaker 3: and it predicts that if we keep reproducing, we're all
Speaker 3: going to starve to death. Right, there's this very like
Speaker 3: Malthusian kind of vibe in the air. So a think
Speaker 3: tank called the Club of Rome forms in Rome. It
Speaker 3: is founded by an industrialist and an economist named Aurelio Pitchai.
Speaker 3: I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. This in nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 3: he invites some leading thinkers, economists, physicists, chemists, other kinds
Speaker 3: of academics into a room and he says, let's map
Speaker 3: out what's going to happen if we keep growing the
Speaker 3: way we're growing. Right, So four of them go back
Speaker 3: to MIT, which is using very early but very very
Speaker 3: good computer technology, and they sort of feed scenarios into
Speaker 3: the computer. What happens if we keep repricing at the
Speaker 3: same rate, What happens if we keep eating at the
Speaker 3: same rate, What happens if we keep clearing forests at
Speaker 3: the same rate. And they keep coming up with really
Speaker 3: bad news. The planet will be burning, we will not
Speaker 3: have enough, we will all starve to death. They write
Speaker 3: this book called The Limits to Growth in nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 3: and shockingly, you guys the New York Times, I thought
Speaker 3: this was like a pamphlet. Okay. When I first started
Speaker 3: studying this, I was talking to the d growths and
Speaker 3: I got the sunset like, Okay, they're playing it up
Speaker 3: a little bit. It's probably like a pamphlet that people got,
Speaker 3: you know, that got handed out in the street. The
Speaker 3: New York Times reviewed this book in nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 3: There is an old review online and it is very
Speaker 3: critical of the conclusion, and it acknowledges that, you know,
Speaker 3: these guys are using computers and this is a new
Speaker 3: thing and that's very important in statistics. But then it
Speaker 3: says like there's been dumerism for a long, long, long
Speaker 3: long time, and this just seems like more doumerism. So
Speaker 3: from there you have this movement of people. The Club
Speaker 3: of Rome seems fascinating to me right like it's an
Speaker 3: informal think tank. They meet a couple of times a year.
Speaker 3: We have a website now, and they for the past
Speaker 3: fifty years have continued to bang this drum and have
Speaker 3: continued to say, if we keep going along these lines,
Speaker 3: we're going to burn ourselves out. They will use words
Speaker 3: like suicide, you know, very very colloquially. And if you
Speaker 3: look at what's happening with climate change now and with
Speaker 3: stories about glaciers melting and forest being raised, it does
Speaker 3: sort of seem like back in nineteen seventy two. They
Speaker 3: predicted quite a bit in the way we think about
Speaker 3: the environment now, which is we are all very concerned
Speaker 3: about it and we don't really have ways to fix it,
Speaker 3: they would argue.
Speaker 1: So you sort of touched on it in that answer there,
Speaker 1: But talk to us about who I guess the ringleaders
Speaker 1: of the de growth movement are now, Like, who is
Speaker 1: spearheading this effort? And do you get the sense that
Speaker 1: it's resonating perhaps in twenty twenty three in a way
Speaker 1: that maybe it didn't in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 3: So I'll tell you something really funny. I was trying
Speaker 3: to book this show, you know, get these people to
Speaker 3: talk in the month of August twenty three. Guess what
Speaker 3: goes on in the month of August for Deep Growths vacation, vacation.
Speaker 1: Like all month from the life show Funny.
Speaker 3: I did four series in this I did four episodes
Speaker 3: in this series about capitalism, and everybody was very easy
Speaker 3: to reach, except for the have it all figured out
Speaker 3: amatic Yep, they're like, I will be gone until September seventh.
Speaker 3: It was actually really great. That's exactly right. So a
Speaker 3: couple of names, you're going to be familiar with Jason Hickel,
Speaker 3: the economic anthropologist I mensioned who wrote the book Less
Speaker 3: is More. You will be familiar with the name Herman Daly.
Speaker 3: Herman Daily was an advocate of steady state economic growth.
Speaker 3: He passed unfortunately. I believe it was late last year.
Speaker 3: There is a gentleman named Dirk Phillipson. He's a professor,
Speaker 3: a Duke and economic historian. He wrote a very good
Speaker 3: book called How GDP Came to Rule the World, which is,
Speaker 3: you know, an argument against taking GDP, as you said
Speaker 3: in your intro, taking GDP as the fundamental underpinning of
Speaker 3: our economy. There's a really interesting guy named Tim Jackson,
Speaker 3: also an economist, identifies as an ecological economist. That was
Speaker 3: not a term I had encountered until I started reporting
Speaker 3: on this. And Kate Rayworth, the famous one who wrote
Speaker 3: the book Doughnut Economics in twenty seventeen and caused a
Speaker 3: big stir. Now. I don't know if Kate identifies as
Speaker 3: a d growth, but they certainly identify with her. We
Speaker 3: looked for the physical center of the movement. There's a
Speaker 3: lot of activity in Barcelona. There's an economist whose name
Speaker 3: I Hope. I pronounced correctly. Georgis Callis. He's a Greek guy,
Speaker 3: And it does seem like they're mainly concentrated in Europe,
Speaker 3: which you know you might expect, but these are people
Speaker 3: who know each other, who speak to each other. And
Speaker 3: to your question about is this more popular now, yeah,
Speaker 3: I really think it is one of the things that
Speaker 3: I couldn't help. But notice is suddenly around twenty twenty two,
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three, everybody has a d growth piece, right,
Speaker 3: So The New York Times is interviewing Herman Daily, the
Speaker 3: man who has been arguing for five decades that we
Speaker 3: should stop obsessing overgrowth, and has gotten a lot of respect.
Speaker 3: I mean, he's not a crackpot. The New Yorker has
Speaker 3: on Cassidy writing, is prosperity possible without growth? And I believe?
Speaker 3: Twenty twenty twenty twenty one, and then just a few
Speaker 3: months ago follows up with Bill mckibbon is it time
Speaker 3: to take de growth seriously? In The Financial Times? Martin
Speaker 3: Wolfe the Great, the esteemed columnist too. I'm sure we
Speaker 3: all read he recommends as one of his top books
Speaker 3: of the year. Jason hickeles less is more about de growth?
Speaker 3: So I definitely think we are starting to see this
Speaker 3: permeate in a real way. And I think it's probably
Speaker 3: because so many of us are very worried about what's
Speaker 3: happening with the environment, with the ecology. But I actually
Speaker 3: think there is another reason for this, and I can
Speaker 3: speak about what happened to me personally when I started
Speaker 3: reading about de growth. If you guys don't mind, go
Speaker 3: for it, yeah, I started to agree with them. I
Speaker 3: started to full on agree with them. My dad had
Speaker 3: worked on Wall Street in the nineteen seventies, before financialization,
Speaker 3: before securitization, so before there was real money. But he
Speaker 3: walked away from Wall Street in his early forties really
Speaker 3: hating Wall Street, and he told us as kids, you know,
Speaker 3: money isn't everything, and you should never work in this
Speaker 3: life just to get money. It was like one of
Speaker 3: the most firmly ingrained things in my brain from the
Speaker 3: time I was four or five years old. So I
Speaker 3: grow up and I'm a journalist, and journalists don't care
Speaker 3: very much about money. But then I moved overseas and
Speaker 3: I started covering conflict in African nations. I was a
Speaker 3: war reporter, and I was looking at what happened when
Speaker 3: a country like Sudan, where I was based for a
Speaker 3: long time, didn't have an economy to speak of, and
Speaker 3: then suddenly Sudan discovers oil in additional places, and all
Speaker 3: of a sudden, there's roads and there's bridges, and there's towers,
Speaker 3: and so from that point on, I looked at growth
Speaker 3: somewhat suspiciously, but I was able to see, like, Okay,
Speaker 3: this is the real world impact. Right. A person who
Speaker 3: dropped out of school at nine or ten because of war,
Speaker 3: because of conflict, because there was no money, and then
Speaker 3: the oil boom happens, and this guy is sending his
Speaker 3: kids to college. I can't think of a more perfect
Speaker 3: encapsulation of growth, right. What it means for real people
Speaker 3: when an economy grows, And yeah, it means things for
Speaker 3: CEOs too, It means things for fat cats. But if
Speaker 3: you're an ordinary person, it means a lot for you
Speaker 3: as well. And so I've been very pro capitalist in
Speaker 3: my thinking, but like everyone else, I've been really concerned
Speaker 3: about what is happening to the environment. But along come
Speaker 3: these de growths, and they look at society in a
Speaker 3: very philosophical way, and they ask questions like, are we
Speaker 3: really happy with all this stuff we have now. The
Speaker 3: guy in Sudan who was sending his kid to college,
Speaker 3: he's very happy, was sending that kid to college. Do
Speaker 3: I need all of the things that I have? And
Speaker 3: that's what really made me start thinking about where do
Speaker 3: I shop and how do I shop?
Speaker 2: Ideological rebellions happened from time to time, particularly after crises,
Speaker 2: and so I think like ten years ago this time,
Speaker 2: maybe eleven or twelve years ago, you know, we had
Speaker 2: Occupy Wall Street is probably an agglomeration of a lot
Speaker 2: of things. It was targeted banks, there was a lot
Speaker 2: of that was some of the early talk about debt
Speaker 2: cancelation and student debt cancelation. Does this feel like a
Speaker 2: distinct from that or is it sort of like this
Speaker 2: ankst that many people feel about inequality and the economy? Like,
Speaker 2: is this the sort of current manifestation of a sort
Speaker 2: of underlying anst that ten years ago or eleven years
Speaker 2: ago presented as the occupy movement?
Speaker 3: I think it's both. I think that is a great question,
Speaker 3: and I think it's both. And I'll tell you why.
Speaker 3: You guys, remember there was a time when we didn't
Speaker 3: all talk about capitalism, right, it was just the system
Speaker 3: and we talked about bosses, we talked about banks, but
Speaker 3: like I was an economics reporter, I never once to
Speaker 3: use the word capitalism on air. Something did change, and
Speaker 3: it was seeing people in culture spaces start talking about
Speaker 3: capitalism that made me, like about six years ago, go
Speaker 3: what the hell is going on? Why are my cool
Speaker 3: friends in the zeitgeist talking about it and I'm not
Speaker 3: talking about it on air. So we did a bunch
Speaker 3: of research and we started seeing, to your point, the
Speaker 3: point in US history that we all started talking about capitalism.
Speaker 3: It was first the Tea Party and then it was
Speaker 3: Occupy Wall Street. Right, these two movements emerge together and
Speaker 3: suddenly we are hearing, we're hearing the sea word capitalism
Speaker 3: all the time. The Tea Party and Occupy were very
Speaker 3: very carefully tied to the financial crisis, and they were
Speaker 3: two very different movements that wanted different things, but they
Speaker 3: absolutely wore a reaction, they absolutely wore backlash. And d
Speaker 3: growth strikes me much the same, it really does. It
Speaker 3: strikes me much the same. But the financial crisis at
Speaker 3: a certain point ended. I think what it's gonna take.
Speaker 3: And the financial crisis ended, and the young people are
Speaker 3: still out there yelling about capitalism. We see that in
Speaker 3: Pugh service. Every year they take a new Every year
Speaker 3: or two, Pew does a new round of data on capitalism.
Speaker 3: And every year you see the young people a little
Speaker 3: bit less, a little bit fewer, a little bit fewer
Speaker 3: have faith in it. Right, So the financial crisis ended,
Speaker 3: but this is a long tail of us doubting capitalism,
Speaker 3: the environmental problems that the world is facing. And these
Speaker 3: are things you know, I see in my daily life.
Speaker 3: I'm a big hiker. I like to go out west.
Speaker 3: These are things that I see my daily life. I
Speaker 3: don't know that they end the way the financial crisis ended.
Speaker 3: I think they have an equally long tale. And so
Speaker 3: I do wonder. I mean, I said to Dirk Phillips
Speaker 3: and the economic history, and I said, look, you know
Speaker 3: that an American president or an American politician could never
Speaker 3: get elected on a platform of de growth. And he mentioned,
Speaker 3: and I can't believe I didn't see it coming. He
Speaker 3: mentioned Rfk's famous speech in Kansas, and I believe it
Speaker 3: was nineteen sixty eight when he talks. RFK talks about
Speaker 3: GDP not measuring the health of our children, the happiness
Speaker 3: of our children, the health of our waters. You know
Speaker 3: how sane we all are. And he said, you know,
Speaker 3: Dirk Phillipson tells me, as far as I understand it,
Speaker 3: RFK may very well have been elected president, right, And
Speaker 3: it was one of those moments where I was like,
Speaker 3: I don't have an answer for that. I actually don't
Speaker 3: have an answer for that. It's a really interesting point,
Speaker 3: and I'm not going to clap back at you because
Speaker 3: I want to think about it for a while. And so, yeah,
Speaker 3: I to your point is this just is this a blip,
Speaker 3: is a furious blip? Maybe it very well might be.
Speaker 3: Many things are furious blips. But if we continue seeing
Speaker 3: what climate change is doing to us, I could see
Speaker 3: this having a bit of a longer tail. And the
Speaker 3: thing is, you never know what the kids are going
Speaker 3: to do a generation from now. You just don't.
Speaker 2: You know, Tracey, you know the other speech you know
Speaker 2: that I'm thinking about too, which is like there is
Speaker 2: some you know the Carter in the Carter gave the
Speaker 2: famous Malaise speech where he like talked about the quote
Speaker 2: erosion of our confidence in the future, and that was
Speaker 2: like at a time of high inflation, but it also
Speaker 2: sort of got at this idea that like there was
Speaker 2: a president who's sort of like talked about like maybe
Speaker 2: we need some like societal reset.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you've seen sort of glimmers of this theme at
Speaker 1: various points in time, but no one has actually like
Speaker 1: enunciated it as a de growth movement, at least in politics.
Speaker 1: But I want to ask, you know, move away from
Speaker 1: the US for a second, Noel. You mentioned your experience
Speaker 1: in the Sudan. You know, developing countries will probably have
Speaker 1: a different view of economic growth and progress than a
Speaker 1: lot of the developed world, and they're certainly in a
Speaker 1: different position. How does the de growth movement take them
Speaker 1: into account? And how does it tell people to think
Speaker 1: about you know, when are you big enough?
Speaker 3: They certainly do take the developing world into account. I
Speaker 3: mean you would imagine so, right. It's the type of
Speaker 3: person whose mind instantly goes the de growth is the
Speaker 3: people as who are part of this movement. I feel
Speaker 3: like de growther is slightly pejorative. The people who are
Speaker 3: part of this movement are the type of people who
Speaker 3: are wired to think about the developing world. And so
Speaker 3: when I push them on that, I mean I brought
Speaker 3: up Sudan in interviews and what they would say, is
Speaker 3: it's not Sudan that needs to stop growing. It's the
Speaker 3: United States, it's Western Europe. It's not like we've had
Speaker 3: our time, but it is we have enough. We have
Speaker 3: to decide that we have enough. And Sudan doesn't, and
Speaker 3: Molly doesn't, and much of the African continent and much
Speaker 3: of the developed world doesn't, and we have to be
Speaker 3: okay with letting them grow, and we have to work
Speaker 3: with them to make sure that they are growth is
Speaker 3: greener than our growth was through industrialization right and into
Speaker 3: the present day. So this is not a movement. And
Speaker 3: again this is why I find them sympathetic. It's very
Speaker 3: easy for me to dismiss people who have never thought
Speaker 3: about Sudan as somebody who lived there for three years
Speaker 3: and covered that country for three years. If you haven't
Speaker 3: thought about Sudan and you're making some big grand point,
Speaker 3: then I've got some things to say to you. And
Speaker 3: so it was fascinating to hear them say, oh, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: we're not saying that these countries that need to grow
Speaker 3: are the problem. We're asking about the manner in which
Speaker 3: they grow. I mean Sudan and its oil money. That's
Speaker 3: not a great thing for degrowths. However, it is a
Speaker 3: good thing for impover Sudanese people. And I think what
Speaker 3: they would almost certainly say is let's get the impover
Speaker 3: Sudanese people up out of poverty. Right. But yeah, they
Speaker 3: have taken the developing world into account, and the prescription
Speaker 3: to me seems to be it's the developed world that
Speaker 3: has to change.
Speaker 2: An economist a sort of mainstream economist, and I would
Speaker 2: probably be a sympathetic to this view, But a mainstream
Speaker 2: economist would listen and say, the error that's being made
Speaker 2: is the assumption that there is a finite amount of growth,
Speaker 2: and that it's the role of the developed world to
Speaker 2: step back and allow for more growth to be allocated
Speaker 2: to the developing world. And obviously, you know, the US
Speaker 2: consumer is a big source of demand for goods made
Speaker 2: all around the world. A lot of growth comes, people
Speaker 2: would argue, comes from trade and relationships and networks, et cetera.
Speaker 2: And that the US would and the developed world would
Speaker 2: not be doing any favors to poorer countries to retrench,
Speaker 2: to buy less, to consume less oil, to consume less food,
Speaker 2: to consume less crops, to consume fewer manufactured goods that
Speaker 2: are made in the developed world. It seems like on
Speaker 2: some level there's like a fundamental rejection of this assumption,
Speaker 2: or there's this fundamental belief that, like there is only
Speaker 2: so much pie to go around, and that the developed
Speaker 2: world needs to take less in order for the developing
Speaker 2: world to have more.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. I mean, I don't that point you
Speaker 3: just made about what an economist would say about the
Speaker 3: way the world works. I don't think they have great
Speaker 3: answers for that. I think that's why they tend to
Speaker 3: focus on what should we be doing in the US
Speaker 3: and what should we be doing in Western Europe? Right,
Speaker 3: Because it's easy to tell me, Noel King, just stop
Speaker 3: eating meat, and I'm like, okay, yeah, I'm on board
Speaker 3: with that. It's much more difficult to say Americans in
Speaker 3: general stop buying products that are exported from Sudan. Actually
Speaker 3: don't think we have many exports many imports from Sudan.
Speaker 3: But you know what I mean, Like it is this
Speaker 3: thing where on an individual level, it makes a lot
Speaker 3: of sense to me. But when you start talking about
Speaker 3: a globalized world, a globalized economy where we're all really interconnected,
Speaker 3: I mean, there's a gloss on that. They can gloss
Speaker 3: over that, but fundamentally, what you find yourself wanting, what
Speaker 3: I find myself wanting at the end of the day
Speaker 3: is like, just tell me how this would work. And
Speaker 3: I think I didn't get a good answer in this series.
Speaker 3: I didn't get a good answer. I got some good
Speaker 3: individual things. You know, an end legislate, an end to
Speaker 3: planned obsolescence, right, my iPhone will last for fifteen years,
Speaker 3: not three, the way Apple wants it. To eliminate advertising
Speaker 3: in city centers. Paris, France loves the de growths. Paris
Speaker 3: has actually gone about eliminating advertising, as I understand it,
Speaker 3: in certain parts of the city, and they love that,
Speaker 3: and they look at that and they say like, look,
Speaker 3: this is a moment for us. But I mean, I
Speaker 3: think if you look at the world the way it
Speaker 3: is now, it's very hard to see how any of
Speaker 3: this becomes policy. It just seems to me like it's
Speaker 3: going to become individuals making choices that, of course, at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, don't add up to very much.
Speaker 1: I can see the argument for individuals. So you know,
Speaker 1: for instance, you make the personal decision to stop eating meat,
Speaker 1: and I can even see an argument. You know, in
Speaker 1: some respects for governments, maybe they legislate certain things obviously
Speaker 1: you know, rules around pollution and production and things like that.
Speaker 1: But what do you what do companies do in the
Speaker 1: D growth world? Because really, you know, the idea of
Speaker 1: maximizing shareholder value seems to be at complete odds with
Speaker 1: the idea of, you know, shrinking economic growth.
Speaker 3: You are absolutely right, the again a real world problem
Speaker 3: here is and in the D growth materials I've read,
Speaker 3: what's really interesting to me is companies are not often mentioned.
Speaker 3: We have a lot of history, we have a lot
Speaker 3: of philosophy, we have a lot about government, unless it
Speaker 3: is something really specific like Apples should make iPhones that
Speaker 3: last fifteen years, which fine, I think that's a great play.
Speaker 1: That sounds fantastic. Let's do that, right, go for it.
Speaker 3: But you're right, many of us in the West are implicated.
Speaker 3: Is often viewed as a bad word. I don't viewed
Speaker 3: as a bad word. We're all implicated in shareholder capitalism.
Speaker 3: I was telling a friend about d growths and she's
Speaker 3: got a heart, she's like a real caring woman, and
Speaker 3: she said, here's the problem. I have two daughters and
Speaker 3: I need their five twenty nine their college funds. I
Speaker 3: need them to grow until these girls are eighteen, because
Speaker 3: I'm going to have to pay for college someday. And
Speaker 3: when you are up against that, you know, I wish
Speaker 3: I could have put her in a room with Dirk
Speaker 3: Phillipson or with Tim Jackson. And I imagine what they
Speaker 3: might say is, couldn't your daughters go to community college?
Speaker 3: Couldn't your daughters go in state? But that is fundamentally
Speaker 3: at odds with the way human beings work these days.
Speaker 3: And these are people who have a very like positive,
Speaker 3: very positive notion of what human behavior could be if
Speaker 3: we were not all convinced that we're in competition with
Speaker 3: each other. And one of the things that's interesting about
Speaker 3: them is they do believe human nature has been perverted
Speaker 3: by capitalism, so that we do think we need more,
Speaker 3: We do think my house has to be nicer, my
Speaker 3: car has to be nicer, when in fact we're just
Speaker 3: being fed that. So there's a lot of stuff that
Speaker 3: you would have learned you would have come across in college. Right,
Speaker 3: But again, the question of what do we do with
Speaker 3: companies that actually need to engage in shareholder capital, And
Speaker 3: because so many of us are invested in the stock
Speaker 3: market and like need it to retire. I mean, at
Speaker 3: a basic level, I don't retire if the stock market
Speaker 3: doesn't grow, or I retire under a bridge, and so
Speaker 3: this is this is where again I would think that
Speaker 3: this movement probably probably has a lot to say about
Speaker 3: individual behavior that many people in the future might find
Speaker 3: and even even in the near future might find really
Speaker 3: really compelling. But I can't really see a CEO sitting
Speaker 3: down with any of this material and being like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's a great idea.
Speaker 2: Right, there's a limit to regardless of the structural changes
Speaker 2: we may want to make, whether it's environmental that like
Speaker 2: individual agency or one firm community. I just have one
Speaker 2: last question, and I want to go back to your
Speaker 2: point about how like in the developing world, places that
Speaker 2: have gotten a lot richer thanks to globalization, exports growth
Speaker 2: has been generally seen as a good thing, and many,
Speaker 2: very few people would dispute that, Like, you know, if
Speaker 2: it resonates in Europe, it resonates in the US with
Speaker 2: a certain subset of the pop So people might listen
Speaker 2: to this and say, like, it's not really about capitalism,
Speaker 2: it's not even really about the environment. It's about some
Speaker 2: sort of like deeper spiritual malaise, like we're lonely people.
Speaker 2: When you mentioned the iPhone, Actually where I thought you
Speaker 2: might we're gonna go is like we spend hours on
Speaker 2: a day looking at screens and it seems to be
Speaker 2: making people lonelier and we have less interaction with other
Speaker 2: people Like that seems to be well known and you
Speaker 2: know people have like families later in life and so forth.
Speaker 2: Like how much does it feel like is it really
Speaker 2: about GDP, is really about carbon or just sort of
Speaker 2: a reaction to this sort of I don't know, like
Speaker 2: spiritual crisis. Some might say that there's in a rich
Speaker 2: Western countries.
Speaker 3: You're speaking my language and you've put your finger on
Speaker 3: something really, really, really important. I think a big appeal
Speaker 3: of degrowth is about this sick feeling that a lot
Speaker 3: of us have that we have a lot of stuff,
Speaker 3: that we're doing good. We have roofs over our heads,
Speaker 3: we have cars, we can buy food, we have what
Speaker 3: we need, but we don't really know when enough is enough.
Speaker 3: And I think that's why it spoke to me. In
Speaker 3: all honesty, that's why it spoke to me. It made
Speaker 3: me question what is enough? And if somebody in another
Speaker 3: part of the world can do better, if I have
Speaker 3: a little bit less, is it worth it for me
Speaker 3: to have a little bit less? And the answer that
Speaker 3: I came to is, yeah, no doubt it is. You know,
Speaker 3: I think in the seventies and the late sixties and seventies,
Speaker 3: it was about it was just about the environment. I
Speaker 3: really do believe that. I think people weren't as malaised.
Speaker 3: Forgive my language, forgive my inventing words. I think people
Speaker 3: weren't as spiritually sick as many of us do feel now.
Speaker 3: They weren't as lonely, they weren't as divorced. And I
Speaker 3: think d growth speaks to the current moment in part because,
Speaker 3: as you said, it's less about the economy and more
Speaker 3: about as an individual, do I feel like capitalism has
Speaker 3: worked for me? And one of the things that we
Speaker 3: really try to trace in this series is that it's
Speaker 3: a vibe. The revolt against capitalism is a vibe more
Speaker 3: than it is anything else. It is people being sick
Speaker 3: and fed up and feeling like they're being screwed and
Speaker 3: feeling like they're lonely. And there's student debt, and then
Speaker 3: you have a bad job and then you don't have
Speaker 3: a pinch at anymore. Like all of these things really
Speaker 3: really really make us anxious, And if we were not
Speaker 3: anxious about those things, with something like d growth, would
Speaker 3: it appeal as much. No, I don't think you'd need
Speaker 3: this kind of philosophy. I think there would still be
Speaker 3: people advocating it. But I think the reason as a
Speaker 3: as a philosophy, not as an economic argument, but as
Speaker 3: a philosophy. The reason I think it works is because
Speaker 3: these are exactly the times that we're in. That's probably
Speaker 3: why you didn't hear much about de growth in the
Speaker 3: nineteen eighties and the nineteen nineties. It's a very twenty
Speaker 3: twenty three phenomenon here, right, All right, Well, the series
Speaker 3: is Blame Capitalism.
Speaker 1: Go check it out on vox and Noel, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for coming on the show to explain d
Speaker 1: growth to us. Appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Thank you guys so much for having me.
Speaker 1: This was really fun, Joe. That was interesting but also
Speaker 1: depressing because I feel like I feel like all of
Speaker 1: this makes sense, but at the same time, like economic
Speaker 1: growth and technological progress, and like the drum beat of
Speaker 1: more consumption is just almost this runaway train that it
Speaker 1: feels like no one actually has control over.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess what my view is that
Speaker 2: I'm skeptical that people doing less or consuming less will
Speaker 2: make other people better off. That that that, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm skeptical of like the idea that like, okay, if
Speaker 2: like people there we work less or buy less, et cetera,
Speaker 2: that that means that there is going to be some
Speaker 2: pot of stuff or activity or things that then get
Speaker 2: allocated to someone else and makes someone better off what
Speaker 2: I do buy And it was sort of she touched
Speaker 2: on it. Noel touched on it in that last answer,
Speaker 2: is that like on an individual basis, I'm not surprised
Speaker 2: that more and more people feel like they need like
Speaker 2: some individual recent right, not necessarily on a policy standpoint,
Speaker 2: but like individual reset regarding consumption or diet or meet use,
Speaker 2: et cetera. And you see that, and so I guess,
Speaker 2: like it makes sense to me that like, more and
Speaker 2: more people feel like they need something like that in
Speaker 2: their life.
Speaker 1: Well, the other thing I would say is it almost
Speaker 1: feels like an absolute versus relative gains problem. And I think,
Speaker 1: you know, you're almost getting into I guess human philosophy here,
Speaker 1: But it feels like people are always going to benchmark
Speaker 1: themselves to the person or people nearest to them, you know,
Speaker 1: and so and so I that dynamic seems really hard
Speaker 1: to get out of.
Speaker 2: Well, and I think people benchmark themselves to the year before, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So it's like, I mean, you people do not want
Speaker 2: to have for very understandable and I'm you know, a
Speaker 2: nice people, I mean myself and this too, like people
Speaker 2: don't want to have declining material experiences, right right, Like
Speaker 2: you know, it's one thing to say, Okay, I want
Speaker 2: to like slow down, and people obviously get to stages
Speaker 2: in their life where they like feel they need to
Speaker 2: buy less stuff or work less or consume less, et cetera.
Speaker 2: But buy and large like people like to have that choice,
Speaker 2: and people like to be able to modulate that. But
Speaker 2: I don't think people like having the feeling imposed on
Speaker 2: them that what I have or what you know is
Speaker 2: cost more next year or I have less than that.
Speaker 2: That being said, you know, there may be you know,
Speaker 2: there could be an argument that like climate does impose
Speaker 2: this sort of like hard limit on consumption in some way,
Speaker 2: and then it's interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, the other thing I would say is, like,
Speaker 1: clearly there is this sense of on we is a
Speaker 1: nice way of putting it, but maybe impending disaster would
Speaker 1: be another way of putting it as well, which pure
Speaker 1: GDP figures just do not take into account. Right, So
Speaker 1: you know, the US economy going up one or two
Speaker 1: percent per year is not capturing the decrease in life
Speaker 1: expectancy for some people or just general dissatisfaction with life.
Speaker 2: Tase, can I tell you a secret? I'm just saving
Speaker 2: I've never said this to you before, and I'm saving
Speaker 2: it to the end of the episode.
Speaker 1: WHOA.
Speaker 2: I'm kind of like I've been like a dumer all
Speaker 2: my life, Like I going back, like even like when
Speaker 2: I was in high school and stuff like, I've always
Speaker 2: sort of been convinced that like some big societal shoe
Speaker 2: to drop is like right around the corner.
Speaker 1: Wait, I thought you used to say you were short
Speaker 1: term pessimistic, long term optimistic.
Speaker 2: Uh, maybe I am sort of Well, I sort of
Speaker 2: mean that there's always some disaster around the corner, like
Speaker 2: short term, like I always think we're like on the
Speaker 2: doorstep of something bad. Over time in my life, I've
Speaker 2: realized that I'm normally wrong, which is like, you know,
Speaker 2: sort of like trying to balance that out. But I
Speaker 2: am always of this view that like something bad is
Speaker 2: always right around the corner.
Speaker 1: See I'm short term optimistic and long term pessimistic. I
Speaker 1: think we kick the can down the road for the
Speaker 1: next year or two. We always find a short term solution,
Speaker 1: but eventually it's all going to come to a head.
Speaker 2: Well, well, we'll check back in a few years. See
Speaker 2: who's right.
Speaker 1: Check back in the next century, and you know, see
Speaker 1: who's right. Okay, shall we leave it there.
Speaker 2: Let's leave it there.
Speaker 1: This has been another episode of the Odd Thoughts podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Speaker 2: Follow our guest Noel King, She's at Noel King. Follow
Speaker 2: our producers Carman Rodriguez at Carmen Arman, dash Ol Bennett
Speaker 2: at Dashbot, and Moses Adnan, and follow all of our podcasts.
Speaker 2: Is Bloomberg under the handle at podcasts, and for more
Speaker 2: odd Lots content, go to Bloomberg dot com slash odd Lots.
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Speaker 2: Behind it.