The 19th-Century Family Fortunes Funding Degrowth

Re:The 19th-Century Family Fortunes Funding Degrowth by sobellian on Tuesday August 11, 2026 @06:42PM (#49265504)

A single carbon tax would be a market-oriented solution that captures the externality of CO2 emission - and would likely still permit economic growth! You don't need to revolutionize the entire basis on which human civilization has acted for millennia in order to solve the problem. And if you did have to, one could reasonably expect that effort to fail.

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Re:The 19th-Century Family Fortunes Funding Degrowth by newspaper1 on Tuesday August 11, 2026 @06:59PM (#49265653)

That’s one single variable out of near infinite externalities. Other examples: collapsing the food chain by wiping out critical pieces through urbanization, microplastics poisoning all animal life (potentially), global warming due to heat capture of asphalt… Some of these may have solutions, some might not be problems but what’s definitely true is that “growth = good” is way too simplistic a model.

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Re:The 19th-Century Family Fortunes Funding Degrowth by sobellian on Tuesday August 11, 2026 @07:14PM (#49265766)

I think there's a middle ground between laissez-faire capitalism and degrowth. As far as I can tell no one in this thread has been arguing that laissez-faire always produces great outcomes, simply (and rightly) that degrowth is a horrible idea.

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Re:The 19th-Century Family Fortunes Funding Degrowth by newspaper1 on Tuesday August 11, 2026 @07:25PM (#49265867)

I’m talking about our existing economy, not laissez-faire. These externalities are not modeled in it.

> simply (and rightly) that degrowth is a horrible idea.

I don’t agree that it’s this clear. If growth is happening mainly for the rich (which it currently is), then I fully support de-growing them.

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Re:The 19th-Century Family Fortunes Funding Degrowth by sobellian on Tuesday August 11, 2026 @07:42PM (#49265996)

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/COMPRNFB

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

https://old.reddit.com/r/charts/comments/1qcy40d/growth_in_u...

It's nice to be wealthy, but growth is happening for everyone. But as an overarching point, you appear to be arguing against a strawman. No one as far as I can tell in this thread is arguing for the status quo, especially regarding climate policy. They're just arguing against the notion that humanity's lot can be improved by nuking the economy in order to save the climate.

I understand that it is a lot more boring to discuss measured market interventions than eating the rich (incidentally, how will eating the rich solve the environmental problems of urbanization?). But it will be a lot more productive assuming one's starting goal is truly the environment rather than eating the rich.

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Re:The 19th-Century Family Fortunes Funding Degrowth by newspaper1 on Tuesday August 11, 2026 @08:06PM (#49266202)

I mean those charts don’t pass the sniff test. Being healthy (or sick for that matter!) was basically free, now it costs over a thousand dollars a month in insurance. A huge chunk of most people’s income.

Same with housing (and education): https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-american-income-vs-...

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Re:The 19th-Century Family Fortunes Funding Degrowth by sobellian on Tuesday August 11, 2026 @08:27PM (#49266340)

Is it fair to say that you're more interested in discussing wealth inequality than environmental policy?

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Re:The 19th-Century Family Fortunes Funding Degrowth by newspaper1 on Tuesday August 11, 2026 @08:38PM (#49266415)

Degrowth touches both subjects. Billionaires for instance are top polluters. Leveling resource distribution would prevent that.

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Re:The 19th-Century Family Fortunes Funding Degrowth by snapplebobapple on Thursday August 13, 2026 @08:28AM (#49284924)

good luck making that happen. They are rich because they are highly capable (or their ancestor was and they have enough money to hire as many highly skilled poors as they need to enact their goals). They will find a way to push your attempts at degrowing them mostly onto the poors without structural changes to the market place. This doesnt mean what you think either. It means breaking up the companies they control that have large market power until they are small enough to not have much market power and there is an opening for more entrants to diffuse the market power causing market shares they held previously. Degrowth is a seperate, stupid idea, that will shrink the pie making everyone worse off. Even if manages to decrease the wealth gap slightly, the massive drop in quality of life from the pie being smaller will overwhelm that benefit.

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