I want to acknowledge the value of Prof. Blyth to intelligent discussion in a public format, his obviously long hours of work, and belief in education. I am 75, and these chats make me feel that I want to go back to university. Also, thank you to Brown University and the support for Mark and his network. In short, I'm grateful to everyone involved. Thank you.

"Degrowth isn't plausible. We need more growth to fix the problems that we created by pursuing growth." Genius.

@ProfDCoy

8 ай бұрын

Yeah, it sounds stupid when you don't understand what degrowth's critics are actually saying. Degrowthers never shut up about "that's not REAL degrowth", but at the end of the day, a real political-economy that actually exists in the real world is always going to pale in comparison to a system you invented in a world you made up.

@meb3369

8 ай бұрын

​@@ProfDCoySeems to me like the current political-economy isn't contending / comporting with the "real" world, and that's how we've ended up in an ecological crisis. And moreover, what's going to happen, when the global population declines around 2100? What will drive economic growth then - meaningless financialization? I'm asking because I am genuinely curious.

@ProfDCoy

8 ай бұрын

@meb3369 as I said in the second sentence, a common defence when someone points ou the real world difficulties with degrowth - right after "that's not real degrowth" - is to say "you think the current system is working out well?" No I do not; I know about degowth because I took the movement seriously for a while, because I too have issues with the current system. But the point is to replace it with a system that WILL work, not to run through a debating flow chart filled with gotchas and rhetorical flourishes. And I just don't see a lot of degrowthers willing to grapple with the real world implications of their policy prescriptions - and how they plan to build a political coalition to pass those policies. It always descends into a bad faith internet debate. So no, I'm not going to engage because I don't believe you are genuinely curious, you're just running through the next step on the flow chart, when I already said you would. "Beware isolated demands for rigor": either you're interested in rigor when analysing both systems, or you're only asking for rigor when it suits. What you might try being curious about is "how do we, in the next 6-26 years, unlock the trillions of dollars of private capital required for the transition in a way that can be achieved politically in majoritarian democracies where it took over a century of political and physical struggle to achieve even a hybrid form of capitalism with a social safety net?" Taking that question seriously might improve your view of what parts of degrowth are achievable in the near term and how, as it did for me.

@asumazilla

8 ай бұрын

​@@meb3369barbarians takeover usually.

@kayvee256

8 ай бұрын

@@meb3369 It's not enough to have a good idea for how to do degrowth. You have to be able to convince politicians to do it. But it's against the interests of investors. Which means you need to be able to convince enough voters to force politicians to do it anyway. If you've got an effective strategy for doing that, then you should already be out there doing it instead of spending your time arguing in KZread comments. :) If you don't have an effective strategy for doing that, then it's all moot. I do agree that the eventual consequence for not pursuing a strategy of _managed_ degrowth will inevitably lead to a state of _unmanaged_ degrowth, which will be orders of magnitude worse. But I don't see a way out of that problem.

Just ordered the book; looking forward to a sane and reasoned argument and read, without perpetuating “the tired tropes of a mythological American Exceptionalism. Instead, I anticipate a global sustainability perspective from the trio of authors/academics.

It's the tax code.

@BigHenFor

9 ай бұрын

Nope. It's not the tax code.

@buzoff4642

7 ай бұрын

@@BigHenFor Yes, it is. Tax escape was (re)investment. Those excess untaxed funds now buy up politicians, and competitors to shut them down. Once on easy street (monopoly), the funds then move on to buy up other industries, real estate, for instance. This is a downward spiral.

@5508Vanderdekken

6 ай бұрын

@@buzoff4642proclaiming this issue to be the result of one thing is a cognitive bait and switch that ignores the complexity of the problem in favor of a simple solution; in other words, the solution is too complex for you so you reduce it to one simple thing

this vid so fye 🔥

I’m wondering how subsistence economies and largely informal economies fit into these discussions…or are they just not included in the analyses?

When asset prices are inflated, the income generated from them is proportionately lower eventually. Other than in selling them. Which is possible to do for a short while.

On the topic of degrowth it would be great if you talked to Steve Keen.

@tonywilson4713

7 ай бұрын

Engineer here: I have been participating in Steve Keen & Friends for a few weeks now. Steve is by a long way the best person in economics when it comes to modelling and yet compared to the sorts of stuff I was doing over 35 years ago his stuff is backwards. I don't mean that in a malicious or self righteous way its just that Economics has been living in some freaky time warp for about a century. As a result of not bothering to see how other sciences modelled and analysed complex systems they are now so hopelessly out of date and its amazing the world still functions. Right now I can tell you that as a result of the things Steve has been trying to tell people about classical and neoclassical nonsense that *we are on the verge of an energy apocalypse.* I'm Australian and first discovered our situation back in 2016 and have been trying to find a way to speak enough Economic language to explain to people what has happened so they can understand how we got here. THIS IS THE SHORT VERSION. In simplest form we flipped our government owned energy systems which were constructed around GDP growth through employment INTO PROFIT MAKING systems. PART of all government strategy was to build AHEAD of the energy demand which is driven by population growth. *That meant planning ahead rather than reacting.* Unfortunately Milton Friedman's free market is reactionary. You can't do that with energy because new power stations take time to plan, take time to design and take time to construct. That's compounded by the motives behind how the energy system is managed. Governments build for OVER SUPPLY so there is capacity for new businesses and with them EMPLOYMENT and with that GROWTH. In a privatised system that goes out the door for PROFIT. A system with OVER SUPPLY isn't very good for profit so you need to shift it to into UNDER SUPPLY, because under supply drives prices up and with it profits. It might sound crazy to artificially cause under supply but that's exactly what Enron did before they got caught. To avoid the Enron trap the rest of the new power moguls DID NOTHING. They just sat back and waited until population growth caused the UNDER SUPPLY. It took some years but once it happened their profits started rolling in. 20 years later we are now stuck with privatised UNDER SUPPLY energy systems everywhere ruled by overly influential energy moguls who will do anything to prevent construction of anything unless they get the job and massive subsidies to do it. The problem is most of the developed world now has a fleet of old worn out power stations that need replacing and that IS NOT EASY BECAUSE IT TAKES TIME. Simon Michaux and others keep trying to tell us we don't have the resources to do the energy transition. My point is we don't have the energy production to do the energy transition because the energy moguls have stalled everything for 20+ years.

Degrowth is sort of a misnomer, it actually isn't negative growth. To put it simply, it's an increase in efficiency.

Degrowth is giving someone a local distribution on a motorcycle vs driving huge empty trucks criss crossing the country and still calling it "gdp"

Get it in audio book and I will buy !

Audiobook!

"No Inflation Blyth." In Tyler, Texas, building a flight of outdoor stairs costs 86,000 dollars USD in July 2023? Cement foundation already there, so excluded from price. Just Home Depot pressure treated lumber and a door and a saws-all, and 200 skews. Put that into a scale. One side is a single flight of outdoor stairs and a door, on the other is ONE YEAR of tuition and housing at Brown University? Still no inflation Blyth? Wait till you need some tradesmen in Boston!!!!!!!

@TheFamousMockingbird

7 ай бұрын

youre getting ripped off is what it is, inflation is just a obfuscating term

@5508Vanderdekken

6 ай бұрын

The acute need for tradespeople is also what’s driving up the cost of such projects, and that’s just the good old free market supply and demand you all in Texas love

Please talk to Academic Agent

Using the U.K. as an example of economic failure and hence the E.U. as well isn't it obvious ,now, that politicians are stuck in a loop of making their citizens poorer. Wages, in real terms, have decreased over the last 40 yrs. Exporting high skilled jobs abroad has created service industry economies, obviously not highly paid. The debt society grew because borrowing money was only way to buy goods. Now we have the disappearance of disposable income thus causing mass bankruptcies of small to medium sized businesses. The big rise in inflation is tackled by wage restraint even though it was caused by corporate profits. Europe is seeing a move to right wing populism supposedly driven by anti immigration fellings when actually it is driven by economics and falling standards of living. Taxation of wealthy, including corporations, is simply ignored. Spending on infrastructure halted due to Austerity. The U.K. has many unfilled jobs yet higher wages aren't being offered. That simply is economic madness. The idea that economic growth will improve the workers lot ignores the fact that any growth profits will simply be given to shareholders. Now you would think supposed left wing party's hoping to form a government would recognise these problems yet the U.K. Labour party actually admits it will follow conservative policy's for their first two years of government when it should actually be increasing taxes on the wealthy and corporate profits. Obviously one nation cannot solve these problems given we live in a global society but name one national government, of a wealthy nation, talking about bringing other nations together to tackle a continuing economic downward spiral. Tinkering around the edges simply leads to economic ineffectuality.

@buzoff4642

7 ай бұрын

Once fossil fuel realized their might, they retooled the economies to bow to them. Next up, shift the national expenses onto the public. Tax free profits, they've now moved into other sectors, with addiction to ever growing return rates. Insatiable oligarchy rules.

The only real growth seems to be in the levels of all kinds of debt.

Populations in 1st world nations are decreasing (so fewer customers), the rate at which we are extracting fossil fuels is starting to diminish (so less energy), and global conflict is disrupting global supply chains. I'm not sure how you continue to grow in that type of environment. I don't think it matters if that's not politically feasible.

@MarkMacWilliam

8 ай бұрын

Right. With population plunging (among other things), degrowth and a post-growth economy may be inevitabilities that we should be planning for rather than tactics we might advise against. I'd love to hear ideas about how to make that work.

@buzoff4642

7 ай бұрын

@@MarkMacWilliam Living Min Wage, for a start. The population won't be reproducing, within an incredibly unstable economy. 1/3 of those under 35, live at home with their parents, with no job. There is no shortage of workers, industry now feels entitled to wage-theft vulnerable workers, and nations feed that by importing a labor glut. Export nations are dependent on higher waged nations, and that is in meltdown. The US' $2.13/tipped waged and $7.25 min waged isn't a position of funding disposable income market's products.

@5508Vanderdekken

6 ай бұрын

The drop in aggregate demand isn’t because of population decline, it’s because of wages being kept low as a result of the focus they say is on aggregate supply

@kevinbyrne3725

6 ай бұрын

Actually Mark Blyth has pointed out in earlier talks that every so often the system (the economy) breaks and we get a system reset. That happened in the early 70's when labor was seeing most of the gains and the tax rate on the upper class was very high. It wasn't worth investing in things because you didn't get much back from your investment. The rich fought back and broke up the unions (among other things). So we've had stagnant wages for about 50 years, and yet the economy has still grown, just most of the gains have gone to the wealthy. So unless we start paying people more (unlikely), fewer people means a smaller economy. To put a finer point on it, fewer people born means the average population is aging (more old people than young people), and society is aging past the point in their lives where they do most of the spending.@@5508Vanderdekken

Sorry this was too abstract for me. What is this "growth" of? You need a few different adjectives than just the adjective "economic"...

@Rotwold

8 ай бұрын

Higher GDP, increased revenue, expanding financial markets, purchasing other companies to expand in to new segments of the economy (or purchase your competition), inventing new segments like "luxury" headphones using the same technology and components as the non-luxurious variant. Apple is a perfect example where they claim to be environmentally conscious but they release a new phone every 1 or 2 years.

@CA999

8 ай бұрын

@@Rotwold "Blah...Blah...Blah..." I was afraid of that... Nothing of substance.

@Rotwold

8 ай бұрын

@@CA999 hahah

@buzoff4642

7 ай бұрын

@@CA999 Growth of GDP (gross domestic product/production) used to indicate the fiscal health of nations. Once industry divorced the % of increase going to workers, it no longer reflects the fiscal health of the nation _and_ _its_ _citizenry_ as the increased profits from more productivity is going to shareholders. Worst, far worse, finance/investors now demand industry constantly hand over an ever increasing percentage of profits. Stop here, read that again. That's full on downward pressure for businesses to pay less for everything they buy (materials, labor, etc.) AND "externalize" their expenses (pay less and less taxes, reconfigure services and products that customers get less for their money. Notice the decline of products' quality, customer service, etc. Rising prices/stagnant wages, people start using credit cards extensively. Swipe!, % going to banks on every purchase as fees on the sales. Not paid in full at end of month, the price of everything purchased now has an interest (bank type of tax) atop the purchase. Absurd suppressed min wage, those credit cards now being used for essentials (food, clothing, etc.), so it equates to cumulative debt.

@5508Vanderdekken

6 ай бұрын

@@CA999made sense to me. Not sure what the issue is

When your guests confidently don't understand degrowth...

@ProfDCoy

8 ай бұрын

Degrowthers don't understand what degrowth's critics are saying, and they're never going to deliver a low growth or no growth economy until they do.