I should point out that the logic of the degrowth movement follows from a relatively straightforward analysis of available resources vs. first world consumption levels. Our world can only sustain 7 billion human beings because the vast majority of them live not at first world levels of consumption, but third world levels, which many would argue to be unfair and an unsustainable pyramid scheme. If you work out the numbers, if everyone had the quality of life of a typical American citizen, taking into account things like meat consumption to arable land, energy usage, etc., then the Earth would be able to sustain only about 1-3 billion such people. Degrowth thus follows logically if you believe that all the people around the world should eventually be able to live comfortable, first world lives.
I’ll also point out that socialism is, like liberalism, a child of the Enlightenment and general beliefs that reason and science could be used to solve political and economic problems. Say what you will about the failed socialist experiments of the 20th century, but the idea that government should be able to engineer society to function better than the ad-hoc arrangement that is capitalism, is very much an Enlightenment rationalist, materialist, and positivist position that can be traced to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Charles Fourier, and other philosophes before Karl Marx came along and made it particularly popular. Marxism in particular, at least claims to be “scientific socialism”, and historically emphasized reason and science, to the extent that most Marxist states were officially atheist (something you might like given your concerns about religions).
In practice, many modern social policies, such as the welfare state, Medicare, public pensions, etc., are heavily influenced by socialist thinking and put in place in part as a response by liberal democracies to the threat of the state socialist model during the Cold War. No country in the world runs on laissez-faire capitalism, we all utilize mixed market economies with varying degrees of public and private ownership. The U.S. still has a substantial public sector, just as China, an ostensibly Marxist Leninist society in theory, has a substantial private sector (albeit with public ownership of the “commanding heights” of the economy). It seems that all societies in the world eventually compromised in similar ways to achieve reasonably functional economies balanced with the need to avoid potential class conflict. This convergence is probably not accidental.
If you’re truly more concerned with truth seeking than tribal affiliations, you should be aware of your own tribe, which as far as I can tell, is western, liberal, and democratic. Even if you honestly believe in the moral truth of the western liberal democratic intellectual tradition, you should still be aware that it is, in some sense, a tribe. A very powerful one that is arguably predominant in the world right now, but a tribe nonetheless, with its inherent biases (or priors at least) and propaganda.
I should point out that the logic of the degrowth movement follows from a relatively straightforward analysis of available resources vs. first world consumption levels. Our world can only sustain 7 billion human beings because the vast majority of them live not at first world levels of consumption, but third world levels, which many would argue to be unfair and an unsustainable pyramid scheme. If you work out the numbers, if everyone had the quality of life of a typical American citizen, taking into account things like meat consumption to arable land, energy usage, etc., then the Earth would be able to sustain only about 1-3 billion such people. Degrowth thus follows logically if you believe that all the people around the world should eventually be able to live comfortable, first world lives.
I’ll also point out that socialism is, like liberalism, a child of the Enlightenment and general beliefs that reason and science could be used to solve political and economic problems. Say what you will about the failed socialist experiments of the 20th century, but the idea that government should be able to engineer society to function better than the ad-hoc arrangement that is capitalism, is very much an Enlightenment rationalist, materialist, and positivist position that can be traced to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Charles Fourier, and other philosophes before Karl Marx came along and made it particularly popular. Marxism in particular, at least claims to be “scientific socialism”, and historically emphasized reason and science, to the extent that most Marxist states were officially atheist (something you might like given your concerns about religions).
In practice, many modern social policies, such as the welfare state, Medicare, public pensions, etc., are heavily influenced by socialist thinking and put in place in part as a response by liberal democracies to the threat of the state socialist model during the Cold War. No country in the world runs on laissez-faire capitalism, we all utilize mixed market economies with varying degrees of public and private ownership. The U.S. still has a substantial public sector, just as China, an ostensibly Marxist Leninist society in theory, has a substantial private sector (albeit with public ownership of the “commanding heights” of the economy). It seems that all societies in the world eventually compromised in similar ways to achieve reasonably functional economies balanced with the need to avoid potential class conflict. This convergence is probably not accidental.
If you’re truly more concerned with truth seeking than tribal affiliations, you should be aware of your own tribe, which as far as I can tell, is western, liberal, and democratic. Even if you honestly believe in the moral truth of the western liberal democratic intellectual tradition, you should still be aware that it is, in some sense, a tribe. A very powerful one that is arguably predominant in the world right now, but a tribe nonetheless, with its inherent biases (or priors at least) and propaganda.
Just some thoughts.