Don’t forget that scarcity is literally the goal of many people trying to make sure we avoid climate change.
It’s not my view, but many many people are talking about “reducing consumption” for humanity. They never come out and acknowledge that their economy-shrinking tactics are making life miserable for poor people, but they’d have to be blind not to understand it.
There are many, many different ways in which the economy could be shrunk. Many have the downside which you mention; making life miserable. But also many, other ways avoid this problem. A few examples how this could look like:
reduce consumption of the super rich
reduce production of trash products like plastic toys or single use vapes
remove laws which enforce waste, such as minimum parking spots
in urban design: prioritize mass transit, biking and walking over motorized individual transportation
When discussing these things, we should never forget that too little, too late action will certainly lead to what you wanted to avoid; making life miserable for poor people.
reduce consumption of the super rich - interesting idea. sci fi at this point. all the consumption-reduction is hitting the poor so far
reduce production of trash products like plastic toys or single use vapes - eliminating those jobs, removing choice from people over what they use
remove laws which enforce waste, such as minimum parking spots - agree, zoning in general means enormous deviation from market equilibrium, meaning tons of economic value wasted
in urban design: prioritize mass transit, biking and walking over motorized individual transportation - as usual, ignores the time cost to people. Time is people’s most limited resource. Taking away people’s time makes them poorer
Ideally what we’d do is shift from polluting to non-polluting forms of consumption - such as by switching from coal and natural gas to renewables. Some would claim this is “economy shrinking” because we’d be pushing people away from one and towards the other by artificial means like taxes and subsidies.
But what these arguments fail to recognize is that we’re already doing that. We can’t pretend that the government has nothing to do with setting incentives when it lets coal plants pollute for free, and also gives them free police and military protection to stop any citizens or foreign countries that may be on the less beneficial end of that pollution from doing anything about it. So in essence discouraging and eventually ending the burning of fossil fuels is putting an end to the tax we all already pay in the form of bad health outcomes and lost current and future land value from pollution.
![The US is Politically to the Right of [Other] Democracies](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/21301eb3-0348-4db4-9f02-82fd35987e02.jpeg){kind=link}
Don’t forget that scarcity is literally the goal of many people trying to make sure we avoid climate change.
It’s not my view, but many many people are talking about “reducing consumption” for humanity. They never come out and acknowledge that their economy-shrinking tactics are making life miserable for poor people, but they’d have to be blind not to understand it.
There are many, many different ways in which the economy could be shrunk. Many have the downside which you mention; making life miserable. But also many, other ways avoid this problem. A few examples how this could look like:
When discussing these things, we should never forget that too little, too late action will certainly lead to what you wanted to avoid; making life miserable for poor people.
reduce consumption of the super rich - interesting idea. sci fi at this point. all the consumption-reduction is hitting the poor so far
reduce production of trash products like plastic toys or single use vapes - eliminating those jobs, removing choice from people over what they use
remove laws which enforce waste, such as minimum parking spots - agree, zoning in general means enormous deviation from market equilibrium, meaning tons of economic value wasted
in urban design: prioritize mass transit, biking and walking over motorized individual transportation - as usual, ignores the time cost to people. Time is people’s most limited resource. Taking away people’s time makes them poorer
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Yeah monopolies are really bad. Which industries do you believe are monopolized right now?
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Ideally what we’d do is shift from polluting to non-polluting forms of consumption - such as by switching from coal and natural gas to renewables. Some would claim this is “economy shrinking” because we’d be pushing people away from one and towards the other by artificial means like taxes and subsidies.
But what these arguments fail to recognize is that we’re already doing that. We can’t pretend that the government has nothing to do with setting incentives when it lets coal plants pollute for free, and also gives them free police and military protection to stop any citizens or foreign countries that may be on the less beneficial end of that pollution from doing anything about it. So in essence discouraging and eventually ending the burning of fossil fuels is putting an end to the tax we all already pay in the form of bad health outcomes and lost current and future land value from pollution.