I want the economy to grow. Specifically I want the wind and solar industries to grow REALLY fast. So much so that their lobbying power is greater than that of the oil industry.

Yeah, not gonna happen. Best to treat growth as a given and work around it, imho.

On the upside, many "new" sectors don't use natural resources, except human time. E.g. writing blog posts, social media management, doing marketing campaigns for Gucci. Growth in those sectors should be (mostly) easy on the planet.

It's to me reminiscent of the 'deep ecology' folks, who don't pursue environmentalism with the goal of furthering human well-being, but have a quasi religious attitude to nature as if it is a thing in itself. If you want to have a life of leisure and cooperation, you need material progress and abstract away all the nasty and brutish things which is only achievable in an environment of abundance.

Degrowth will produce the exact opposite. Scarcity, tribalism, zero-sum competition and so on.

That's cute. No, most families would own NO cars, like most families don't own an helicopter these days.

P.S.: I'm pretty sure that's already/still true today, if you consider the world rather than the richest countries.

P.P.S: And I'm pretty sure that it's only in USA that the idea of most families having three cars wouldn't be considered outrageous.

Since we have math lovers here, I'll post a fantastic math oriented conf on the topic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&feature=list_othe...

Hello Mars!

Ted Kaczynski and other far-right thinkers (e.g. Pentti Linkola) have been advocating for shrinking the economy for decades.

It’s not a left/right issue and one side doesn’t have a monopoly on anti-materialism.

I think people in the West assume that because we are freer than most that we are not drowning in propaganda. Money really does run the show this planet over. Money and power really do seem to bring the worst out of people.

Economic growth is only needed for Ponzi economics, whether that be retirement funds, Social Security or stock market returns. Human beings are not some living aberration that requires growth or we die. Growth is only "needed" by the financial industry and holders of equities. As growing social unrest increases, and it will, people will slowly realize that consumption of cheap Chinese electronics do not make them happy. This idea that once we get over the hurdle of 100% automation we will all be able to live work and stress free in our post automation utopia where people can focus on the things that give them "meaning" and make them "happy" is absurd. Basic Income as a panacea for the lower class is another ridiculous idea that can only be imagined being successful if you first image human beings as blank slates whose programing is purely cultural and devoid of millions of years of instinctual hardwiring. The only thing I see Basic Income providing is as cultural grease (as in bribe) to keep people from rioting. The "need" for immigration is another epic lie needed only to keep the Ponzi scheme going. It blows my mind that the left let this made-in-marketing-heaven line of propaganda slide: "immigration is needed to supply the jobs that Americans don't want to do". It even sounds like a corporate slogan. Holy shit the gas-lighting. This is wage suppression. Americans don't want to do those jobs for what you want to pay them when you can instead take advantage of someone from a poor and broken country. This was big business stealing from Americans and it has contributed to the decline of the middle class. People seem to forget, or maybe they don't know, that the middle class was created through policy, just as it is now being dismantled through policy. Instead of this issue being talked about honestly we are told to ridicule those "xenophobes" who dare suggest that Americans could/should be doing those jobs for a non artificially lowered wage. Off-shoring and immigration are the same thing and no one is honest about this. They are supported by the same forces, for the same Ponzi effect, for the same concentration of wealth causing the growing income disparity we see. The "need" for immigration is also about the higher abstraction of the population Ponzi scheme. We as human being do not need to grow to thrive. There is no need to see just how many billions of us this planet and technology can sustain before biblical levels of suffering ensue. Europe importing millions of "refugees" (migrants)/immigrants to "fill the void" is purely the greed and entitlement of the Elites. They feel entitled to Ponzi economic comforts even though they did have to children themselves to support it. Less people means less load on the environment and less fighting over resources. This is a great thing especially for the environment as well as for everyone else on the planet not just those in Europe. Jared Diamond in his book Upheaval very slyly points out that immigration from the third world into the first world increases environmental problems by increasing gross carbon emissions and overconsumption. Yet as much as Diamond is loved by the left this is ignored, as if he didn't say it. Again the propaganda pumped out is multiculturalism and "diversity is our strength". Japan and the Norwegian countries beg to differ and are looked up to as models. Immigration is pushed to keep the Ponzi scheme going and to increase the Democrat voting base and not to give you more choices in local cuisine. The bullshit is miles high.

Can you really not envision a thriving human race without growth? International finance and corporate banking really do need growth. Either way economic growth is not sustainable indefinitely. Technology will not enable us to colonize the Universe anytime soon. Self driving cars are not happening in the next decade and the singularity is not happening in the next 5 decades, at least.

Looking through the comments I see multiple posts suggesting that non growth equals lowered standard of living. Standard of living has all ready started falling in America, most likely due to income disparity. Japan has not had much economic growth for the last 20 years yet they are living in the future. I have visited Japan, it's incredible. Japan feels like a future I'm not sure a multicultural country like American can ever achieve. Regardless, Ponzi economics is not necessary for anything other than easy money, especially for the Elites. Someone down at the bottom mentions Ted Kaczynski as a "far-right [thinker]". I think not. If you remove his savage deconstruction of leftism and academia from his writings he would be considered far left-wing. His philosophy is left-wing environmentalism and anti capitalism/tehcnology.

So, this movement is communism by another name? I understand that the new bit is the reduction energy consumption and quality of life, but it seems to me that they first need to get to the communist stage and then they'll shrink the economy. In other words: it's a fantasy.