Zompist Bboard Again

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Mon Oct 04, 2021 9:23 pm While I acknowledge that there are no simple solutions that will fix all of Capitalism's problems (especially the ones that are features rather than bugs), I think we are sometimes disingenuous in the ways we pretend that government solutions are worse than they really are. For example, the problem of government being incompetent as a producer of goods is certainly true, but who cares when the solution to that problem is so obvious? The government would have no handicap as an investor. The government would invest public funds in enterprises with no less information than what private investors have now. Meanwhile government has the advantage that, unlike private investors, it can be told what to do. The state is not the perfect proxy for the will of the people that it often pretends to be, but certainly an elected committee will be more sensate to the public need than Jeff Bezos. You could split the difference by saying that once a fortune or portfolio reaches a certain size it must be managed by a combination of the owner and the public, with concrete obligations to both.

I definitely agree on that one. I'm told public sector banks play in key role in German economic success. The European Investment Bank provided loans to support BioNTech's vaccine trials.

(I do think there should be private investors besides. But of course the two aren't incompatible.)

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Mon Oct 04, 2021 9:23 pm While I acknowledge that there are no simple solutions that will fix all of Capitalism's problems (especially the ones that are features rather than bugs), I think we are sometimes disingenuous in the ways we pretend that government solutions are worse than they really are. For example, the problem of government being incompetent as a producer of goods is certainly true, but who cares when the solution to that problem is so obvious? The government would have no handicap as an investor. The government would invest public funds in enterprises with no less information than what private investors have now. Meanwhile government has the advantage that, unlike private investors, it can be told what to do. The state is not the perfect proxy for the will of the people that it often pretends to be, but certainly an elected committee will be more sensate to the public need than Jeff Bezos. You could split the difference by saying that once a fortune or portfolio reaches a certain size it must be managed by a combination of the owner and the public, with concrete obligations to both.

Well, we have governments investing in countless things, through government wealth funds, public companies, and various funding programs. These investments have a mixed history of success. That doesn't mean government shouldn't invest, it just means that it's not necessarily better or worse than private investment. But if government investment is the only investment you allow, you'll creat artificial bottlenecks and reduce diversity, as every investment will be the result of a political decisionmaking process and therefore reflect only the preferences of the currently governing majority, plus be exposed to the horse-trading, blockages, and the patronage issues of the current political set-up (ask anyone in Germany about the new Berlin airport). That is fine as long as this is about part of what's going on in the economy, but it shouldn't determine everything.
Another thing is also that if you want to achieve or avoid certain outcomes, you can put them into regulations; again, that's nothing new. If you want Jeff Bezos to treat his workers better, mandate minimum salaries and work standards, plus inspections and penalties that bite; and / or create rules that support unionisation. If you want private Investment in a certain sector, create favourable conditions and subsidies - that worked like a charm for renewables in many countries.

hwhatting wrote: ↑Tue Oct 05, 2021 4:25 am
Another thing is also that if you want to achieve or avoid certain outcomes, you can put them into regulations; again, that's nothing new. If you want Jeff Bezos to treat his workers better, mandate minimum salaries and work standards, plus inspections and penalties that bite; and / or create rules that support unionisation.

That's a very important point. The most significant problem with Bezos is that he's an abusive employer - labour laws are the most efficient tool for that particular job.

"This dog is no good at swimming."
"At least we don't have a fish!"
"True enough. Can you imagine if our beloved pet was a hideous, slimy fish? Gross. But I do wonder if maybe he could be a better swimmer..."
"What do you have in mind?"
"Well, it would be better if he had fins."
"Sure enough. We can attach some fins right away."
"And all that fur just slows him down in the water."
"I'll shave off all his fur once we get the fins on."
"Of course, not being able to breathe under water is a problem as well."
"We could graft some gills onto his mouth. Medicine has come a long way."
"Then we just need some scales, a swim bladder, and voila!"
"That sure is a fine looking dog, yessir."
"Can you imagine how foolish those people feel who have pet fish instead?"
"I feel nothing for them but pity, friend."

Since this is the internet and jokes always have to be explained, I'll spell it all out. Capitalist reform always takes the form of chipping away at the wealthy's ownership of the means of production, taxing their profits away, redistributing their wealth, and regulating what they can do until the legislature has more control over their fortune than they do, but somehow this is all still not icky scary Socialism and it won't cause us to lose any of the things we like about yummy friendly Capitalism. It's magical thinking, and it's a paradox: If we think that rich people are doing useful work by owning the means of production, then taxing them to smithereens is just killing the goose that laid the golden egg. And if people siphoning away other people's labor value simply by existing is a bad thing, why are we so eager to preserve it at all costs?

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Tue Oct 05, 2021 9:13 pm Since this is the internet and jokes always have to be explained, I'll spell it all out. Capitalist reform always takes the form of chipping away at the wealthy's ownership of the means of production, taxing their profits away, redistributing their wealth, and regulating what they can do until the legislature has more control over their fortune than they do, but somehow this is all still not icky scary Socialism and it won't cause us to lose any of the things we like about yummy friendly Capitalism. It's magical thinking, and it's a paradox: If we think that rich people are doing useful work by owning the means of production, then taxing them to smithereens is just killing the goose that laid the golden egg. And if people siphoning away other people's labor value simply by existing is a bad thing, why are we so eager to preserve it at all costs?

Both your joke and your argument seem to assume a completely binary choice. But why should it be binary?

Take a non-rich person, like Farmer Jones. Presumably he's doing useful work (feeding us), so he deserves a wage. Probably $10,000 is too little. $100,000 is comfortable. $1,000,0000 seems excessive. $1,000,000,000 is absurd. The best amount is some range of reasonable values.

Now, why does this not apply to the rich person? Instead, we have to either do away with him, or let him take all the money he wants?

(More of a minor point, or maybe it's the major point: no one was ever "taxed to smithereens." Whether you mean to or not, you're accepting a conservative framework that rich people have "their money" which the government is "taking away". That's not some God-given fact; it's rich-person propaganda, and there are very different ways of looking at it (e.g., we might possibly believe that government is doing useful work that should be paid for.)

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Tue Oct 05, 2021 9:13 pm It's magical thinking, and it's a paradox: If we think that rich people are doing useful work by owning the means of production, then taxing them to smithereens is just killing the goose that laid the golden egg. And if people siphoning away other people's labor value simply by existing is a bad thing, why are we so eager to preserve it at all costs?

Both socialists and libertarians operate under the assumption that there can't be too much of a good thing. And I think your metaphor does a good job of explaining why people think so.

The thing is, mixed economies have done better than either robber baron capitalism or radical attempts at socialism. So, yeah, it may be ugly, but it does the job.

Or to put it another way, the rich is neither heroes nor villains. Capital owners are providing a useful service; but that's not reason enough to let them have slaves or get away with dumping toxic waste.

Capitalist reform always takes the form of chipping away at the wealthy's ownership of the means of production, taxing their profits away, redistributing their wealth, and regulating what they can do until the legislature has more control over their fortune than they do, but somehow this is all still not icky scary Socialism and it won't cause us to lose any of the things we like about yummy friendly Capitalism.

Getting back to that point: the point is precisely not to regulate everything people can do. There is such a thing as too much regulation, and it has negative economic consequences.

(It's rarely the wealthy who suffer from these. If you have a secure hold on the market, you've learned to live with regulations, with the added benefit that no newcomer can afford to be competitive)

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Oct 03, 2021 7:13 pmOverall I think "degrowth" is barmy, not least because it's anti-people. (If you can't get to utopia without genocide, it's no utopia.) But this particular set of policies is interesting; they range from liberal to green to radical. Going over the list in more detail:

In what way would reducing economic growth be anti-people or pro-genocide? I think there is enough money in the world, it just needs better redistributed.

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Oct 03, 2021 7:13 pm "Minimize waste" - uh sure, who is against that?

Possibly the massive companies creating the massive unsustainable amounts of waste currently being produced.

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Oct 03, 2021 7:13 pm "Suppression of advertising from the public space" - someone snuck their personal hobbyhorse into the manifesto.

Part of the problem is manufactured needs. People act like they need to have the things being advertised and would not consider buying if they hadn't been advertised.

MacAnDàil wrote: ↑Thu Oct 07, 2021 8:51 pm

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Oct 03, 2021 7:13 pmOverall I think "degrowth" is barmy, not least because it's anti-people. (If you can't get to utopia without genocide, it's no utopia.) But this particular set of policies is interesting; they range from liberal to green to radical. Going over the list in more detail:

In what way would reducing economic growth be anti-people or pro-genocide?

Because the degrowth people seem to hate the big cities where, you know, actual human beings live. If you want a world where there are no big cities and everything is local and small and much poorer-- i.e. we return to 1820-- then you pretty much have to get rid of 6 billion people.

If you want a world where 8 billion people thrive, you have to be comfortable with high population density. (Which has a lot to be said for it ecologically! The sort of anti-urban environment degrowth people seem to like is a highly inefficient way to live.)

I think there is enough money in the world, it just needs better redistributed.

The median household income on this planet is under $10,000 a year. That's about that of Mexico. Maybe not horrible, but do you really believe that's the best we can do?

You're asking for 93% of the population of the US to accept a lower standard of living. That's... a big ask. Historically-- and morally-- it's easier to improve the lives of the majority rather than just equalize whatever the current aggregate income is.

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Oct 03, 2021 7:13 pm "Minimize waste" - uh sure, who is against that?

Possibly the massive companies creating the massive unsustainable amounts of waste currently being produced.

What do you mean by "waste" here?

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Oct 03, 2021 7:13 pm "Suppression of advertising from the public space" - someone snuck their personal hobbyhorse into the manifesto.

Part of the problem is manufactured needs. People act like they need to have the things being advertised and would not consider buying if they hadn't been advertised.

Personally, there are a lot of things I'd like to do but can't, because I don't have the money. That isn't a situation I wish I could force on other people.

I'm divided and undecided on degrowth.

On the pro-degrowth side:

I think diminishing returns are at work here. Certainly developping countries need to grow their economy. In the richest country, though, the benefits of growth aren't obvious.

At some point it feels like growth has no impact on standards of living at all. France's GDP -- taking inflation into account -- has increased by 50% since 2000 (with sluggish growth -- but even tiny growth rates accumulate). If anything, it feels like people were living better back then!
Essentially if we'd all worked a bit less over that period, we'd be about as well off. (And better rested.)

Oh, there's a cultural difference in play here. I don't think degrowth people have any objections to big cities here. (They'd be shooting themselves in the foot: the Green vote is almost exclusively urban.)

Besides, politicians seem fixated on the processes at play in developping countries: China, or Europe in the 1950s or 1960s. These were situations where you could get huge growth rate relatively easily. These days are long past. Getting a growth rate over 1% is difficult in a wealthy country: the country is wealthy because, precisely, all of the easy things have been done already.

Apparently, no one understands this. This is a source of endless political problem. Of course we don't get China's huge growth rate; some people conclude that what we need is martial vigor and totalitarianism. Others will blame this on foreigners, or trade unions, or whomever bothers them.
Less dramatically, I remember our last socialist government budgeted according to unrealistic growth prediction. Of course 3% growth rates failed to materialize (to noone's surprise.) That didn't end well for them.

On the pro-growth side:

Economic growth correlates with less unemployment and decreasing inequalities. Slow growth or recessions benefit the wealthy. (Essentially, without economic growth, the best bet is to just sit it out and collect rent.)
Growth and GDP are counter-intuitive things. If, say, you're replacing inefficient and wasteful industrial processes by streamlined, environmental friendly processes that consume less resources... that counts towards growth.
Or, if you set up essential transport infrastructure to replace road traffic... that counts towards growth as well.
In fact, over the last 50 years we're largely polluting less and yet the economy grew.

And, of course, we haven't reached the pinnacle of technological or social achievement. There are a lot of things that could be improved -- and of course new things to be discovered. These would all add to growth.

All in all... eh. GDP and economic growth are indicators among many, with known flaws, and maybe we shouldn't fixate on these so much. Theoretically, they could be improved. (I think Piketty suggests adding the environment to national wealth. I don't know how you'd go about it, but the idea makes sense.)

What is the French Degrowth stance towards organic agriculture?

They're in favor. But it's not just them: nobody really likes industrial farming here. At best people think it's a necessary evil.

Industrial agriculture, like many industrial production things, benefits the major corporations that organise the production, but doesn't even necessarily benefit the often pittance-earning cancer-risk farmers that actually do the hard work.

zompist wrote: ↑Thu Oct 07, 2021 9:45 pm

MacAnDàil wrote: ↑Thu Oct 07, 2021 8:51 pm

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Oct 03, 2021 7:13 pmOverall I think "degrowth" is barmy, not least because it's anti-people. (If you can't get to utopia without genocide, it's no utopia.) But this particular set of policies is interesting; they range from liberal to green to radical. Going over the list in more detail:

In what way would reducing economic growth be anti-people or pro-genocide?

Because the degrowth people seem to hate the big cities where, you know, actual human beings live. If you want a world where there are no big cities and everything is local and small and much poorer-- i.e. we return to 1820-- then you pretty much have to get rid of 6 billion people.

If you want a world where 8 billion people thrive, you have to be comfortable with high population density. (Which has a lot to be said for it ecologically! The sort of anti-urban environment degrowth people seem to like is a highly inefficient way to live.)

Even assuming a(n intrinsic?) link between degrowth and opposition to high-density cities, this also appears to, unless I am mistaken, assume a link between opposition to cities and destroying the people within them rather than just reorganising the space.

If anything would be pro-genocide or anti-people, it would be continuing with the massive amounts of fossil fuels and waste that we currently have. That would be collective suicide.

zompist wrote: ↑Thu Oct 07, 2021 9:45 pm

I think there is enough money in the world, it just needs better redistributed.

The median household income on this planet is under $10,000 a year. That's about that of Mexico. Maybe not horrible, but do you really believe that's the best we can do?

You're asking for 93% of the population of the US to accept a lower standard of living. That's... a big ask. Historically-- and morally-- it's easier to improve the lives of the majority rather than just equalize whatever the current aggregate income is.

I think we can take into account 1° the unequal distribution of income in Mexico, as for the rest of the Americas. So the average income of Mexico is far from the median. Even in France, which is much more equal, the median is about half the . So, even with the idea I had suggested earlier, it would be more like the upper classes or upper-middle classes of Mexico than the middle. Ares Land may have a point about a developing / developed distinction and ecological growth here though.

2° that the real use of money is what it can buy and not for the money itself. If the same things can be obtained without money (e.g. having your own land rather than paying rent), then it's no worse. And indeed land should be better redistributed as well. I hereby suggest the idea (that I just come up with, pace anybody bagsied me) that land be taxed for land. There is already income tax and tax on land for money, and those excellent tools for redistrubution, but the taxing of land on large land-owners to distribute to either individuals in need of land or for communal projects. If land were, better distributed thusly, there would be much more disposable income. I, for one, spend about half my income on the rent and it used to be half.

zompist wrote: ↑Thu Oct 07, 2021 9:45 pm

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Oct 03, 2021 7:13 pm "Minimize waste" - uh sure, who is against that?

Possibly the massive companies creating the massive unsustainable amounts of waste currently being produced.

What do you mean by "waste" here?

Vast amounts of waste i.e. things not getting used and going in the bucket (especially if they then go into landfill or incinerators), e.g. food getting thrown away (30% of production), clothes (64% of production), toys (that often contain toxic plastics and are often produced by slaves) etc.

zompist wrote: ↑Thu Oct 07, 2021 9:45 pm

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Oct 03, 2021 7:13 pm "Suppression of advertising from the public space" - someone snuck their personal hobbyhorse into the manifesto.

Part of the problem is manufactured needs. People act like they need to have the things being advertised and would not consider buying if they hadn't been advertised.

Personally, there are a lot of things I'd like to do but can't, because I don't have the money. That isn't a situation I wish I could force on other people.

Well sure, I might spend more money if I had enough coming in too, but there are also things I'm glad I don't have the money to spend on that girlfriend would want like pizza or burger. And I think we should all have limits. It's totally appropriate that I can't buy everything that I want. But at which point that limit should be is certainly debatable.

Certainly, there should never be a point at which somebody can not even ask the question "Can I buy this massive thing?" because they undoubtedly can. So let's ban billionaires for a start - obviously referring to massive income tax, not expulsion from society or anything like that.

MacAnDàil wrote: ↑Fri Oct 08, 2021 5:24 am Industrial agriculture, like many industrial production things, benefits the major corporations that organise the production, but doesn't even necessarily benefit the often pittance-earning cancer-risk farmers that actually do the hard work.

Industrial agriculture means that 90% of the population is no longer starving peasants. Farmers are certainly not poor in this country-- median household income for residential farms is $100,593, and $139,016 for commercial farms.

zompist wrote: ↑Thu Oct 07, 2021 9:45 pm Because the degrowth people seem to hate the big cities where, you know, actual human beings live. If you want a world where there are no big cities and everything is local and small and much poorer-- i.e. we return to 1820-- then you pretty much have to get rid of 6 billion people.

If you want a world where 8 billion people thrive, you have to be comfortable with high population density. (Which has a lot to be said for it ecologically! The sort of anti-urban environment degrowth people seem to like is a highly inefficient way to live.)

Even assuming a(n intrinsic?) link between degrowth and opposition to high-density cities, this also appears to, unless I am mistaken, assume a link between opposition to cities and destroying the people within them rather than just reorganising the space.

Cities are highly efficient uses of space. There is not enough land for eight billion people to live in low-density rural or semi-rural environments.

If anything would be pro-genocide or anti-people, it would be continuing with the massive amounts of fossil fuels and waste that we currently have. That would be collective suicide.

Yes, fossil fuels are bad. That has nothing to do with "degrowth".

zompist wrote: ↑Thu Oct 07, 2021 9:45 pm

I think there is enough money in the world, it just needs better redistributed.

The median household income on this planet is under $10,000 a year. That's about that of Mexico. Maybe not horrible, but do you really believe that's the best we can do?

You're asking for 93% of the population of the US to accept a lower standard of living. That's... a big ask. Historically-- and morally-- it's easier to improve the lives of the majority rather than just equalize whatever the current aggregate income is.

I think we can take into account 1° the unequal distribution of income in Mexico, as for the rest of the Americas. So the average income of Mexico is far from the median. Even in France, which is much more equal, the median is about half the . So, even with the idea I had suggested earlier, it would be more like the upper classes or upper-middle classes of Mexico than the middle.

Are you not understanding "median household income"? Not mean, median. Your statement "So the average income of Mexico is far from the median" makes no sense: the median is precisely the number such that half of households earn less and half earn more.

So, no, when I say the median world income is like the median Mexican income, I do not mean the upper classes of Mexico, I mean the precise middle.

2° that the real use of money is what it can buy and not for the money itself. If the same things can be obtained without money (e.g. having your own land rather than paying rent), then it's no worse.

It's easier to give everyone money than land! Money can be grown indefinitely, land cannot.

zompist wrote: ↑Thu Oct 07, 2021 9:45 pm [What do you mean by "waste" here?

Vast amounts of waste i.e. things not getting used and going in the bucket (especially if they then go into landfill or incinerators), e.g. food getting thrown away (30% of production), clothes (64% of production), toys (that often contain toxic plastics and are often produced by slaves) etc.

OK, sure, landfills are very inefficient and should be addressed. I'd note, though, that wherever waste exists, that's an opportunity for productivity growth. A country at maximum efficiency for its technology is a country that can't get more prosperous. (Mark Elwin believes that this is a big part of why the industrial revolution happened in 1700s Europe rather than China. China was maximally efficient with the tech it had, and new inventions didn't really increase efficiency.)

zompist wrote: ↑Thu Oct 07, 2021 9:45 pmSo let's ban billionaires for a start - obviously referring to massive income tax, not expulsion from society or anything like that.

Plutocracy is also very bad, but that's not an argument for "degrowth". (I'm not trying to be dismissive, but general "plutocracy/climate change/oil/etc. are bad" arguments are irrelevant. The question isn't whether those things are bad, it's whether "degrowth" is a good way to replace them.)

The irony of arguing against growth is that cities have far less impact on the environment than suburban or rural development, and more intensive agriculture has less impact on on the environment than less intensive agriculture which supports the same number of people. Land used for housing or farming is not the natural land, no matter how "degrowthist" a fashion in which it is used. Consequently, to change from urban to rural development or more intensive agriculture to less intensive agriculture would necessarily mean using more land for human activities (and thus destroying more natural habitat) without a substantial reduction in the population, and we know how that goes (re: China).

Also, assuming you’re the government and you try to use eminent domain to seize a quarter of the country’s private land to build farms and small towns to redistribute urbanites to, what steps can you do to 1) prevent the formation of an aggrieved landowner class 2) convince most urbanites that life in the New Towns and farms is … worth it.

Also where does the heavy industry go?

Finally, how do you divide land? Is it owned communally by the local town or individually?

Regarding cities, I'd say what leads to confusion there is that in a big city, all the pollution, energy use, and other bad environmental impacts caused by a lot of people are all in one place, and therefore pretty high in absolute numbers. So that makes the city look, at first sight, like an environmental nightmare. What a lot of people apparently don't understand is that, on average, all these things are a lot smaller per person in a big city than in a small town or village. So if you would get all the people in the big cities to move to the countryside, they would still exist, they would still pollute and consume energy, but each person's average negative environmental impact would be bigger than before, so humanity's collective negative environmental impact would be bigger than before, too.

And from a cultural perspective, people who are usually on the left but dislike cities look pretty contradictory to me. I mean, I strongly disagree with right-wingers who dislike cities, but at least they have a certain internal consistency on that matter. People who are usually on the left but dislike cities, on the other hand, are basically saying that everyone should live in small, tight-knit communities, but somehow, in some way that they never bother to explain, people should not have the culturally very conservative mindsets that people in small, tight-knit communities have usually had in most places throughout most of known history.

In the alternative history Separated at Birth: America and Drakia, the Geoists [socially conservative, religious anti-urban socialist-equivalents] seize control of Russia after their equivalent of WW1 and force tens of millions into random New Farms and New Towns as part of the Resettlement

Raphael wrote: ↑Fri Oct 08, 2021 10:12 am And from a cultural perspective, people who are usually on the left but dislike cities look pretty contradictory to me. I mean, I strongly disagree with right-wingers who dislike cities, but at least they have a certain internal consistency on that matter. People who are usually on the left but dislike cities, on the other hand, are basically saying that everyone should live in small, tight-knit communities, but somehow, in some way that they never bother to explain, people should not have the culturally very conservative mindsets that people in small, tight-knit communities have usually had in most places throughout most of known history.

We’ll there is an ideological blank space for something that combines
1) an anti-elite (against “godless mammon-worshippers”), economically socialist (“and they owned all things in common”) and culturally conservative theology
2) Narodnik-like reverence for the village/small town as a little world
3)Phalansteries and other communes

Basically a “holy people’s Gemeinschaft”

zompist wrote: ↑Fri Oct 08, 2021 7:39 am
Industrial agriculture means that 90% of the population is no longer starving peasants. Farmers are certainly not poor in this country-- median household income for residential farms is $100,593, and $139,016 for commercial farms.

MacAnDàil is I think thinking of France where the situation of farmers is I think, different under pretty much all respects.
Median household income is about $50000, before taxes and various payments (notably, health insurance). Long story, that ends up far below minimum wage. And that number hides very different and unequal situation. As it happens, I know a few farmers. The usual strategy is that the farmer's wife has a safe civil job and often ends up providing the bulk of the income.

Farmers are at a higher risk of cancer and suicide. Surprisingly, all in all, their life expectance is a bit higher.

This looks like a highly unstable situation and you'd expect everything to be consolidated in megafarms; but the French are wary of industrial agriculture so there's quite a market for small farms. So in the long run I have no idea how this'll evolve.

Industrial agriculture, as it's practiced right now, has a number of problems: fossil fuel use, the carbon footprint of it all is absurdly high, and the current use of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides amounts, basically, to nuking the existing ecosystem. (Reports on biodiversity are scary.) None of this is sustainable.

I don't think getting back to pre-Green revolution agriculture is the answer either. We need something new. I'm convinced we'll manager, but there will be lifestyle adjustments and it'll be painful in the long run. (At some point, food prices will rise.)

(Again, I don't know how all this will translate in terms of economic growth. Ecosystems, which are what we're trying to preserve, don't translate to anything in terms of GDP so all in all the question is meaningless.)

Raphael wrote: ↑Fri Oct 08, 2021 10:12 am And from a cultural perspective, people who are usually on the left but dislike cities look pretty contradictory to me. I mean, I strongly disagree with right-wingers who dislike cities, but at least they have a certain internal consistency on that matter. People who are usually on the left but dislike cities, on the other hand, are basically saying that everyone should live in small, tight-knit communities, but somehow, in some way that they never bother to explain, people should not have the culturally very conservative mindsets that people in small, tight-knit communities have usually had in most places throughout most of known history.

No disagreement here! But I'd like to add that from a historical perspective, it's odd that environmentalism ended up on the left. If anything, it should be a conservative concern.
(Not too long ago I read a biography of Tolkien. It's interesting to see that he was a most conservative man in all respects. But his ideas on the environment, while eccentric at best during his time, feel very modern.)

Ares Land answered me for the farmers.

zompist wrote: ↑Fri Oct 08, 2021 7:39 am

zompist wrote: ↑Thu Oct 07, 2021 9:45 pm Because the degrowth people seem to hate the big cities where, you know, actual human beings live. If you want a world where there are no big cities and everything is local and small and much poorer-- i.e. we return to 1820-- then you pretty much have to get rid of 6 billion people.

If you want a world where 8 billion people thrive, you have to be comfortable with high population density. (Which has a lot to be said for it ecologically! The sort of anti-urban environment degrowth people seem to like is a highly inefficient way to live.)

Even assuming a(n intrinsic?) link between degrowth and opposition to high-density cities, this also appears to, unless I am mistaken, assume a link between opposition to cities and destroying the people within them rather than just reorganising the space.

Cities are highly efficient uses of space. There is not enough land for eight billion people to live in low-density rural or semi-rural environments.

Sure, it is efficient to build up rather than along. It's the same reason that cupboards aren't built flat.

zompist wrote: ↑Fri Oct 08, 2021 7:39 am

If anything would be pro-genocide or anti-people, it would be continuing with the massive amounts of fossil fuels and waste that we currently have. That would be collective suicide.

Yes, fossil fuels are bad. That has nothing to do with "degrowth".

Well, what it means is one thing we should be ruling out is the unsustainable economy that is going on already. I am open to degrowth or sustainable growth, but things definitely need to improve.

zompist wrote: ↑Fri Oct 08, 2021 7:39 am

zompist wrote: ↑Thu Oct 07, 2021 9:45 pm The median household income on this planet is under $10,000 a year. That's about that of Mexico. Maybe not horrible, but do you really believe that's the best we can do?

You're asking for 93% of the population of the US to accept a lower standard of living. That's... a big ask. Historically-- and morally-- it's easier to improve the lives of the majority rather than just equalize whatever the current aggregate income is.

I think we can take into account 1° the unequal distribution of income in Mexico, as for the rest of the Americas. So the average income of Mexico is far from the median. Even in France, which is much more equal, the median is about half the . So, even with the idea I had suggested earlier, it would be more like the upper classes or upper-middle classes of Mexico than the middle.

Are you not understanding "median household income"? Not mean, median. Your statement "So the average income of Mexico is far from the median" makes no sense: the median is precisely the number such that half of households earn less and half earn more.

So, no, when I say the median world income is like the median Mexican income, I do not mean the upper classes of Mexico, I mean the precise middle.

But my point is that the median should become closer to the mean, whether in wealth or income. The closer the median is to the mean, the fairer it is. And the redistribution would make it that way. In terms of wealth, things are even more uneven: average world wealth is ten times the median. If it was closer to just being the double, then things would be a lot fairer.

zompist wrote: ↑Fri Oct 08, 2021 7:39 am

2° that the real use of money is what it can buy and not for the money itself. If the same things can be obtained without money (e.g. having your own land rather than paying rent), then it's no worse.

It's easier to give everyone money than land! Money can be grown indefinitely, land cannot.

Certainly true, but land is overly forgotten and still overly unequal.