This book is creating quite a buzz. See the basics and one review among many.

People being what they are, there’s no doubt that this is an election-winning agenda for the Democrats. And the authors are both very serious people. I’m reluctant to write off Ezra Klein, who IMO is not just very smart but also circumspect and fair-minded.

But all this also looks to me like an advanced case of deluded wishful thinking. Or of “cornucopian economics”, as EO Wilson called it.

What to conclude?

  • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.worldOP
    1·
    12 days ago

    Your conclusion I definitely share.

    Otherwise you’re making many of the same points as the authors. Perhaps you should read their book, you might feel more optimistic! They seem to be advocating 20th century liberalism, with tons of planning, and spending, and big public projects, and knocking down any regulations that get in the way, including billionaire tax loopholes. And a relentless focus on economic growth and more-more-more. You want all this, the voters probably want it, I probably want it.

    But can the biosphere handle this? Why is this not ecologically illiterate? That’s still my question here.

    • maketotaldestr0i@lemm.eeM
      1·
      9 days ago

      There are some papers about distributing resources so that everyone has enough. we can elevate standard of living while reducing ecological impact. Much of the west is miserable because despite having tons of clothes and TVs and iphones etc… they dont have basic shit like shelter or healthcare or friends. just this hollow life on the treadmill miserable. So you could substantially reduce the GDP of somewhere like america while potentially increasing gross national happiness just by doing something like legalizing shelter , reducing workweeks , having community bbqs and block parties , switching roads for bike lanes etc… Lower total ecological impact but have better life.

      then with resources that would go to all the rich first worlders distribute those resources to people in actual material poverty like the ones starving to the point of permanent stunting.

      Then if we continue with womens rights and birth control we can taper off the human population to sustainable levels over the next 200 years without requiring draconian measures. we just have to make it past the next few hundred and come out the other side in a good place.

      We dont have the top down global coordination to do this so we will just crash this train and have to pick up from degraded afterfuture. best to start making small scale lifeboat communitiies to practice this stuff

      • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.worldOP
        11·
        9 days ago

        Little to disagree with there.

        We dont have the top down global coordination to do this

        True. But why? This is where I diverge from the standard theory of greens and leftists - roughly, that it’s all a conspiracy of greedy selfish capitalists and elites. Personally, I’m inclined to look right inside our nature as biological beings. When you analyze it this way, in a way it’s surprising that we’ve made it this far without crashing our population catastrophically.

        • maketotaldestr0i@lemm.eeM
          1·
          9 days ago

          i think the argument can be made that about 4% of the population are sociopaths and they rise to the top. if we continually liquidated them we could get to a new equilibrium that wasn’t dystopia.

          the domesticated people who just folllow and do their bidding like zombies are the source of power unfortunately.

          unfortunately the benevolent do not rise to the top or else the good could harness the followers rather than the malevolent using them.

          • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.worldOP
            11·
            9 days ago

            This seems to me to be an absolutely terrible take and a recipe for completely societal breakdown if not genocide. But of course I recognize your right to have it.