Hot take: we don’t actually need to grow the economy. We need to disambiguate growth and development. We don’t need to build data centers to make tech billionaires richer, we need more maternal health wards, community solar, and free school lunches. Those just don’t make rich people richer. We should instead orient our economy around meeting every human’s basic needs without overshooting environmental limits.
this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2025
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This. Growth for the sake of growth is literally the logic of cancer cells.
The economy-as-total-spending model definitely has its limitations, and solving those distributional issues is a way to increase public well-being without increasing total consumption
I am a fan of Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics, I think she does a good job illustrating what that sort of economy might look like
People are intensely emotionally invested in cars and meat. You could prove beyond all doubt that a vegetarian life would be longer, happier, and more prosperous, and people would disbelieve you because of their feelings.
Many people are little better than toddlers.
Why do these articles ignore how much C02 air travel and shipping contribute? Both spew far more pollution than cars.
They don't actually. You're confusing SO~2~, for which those are major emitters, with CO~2~, for which they are a smaller fraction.
Chart from here
