Degrowth is a less unpopular word these days and it’s needed for the planet and society.
Jay Forrester of MIT who first wrote about the “Limits to Growth” was not exactly a hippie. He was an MIT scientist and he was attacked both by the worst type of “left” (the same Pronatalist bullshitters) and with far more creepy muscle by the religious and libertarian right.
There is a point to be made about the folly of even green growth:
https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/christopher-ketcham
But leaving aside degrowth or socialism, even on their it’s own terms the narrative these douchebags tell doesn’t stand up:
The shallow sloganeering that the right thrives conveniently glossed over some aspects of their abuse of language and metaphor.
Even if you are for “growth” of the economy, if you truly think about growth as we think of plants then the whole thing falls apart unless you consider that some kinds of growth are bad while others are good. Invasive species like kudzu or that water hyacinth in some parts of the world choke out all forms of healthy growth. And I can glibly point out that the only thing that never stops growing is a cancer.
That’s this economy. People call it surveillance capitalism etc. I call it junk capitalism where a small cabal basically hijacks the resources of the whole planet and all of society and they are getting worse. They are choking the life out of everything.
Scientists and doctors have it hard while these parasites like Andreessen take society hostage to sell low quality garbage in big data, AI and crypto. Thats junk capitalism. You don’t have to get to socialism or degrowth to note how this shit doesn’t even fly in terms of its own basic premise.
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-mad-religion-of-technological-salvation/
AB: Yeah, they are. They have completely misunderstood how the world works, how science works, how people work. I know I keep hammering away at Andreesen, because he’s my least favorite person in the entire book. He says in his manifesto that he is the keeper of the true scientific method, contrasting himself with academic scientists. The real scientific method is not to have a statement of beliefs about what the world is and how it works, or what the inevitable future of technology is. The real scientific method is to be curious and questioning about the world and be open to the possibility that you’re wrong — in fact, expecting that you’re wrong. And that’s not something that I think that these people are capable of.
They fired most of Nist. Are you seriously telling me that the scientists at Nist were inferior to this mediocre crowd?
https://archive.ph/Wdi4P
DUer UpInArms used the correct word for that article-“vomitous”.
This is a perfect metaphor for what contemporary capitalism and its driven by these parasites in crypto, AI etc. And these parasites along with their grifting influencers call people on snap etc parasites.
Water hyacinth grows and reproduces quickly, so it can cover large portions of ponds and lakes.[15] It can easily coexist with other invasive plants and native plants in an area.[16] Particularly vulnerable are bodies of water that have already been affected by human activities, such as artificial reservoirs or eutrophied lakes that receive large amounts of nutrients.[17][18] It outcompetes native aquatic plants, both floating and submerged.[15][19] In 2011, Wu Fuqin et al.[20] tracked the results of Yunnan Dianchi Lake and also showed that water hyacinth could affect the photosynthesis of phytoplankton, submerged plants, and algae by water environment quality and inhibit their growth. The decay process depletes dissolved oxygen in the water, often killing fish.[15]
What do they contribute? The real torches and pitchforks are about calling out parasitic creeps who attack doctors, climate scientists, ecologists, natural scientists etc while gaming the system and pretending to be “producers” and “meritocrats” blah blah. Even on their own terms that is bs and we don’t call that out often enough on the left.
Of course, the problem is that the real elites of society are also often very limited in their understanding of real politik.
I am a mediocre and failed scientist (science is hard), who still wouldn’t look for any profession outside publicly funded scientific research (where btw, I think the pi or leave model is inane).
And except anonymously on DU, I avoid politics. Because..well…except anonymously, I like to come off as staid, dull and buttoned down. But I think this is so stupid where the real elites are bad politics and these creeps game everything. Fuck that..
This Nick person gets it a bit..
I have long felt that there are entire areas of attack against these guys that don’t even need to be about how awful they are as people, but about how frothy and bullshitty their claims of elitism are. Elon Musk is not a genius. He is a grifting bully.
The whole thing has been confusing me because I have met many true elites in science and medicine and they don’t make that much money. Their politics are way more conventional than mine though. If they get it at the level of students or postdocs when someone is a bullshitter, they don’t seem to get it anywhere near correctly about politics.
If anything, one thing really wrong with the world is that the true elites are too overworked and busy to understand politics in any real sense.
Dilettantes like me with common sense and some scientific training can see it better I sometimes suspect.
It is why the true elite exist side by side with complete grifters at places like MIT and Stanford and drive people of best case average or below average talent (who are still more honest) out of science while being in bed with these fucking parasites (till they destroy them as well).
Fuck that..Andreessen is a douchebag and a moron. No wonder they want to hijack all our devices while hiding their own. It’s not child abuse or porn (I mean probably that too in some cases), but what they are really hiding is how mediocre they are as they treat federal workers and anyone else they can like shit.
Before the pull of a divide and rule of the poor versus the middle class even more, they need to be pushed back. I am fortunate enough to be middle class because my parents had only one kid, I am childfree and they were public servants here in the global south with good pensions and healthcare.
But this same criminally parasitic influence is encroaching into our spaces and for 15 years now and no. No more.
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