The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 125
The “Net Zero” and “Sustainability” movements, which no one outside of captured institutions and minds particularly likes or trusts, is advancing to a new initiative, whether we like it or not. That initiative is every bit as bad as it sounds: Degrowth. The idea is that the West has grown too big to be sustainable, so it is time to back off from growth, or to move “beyond growth,” to draw another of their brands. This is little more than the controlled demolition of Western Civilization on an economic level, and it is unsurprisingly just the newest branding of Communism. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay walks you through some information to introduce the concept of “degrowth” to you and compare it to other great Communist catastrophes in history, perhaps most obviously Mao Zedong’s disastrous “Great Leap Forward,” which at least pretended that it was going to make things bigger and better for China instead of smaller and worse. Join him to learn about this unfolding disaster, which we must attack vigorously until they stop trying to force us into it.
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5 comments
Thank you, James, for making the meaning of “Degrowth” so abundantly clear! And, speaking about the aversion to using nuclear power for generating energy, have the people considered the danger of everyone being reliant upon one electrical grid?
“[R]eal political change can only occur when people stop believing the dogmas — that is, the taboos — on which the system rests, so that the system will crumble from the inside (rather like how the Soviet Union collapsed when no one believed in the communist economic model anymore).
This, in turn, means that only those who dare to radically break through the basic assumptions underpinning the globalist system — only those who are prepared to accept being demonized for doing so — have any chance at achieving what needs to be achieved… We need to break the Left’s taboos. The fear of breaking these taboos among conservatives is the cause of their failure…
[D]espite widespread demonization, [the European conservative] movement is still alive and kicking… [W]e are oikophiles: we love home — but, having become alienated from our crumbling societal home, we are today committed to building a new home… [W]e are facing an existential threat. Our societies are on the brink of collapse… all of us are on the brink of serfdom.
After decades of decline under liberalism, Western societies are now in the midst of a new ‘Terror’ and are being guillotined by a neo-Marxist revolution. We will die if things don’t change. So, before we start talking about the direction in which to sail next… we [European conservatives and all anti neo-Marxists] must come together to save the ship.”
Thierry Baudet
(Dutch “right wing” politician)
‘The European Conservative’ magazine, summer 2023
You are missing the point of “degrowth”, Dr. Lindsay. The point is that many scholars have been forecasting some form civilization collapse for decades. The famous “limits-to-growth” studies of the early 1970s put this on a scientific basis. As an applied mathematician, I regard these watershed scenarios as the best mathematical modeling ever done in economics. These are based on reality – that our world, including our global economy, is highly nonlinear and subject to mathematical chaos and complexity. This means a variety of feedback loops, with different scenarios arising from different values of the coefficients of the underlying system of nonlinear partial differential equations.
This work is, of course, qualitative, not predictive in a traditional statistical sense, since it is unknown how the coefficients will evolve over time. But the “business-as-usual” scenario (using the best estimates of the coefficients in 1972) has done quite well. For example, the current peak for world crude oil production occurred in November, 2018, helping to explain the slowing of global economic growth, most evident in China.
Dr. Jem Bendell in “Breaking Together” has documented a number of data series which can be interpreted as indicating that we are already in the early states of civilization collapse, likely headed into global economic contraction within a decade of two. For example, the UN Human Development Index, a measure which includes life expectancy, education, and heatlh has already begun to decrease, and world food surpluses are steadily diminishing and could turn negative by 2030.
Thus “degrowth” is not a matter of wanting economic contraction (although some do want this – to mitigate climate change and ecological disruption) but a matter of a facing reality. That is, it’s highly unlikely that technology will come to the rescue – “renewable energy” will cover only a fraction of our needs (electricity is only 20% of current energy) and nuclear fusion still appears to be very distant.
My personal goal is simply to do what I can to promote more resilience in our current system, to spread out contraction and soften the blows.
“This work is, of course, qualitative, not predictive” yeah heaven forbid. Every single attempt at even a vague prediction by academic doom-sayers has consistently been flat out wrong. The reason is because all of our institutions are broken. They are inhabited by a circle jerk of “professionals” preening and impressing each other the a focus on rapport and not reality. It has turned into the religious cult of “scientism”. They are completely blindsided by organised collusion between world communism and their would-be antithesis at the top of the monetary food chain represented in part by the BIS. I think you need to do a lot more study into the history and development of world communism before trying to hit this nail with your mathematical hammer.
Klaus Schwab and his cronies are clowns. Degrowth is the dumbest thing I’ve heard. In this case less is not more. Mao followed Lenin’s propaganda playbook. Marx idea was to abolish all private property. I guess they will suggest half the population die from starvation for the greater good so the others can live. Oh please! Mao was an idiot just like every other dictator and communist clown! The only mathematical certainty is that masses will die! And yes, it is masqueraded communism! De grow doesn’t equal progress. De growth means mass deaths and destruction. Another great lecture. Thank you James 👍🏻