Nobody will heed degrowth hippies, and centralized efforts fail

2.4. Radical Degrowth Perhaps for the majority of degrowth proponents the notion of degrowth denotes a radical change of (or many radical changes in) the economy. This may involve changes in values, ethics, preferences, financial systems, markets (versus informal exchange), work and labor, the role of money, or even profit-making and ownership (Latouche, 2009; Schneider et al., 2010). Such an approach comprises degrowth notions 2 and 3, but it is broader. Fournier (2008) has called it “escaping from the [capitalist] economy.” The main problem I see here that this is such a grand, imprecise idea which lacks a good, thorough analysis that it will be impossible to obtain political support for it in a democratic system. More importantly, it is void of a good view on systemic solutions and instrumentation, making it unclear how to upscale radical changes in lifestyles and grassroots initiatives by small subsets of the population (“niches”) to society as a whole. Alternative lifestyles, i.e. outside the cultural norm, have always existed but have never been adopted by the large majority of people. So why would this now suddenly be different? This does, of course, not mean such lifestyles need not exist or do not deserve respect. They may influence slow change in dominant lifestyles, but cannot be expected to be copied by the masses. Writings on this issue tend to be normative and idealistic rather than analytical and realistic. They seem to be motivated more by political ideology about justice and equity than about solving urgent and threatening environmental problems (an “ecological imperative”). As a result, they do not necessarily offer an effective approach to combat environmental problems. One can certainly be positive about the underlying humanistic ideals of equality, solidarity, citizenship, locality and “good life.” However, a drastic change in the economy upfront seems an overly risky experiment and a diffuse, undirected strategy that is not sure to meet the desired environmental aims. Moreover, it may well result in unintended social and economic chaos and instability. The main historical, large-scale experiments aimed at moving away from market capitalism which we can learn from, namely central planning by communist states as in the former USSR, Eastern Europe and China, certainly do not offer a good record in terms of clean production and environmental regulation — quite the opposite. Here, a lack of market mechanisms and other incentives seems to have given rise to excessive waste and inefficiency, also in relation to environmentally relevant categories of inputs and outputs.