All of the important stuff isn’t zero-sum and socialist refinancing solves

Timothee Parrique, “A response to Alessio Terzi: Degrowth for good. Dismantling capitalism to save humanity from climate catastrophe”, WordPress, 17 April 2023, ,

You cannot keep the good and throw the bad

“The level of well-being achieved by today’s society rests on the complexity organized by capitalism in a decentralized way […]the idea that we could take the parts we like – advanced healthcare, high-level education, technological innovation – because ‘they have been achieved,’ and simply ditch the rest, is misplaced” (p. 73). We’re back here at the biophysical zero-sum game. One thing is sure: we cannot have it all. And so, yes, we’ll necessarily have to choose between larger homes, larger cars, larger planes, larger steaks, etc. A biophysical budget is like a bank account: you can only spend what you have. If you realise you’ve been over-spending, then comes the time of scaling down.

Terzi’s argument is that there is no baby-safe lowering of the bathwater. This is an argument I often hear about advertising. We cannot get rid of advertising without getting rid of the media who depend on ad revenues to survive. Except yes, we can. We just need to find another way to finance these media. This is not rocket science and it happens more often than we think. Look at all these cities who transition to free public transportation (376 cities in France). One would think that such an extreme form of price control is impossible because, well, who is going to pay for the infrastructure if not the users? In reality, free public transportation can be financed in many different ways, including ones where the service is actually free of charge for final users.

The three only things you need to run an economy is labour time, energy, and materials. Money is not a factor of production; it is only a means of accessing all the things you need to produce. I find it strange to argue that we need to produce more SUVs, ads, and steaks (which waste a tremendous amount of labour time, energy, and materials) in order to have competent dentists, adequate health services, and properly functioning schools (which also require labour time, energy, and materials). From the zero-sum game perspective of ecological economics, this is actually the opposite. If you want better health and education, you need to mobilise labour, energy, and materials, and in an economy in ecological overshoot, you won’t be able to access these resources if they are already monopolised to produce colour-changing cars, pet cameras, and touchscreen toasters. In order to have the good, you have to get rid of some of the bad.

I find Terzi’s critique surprisingly reactionary. As if economies were like Jenga towers risking to collapse if anyone tried to change anything. In practice, people who owns companies and people who run them, as well as governments change the economy every day. The question is not whether or not to design economies (everything about an economy – except the natural resources it uses – is socially constructed) but rather how should economies be designed, by whom, and to achieve what goals.