Terzi is a loser

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

Quick and dirty, here is the best way to summarise Terzi’s critique of degrowth. His chapter only references seven texts on the topic, a rather shallow understanding of a literature that spans almost 700 articles. Terzi doesn’t make a difference between degrowth and post-growth and conflates all growth-critical stances with ecosocialism, two approaches that have actually been opposing each other for two decades. The overall result is sloppy – a sneer more than an actual critique. To add arrogance to incompetence, his light-weight arguments are thrown around with the superior attitude of a know-it-all economist (the first two pages of the chapter addresses the “pub economics of degrowth,” shaming degrowth as being “economically illiterate,” p. 17). This argument of authority might intimidate a few activists but it won’t fly very far with a growing community of economists like myself whose daily job it is to research these precise questions.