Opposition to Degrowth Is a Sign of Progress

The National Review’s ”Degrowth Is a Dead End” suggests that degrowth as an approach to environmental stewardship “isn’t an excuse to abandon economic growth with the resulting large-scale decline in living standards and increase in material suffering” that will destroy the economy. Oof, right? Actually, to the contrary, this kind of attack could be seen as good news!

The fun part of watching an idea over time is seeing its progress – or lack of progress. Most ideas take longer to come to fruition than people think. It’s not a great mystery, as most people are not tracking ideas over time. But futurists do. And futurists who have been around for a while like myself can actually witness the emergence of ideas over time, e.g., self-driving vehicles and 3D printing.

I’ve been watching After Capitalism for about a dozen years (more closely in recent years). One of the more interesting concepts that I’ve seen emerge is degrowth. Reviewing my scanning library, I have 17 hits tagged as degrowth (I have over 800 total). Please note that I don’t capture every mention of a topic, but rather focus on some new aspect or development of a topic. Assuming I’ve been consistent in what I consider a “new development,” we see an uptick in degrowth scan hits last year and this.

The first time I included it as a potential After Capitalism concept was Kallis et al.’s Degrowth in 2015. I first blogged about degrowth in 2018 with Degrowth: A Growing Issue in the Future. I raised the question of whether it was “okay yet to talk about degrowth in polite society or mixed company.” Maybe not quite at that time. The more I have studied the idea and After Capitalism in general, the more I’ve come to see it as not only a worthy of consideration, perhaps as a necessity. But let’s save that question for later.

I’m writing about it today because I’m starting to see the resistance to the concept emerge. This is actually a very important milestone in the journey of a idea. When an idea is new, it is mostly met with indifference. It is ignored or summarily shrugged off. Degrowth was in that position until recently, where now we are seeing some heated opposition, noted above in the National Review piece.

We joke in foresight that the worst response to an idea is indifference. We would much prefer objection, and an emotional rejection at that. It means striking a chord, perhaps subconsciously.  Degrowth is moving along. Now, of course, it will have to win enough of those arguments to keep moving forward. – Andy Hines