Degrowth is not Austerity
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ก.ย. 2024
- RE-UPLOADED WITH SOME IMPROVED AUDIO TREATMENT. It previously had a very loud high pitched whine but hopefull this video is easier to watch for people without the audio whine. i know it's quiet but it's the best i could do without distortion
Is degrowth austerity? No. This video takes a look at what degrowth is, what it isn't, and why the people who are constantly mad at it are so mad about it. I also spend a fair amount of time getting confused about Peter Coffin's terrible book about degrowth.
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And when we needed it the most, he returned with an improved version of his mental breakdown.
I love this 🤣😭
'Not enough resources' = 'Thanos was right'
So...these ppl making these arguments say they're leftists?
Appropriating leftist phrases and then mixing them with fascist bullshit like the phrases you cite is a bog standard technique fascists have been using since the word was coined.
And yet, carrying capacity is probably real..
@@groovalotfunk4147just use a console command to enable God Mode. Checkmate, atheists
every day is a good day to debunk The Groin-Kicker Himself, Peter Coffin
Whenever I watch that Cringe Corner I am shocked that this is real.
Of course everyone agrees energy production is evil. That's why we're against photosynthesis
Thx for the chuckle
👍🏾😆😅😂🤣👏🏾
Overthrow the ruling grass 😂
@@emilyrlnbeautiful
Somebody needs to write "Systems Are Not Individuals: Why So Many People Would Choose Literal Fucking Death Over Admitting That You Can Change The World Without Being A Fucking Tyrant Dictator"
It's easier to tell yourself something is impossible than to admit you have the power to fight back but aren't doing anything.
It's not the same to say "I hate patriarchy" or "I hate white supremacy" than to say "I hate men" or "I hate white people".
I have studied matriarchies. I can see what these systems do to people.
I hate the kyriarchy, not groups of people.
@@emilyrln Because that would require for you to actually see the problem that is in front of you for real.
Some people can have the thing in front of their faces and still deny it.
Where people get stuck, and I'm just talking about people on the left, is around the distinction between floods of useless garbage designed to be obsolete, which is bad, and supplying things to people who've been impoverished, which is good. If you've ever lived somewhere where lights at night were so rare as not to be habitual, you may get this distinction. Similarly, if you've been to a place where you have to boil all water even to have a chance not to have it make you ill, you get it.
It does not help that a lot of people on the left fail to understand that when you punch an AnPrim, a eugenicist's teeth fly out.
@@OsirusHandle this is, in fact, one of the central ideas of socialism and is not specific to "degrowth" at all
@@OsirusHandleif you're talking about what went down in the USSR, Karl Marx described Socialism as proceeding after Capitalism has already reached its peak and mass productive forces have already been developed. The USSR, however, kinda completely skipped the Capitalism part and tried going straight from feudalism to Socialism, which meant they were starting out with pretty close to zero industrial force and had to build what Marx thought that Capitalism would have already constructed. On top of this, the USSR abandoned the principle of global revolution in favor of trying to do 'Socialism in one nation' in order to gain the allyship of western capitalist countries to fight nazi Germany. This abandoning global revolution forced the USSR to have to compete throughout its lifetime with capitalist nations, which caused it to adopt capitalist behaviors in order to keep up.
@@OsirusHandlethere's nothing in the USSR's fall that strikes me as intrinsic to communism as a project.
You should restart that Mao poster. It’s not loading
I don't know much about this subject but being 55 seconds and seeing that Coffin writes like a quirky teenager hopped up on caffeine and struggling to finish their essay for English class before 11:59 already strains my ability to take them seriously here.
In addition, I remember briefly taking a look at their twitter and them seemingly being unable to make a distinction between childfree people and anti-natalists. They're not a person to take seriously.
I mean he was in spankie tankies party too , so, maybe he shouldnt be taken serious anymore.
@@marocat4749 that as well I guess I don't really keep up on those people
There's discourse on twitter where people go straight "oh so i guess you want me to eat dust if i can't have infinite bananas" and it's pathetic
The bananas discourse was wild. Think chapo summed it up well. Neither side of this argument is in power. We are just gonna barrel headlong into climate catastrophe and there won’t be any more bananas to argue about anyway
Before that the fashion was to refer to people promoting conservation as 'mud-hutters' because "You just want us all to live in mud huts."
@@huckthatdishhell, factory farm monocultures will kill the bananas for us without needing the climate to implode first. Granted, we could probably breed a new variety, but there'd be no bananas for a while. Either that or they'd cost significantly more then $12 😂
@@emilyrlnin fact it has already killed bananas once before.
For the benefit of anyone that doesn't know, the reason why banana flavour in other products tastes nothing like the bananas we have today is because it was synthesized for a way sweeter banana type that was basically extinct due to banana decease spreading rapidly among and decimating banana mono culture plantations.
Bananas have quite a mark in society, the term "Banana Republic" comes to mind.
@@fernandomarques5166I am aware, yes! Poor Gros Michel… I should have said "again" in my comment XD
As a latin american, it seems to me that we have also been indoctrinated to vouch for the capitalistic dream even at our own expense. I'd love to hear your thoughts on other factors (aside from economical coercion) keeping the global south tied to this seemingly never-ending cycle of generating wealth for the global north.
I would have to do a lot more research before i came to any further conclusions, but i have been meaning to read open veins of latin america for a long time
@@JohntheDuncan Galeano is a great starting point! If you're interested, I will try to compile a short list of material, maybe I can even summarize some of it or help to translate in case there is no English version available.
I think a lot of what's harmed latin america is the combination of segregation/racial caste inequity combined with the myth of a blended/unified culture in each country, which serves to make excuses for governments looking towards europe (+european capitalism) for the way forward and violently repressing (especially radical) indigenous groups. Also mixed people serving as a middle class that is encourages to side with the wealthy whites to do fascism and scapegoat black and indigenous people. Also America doing fascist coups, and american cold war propaganda being shoved down the throats of latin americans has probably not helped. Also of course as you've said, the true primary thing causing problems in latin america is exploitation by wealthier nations.
capitalism is built around things being your own expense 😂🙃🫠 its the biggest, most basic part
I moved to South America 10 years ago and it completely changed my perspective on the global economy, as it should. Green Growth and Netzero is just the next wave of exploitation. Europe is offshoring its carbon footprint here and wants to extract resources (now also water for hydrogen) to power its green growth. Galeano's Patas Arriba (Upside Down) is another fantastic book that exposes this.
Somebody needs to make a book that's just titled "Degrowth Is Not Austerity: A Comprehensive Explanation Of How They Differ, And Why The People Who Need Told This Most Will Mostly Refuse To Fucking Listen"
Or make it into a movie story to reach outmore?! Where a scientist character as a storyline does regulary debunk it normal dude speech enough?!
@@marocat4749That sounds like an Adam Ruins Everything episode.
@@christiantabares6713 I wouldnt be surprised f he already had one wih similar topic :P
The most important "luxury" that working people in the Global North yearn for and are increasingly denied is _time_ - time not spent "earning a living" but just _living._ And this, of course, is the commodity that the capitalist class demands ever more of from the workers they employ, in order to produce more commodities for the market.
Perhaps the greatest move towards degrowth we can make is a reduction in the workday/week/year/life for workers. One of my favorite memes calls for a 4/20/69 workweek - 4 days & 20 hours/week at 69 (USD, Euro, Pounds)/hour.
One might argue (and Coffin would accuse us of doing so) that the pay should be lower, not higher, if we're going to do degrowth, but I would counter-argue that, given free time _and_ economic comfort & security, working-class people would be less inclined to spend that money on more useless stuff (though there would be an uptick) and more inclined to spend their time _doing things_ they enjoy. And many of those things will be the sort that produce value - home/community food gardens, making art, all sorts of volunteer work commonly done by retirees, etc. It seems to me that giving more people more time to do more of their own thing would create a virtuous cycle of decommodification.
This, of course, is not something the capitalists are about to agree to simply because it would be undeniably good for everyone; it is, as it always has been, a matter of _class struggle._
As has been shown over and over and over, when impoverished people get more money, they get things they really needed but couldn't, and that includes a pretty small amount of "luxuries," i.e. things whose purpose is pleasure and joy, which by the way are completely legitimate things to get. The left has been damaged immensely from the inside by puritanical killjoys. The idea that they fritter those resources away on useless and destructive crap is demeaning, false, and a projection of the way the obscenely wealthy behave.
UBI (with price controls and nationalized infrastructure - aka communism - to prevent inflation) would encourage a huge number of people to opt out of the rat race and just live. This would have a massive effect on overall energy and material consumption.
@@guapochino140 I think you're conflating a few disparate concepts there, but generally okay. You're right that UBI needs to come with some combination of price controls and public ownership; otherwise, you'll get what we've got with section 8 vouchers replacing public housing - a massive subsidy to slumlords along with less housing for non-rich people. We need to make sure that people's basic needs are provided for _independent of_ the market _first_ so that UBI can be what it's meant to be - walking-around money.
That's not communism, tho - that's way further down the line. Communism (or what Marx called the "higher stage of communism" in his _Critique of the Gotha Program_ which has the closest thing to a schematic as I've seen Marx give, as he disliked that sort of thing) is _after_ the working class replaces the capitalist state with its own form of state (the "dictatorship of the proletariat" of which Marx only saw one brief example, the Paris Commune, see _Civil War in France_ ), and then _after_ the means of production have been brought into social ownership by that workers' state (which Marx called the "lower stage of communism" and Lenin called "socialism").
What we're talking about above is _before_ any of that - these are demands we're making of the _current_ ruling class under the _current_ state, as concessions the capitalists need to make to the working class _in lieu of_ their whole system coming down. Just like collective bargaining with unions, and returning some of their appropriated surplus value to the general fund to pay for the things that make their operations possible - every concession made by the ruling class to their servants is _guillotine insurance_ - and as soon as the guillotines (figuratively) are put away, the ruling class forgets about this & starts taking back everything they've conceded. We're at the point where, after decades of unchallenged bipartisan neoliberal austerity and record-low union representation and all the other signs of working-class defeat, folks are fixing to roll out the guillotines again.
@@dwc1964 Thanks for your detailed reply. Marx was wrong about one key thing and if you are still waiting for the dictatorship of the proletariat you may as well wait for the Rapture while you are at it. Both are just dogma. No leftists in the global south believe that because they have seen things play out in recent memory. Lift millions out of poverty and half of them align with the ruling class, and even if apolitical, inclusion in the consumer economy gives capitalism a huge boost anyway. The free market can continue no problem until we are down to 3 sacks of spuds and half a gallon of diesel. What will collapse under the weight of capitalism however will be the biosphere. There will be no guillotines. People won't demand communism as an alternative to capitalism, however miserable their existence. They will plead for it as an alternative to death. And if by some miracle we manage to turn things around and make the planet slightly more habitable, then we can see if people want to continue with it or return to capitalism. I'm planting potatoes either way
Weird thing about Bastani is, Novara Media's live show recently has (more than once) commented on how the scientists who believe 'painting more houses white' will help neautralise our carbon footprint, NM themselves agree with the scientists when they then go on to say that isn't a solution. They *seem* to understand that capitalist overproduction and the greed of cooperations is going to continue to be a growing threat, with or without short term solutions like painting more buildings white.
So, then - why does Bastani continue to think that mining asteroids (or literally anything in space) and advancing technology will save us? It's just all really contradictory. Arron was on one of the live shows where NML mentioned this study about the effects white paint can have on bouncing heat away from our atmosphere, and while he did babble a lot, from what I remember, he didn't disagree with Michael or the scientists themselves, in that the climate scientists are (essentially, though these exact words weren't said) only desperately trying to find bandaids (not solutions) to treat the problem. So surely he DOES understand we can't look to research and new technologies to be the thing which saves us? So why not detract the stranger 'let's mine asteroids' type of ideas he pitched in his book? At this rate, we'll all be 'unalived' by the time anyone can mine anything in space. Leftist outlets should be focusing on making life harder for cooperations to get away with the nonsense they are currently getting away with. Looking to expanding capitalist actopmns into space to 'solve' the problem is all going to be in vein.
(Sorry, Bastani rant I know. The guy just winds me up! He's SO close to the point, yet he so often somehow misses it)
Don't worry, the guy winds me up too!
It is somehow intensely funny to me that you wrote "in vein" instead of in vain because that reads like a play regarding mining asteroids (since you mine ore veins) even though it's probably just a lil' spelling accident.
@@michimatsch5862 lmao, yeah it totally was! But I'm not editing it, because that observation you made is dope.
Thank you, i previously couldnt make it through this and i love to hear people dunk on the crotch kicker himself.
To be clear; I previously couldn't make it through because of the audio and I think it's great that you cleaned it up as best as you could x
I'm glad it's better for you I know it's still not great but was the best i could do
Thanks for the subtitles! Really helps ❤
John I am commenting for engagement but you made me watch maupin and coffin so.... THIN ICE!
You sound fine. I can hear you and understand you, so keep up the good work.
"read the thing you're quoting" - pro tip!
Thanks for covering this one comrade.
Wtf was that is the appropriate response to Peter Coffin generally. We just don’t need the ridiculous amount of stuff we produce.
Dang, it's a pity to see Peter Coffin to spiral down even further. Used to like his videos and learned from him. But this isnall yikes and showing that his reading comprehension and critical thinking is not what I thought it to be. Dude's reasoning is like Thanos'
Living within our means can be a beautiful thing
THANK YOU. I wrote an essay the size of France when this video aired, and, realizing how few people would ever read it, have it in my notes, just a big huge rampaging rant about how many things Coffin got wrong
I used to watch Peter Coffin regularly. There were some Very Important Documentaries back in the day that might still hold up, and the comedic vids they made with their then-spouse had me in stitches.
I don't remember exactly when it was that I started falling off the Peter Coffin train, or why. Most of the time when I fall off a person's or outlet's output it's because I feel like I've heard/read it all before; sometimes it's the opposite, that they've gone somewhere I can't follow. With Peter Coffin, it may be a bit of both.
Anyway, that was many, many years ago, and ever since then all I ever hear about Coffin is how much worse they've gotten. How anyone could take Maupin seriously has always been beyond me, but there they are.
JohntheDuncan? More like JohntheDunking :P
Thank you for educating us on degrowth!
After this I will watch a video on degrowth that goes into the definition/explanation of the concept
But even without that, as a communist, degrowth just automatically made sense to me : smaller house, fewer (electrical) appicances,, no grass, growing some of my own food, not buying clothes and other things randomly/minimalism...none of that is population reduction. It's about using fewer water, energy, food and other resources full stop.
Why no grass?
@@KatieScarlett2353 þey most likely mean lawns
@@KatieScarlett2353 lawns, particularly in american suburbia, are a waste of water and provide no sustenance for local organisms.
xeriscaping should be more or less mandatory in arid/semi-arid regions, and regions with sufficient freshwater should encourage the planting/cultivation of local flora (especially for pollinators)
@@KatieScarlett2353depends, alot of people don't make practical use of their grass other than for appearances. Some people do though, I mulch my grass as straw for growing food.
@@melelconquistador I grow a little bit of food behind my townhouse. Not enough space for both grass and food. I mulch with the neighbour's grass!
The way Peter Coffin went on a spiral is sad.. but also hilarious
We'd have more access to more types of jam actually, there would be enough free time for jam enthusiasts to make small batches of interesting jam on a local scale.
Homemade jam vs shitty flavored corn syrup, there’s no contest
socialism is when high quality local jams
I know this is isn't why you made this video John, but thanks for explaining with sources why Coffin is such a liar, I always thought he was dodgy and not worth listening to due his vibes after watching one of his videos for about 10 minutes, but it's always good to have ones impressions about an arsehole justified with documented evidence. Cheers mate.
You just admitted to being an NPC who uses other people's thoughts to confirm your biases. yikes
@@infra_Gray how not liking what I’ve heard of the guy nor what I saw of him alongside this detailed explanation with sources is relying on others thoughts as an npc? Please and thank you.
So I recently unsubbed from Peter Coffin because he did seem to be doing that 'lefty going down some rabbit hole where he's not really a lefty anymore with peculiar videos/sponsors/new friends and being a bit loony' thing, and I couldn't help but notice it has happened to a couple of YTers I used to watch too. So like, how is it we can spot them faster? Why would they be doing this? Where is this coming?
Also, I've been expanding my leftist YTer diet but I think I've been tricked a couple of times. Does anyone know Infrared? He's some kinda "lefty but not really, sexist debate bro" or something? I really can't tell sometimes. He and channels like it, will use lefty talking points but the audience is very uh... male and angry and a bit racist incelly? What going on?!
Any other channels to avoid like this?
Some of them you can spot from a million miles away. Ever watched Jimmy Dore? But yes, I agree. There are absolutely TH-camrs on the ‘left’ that spout ridiculous talking points anywhere from being pro-war to being pro-imperialism to (in Coffin’s case) making weird arguments against degrowth that completely ignore what degrowth actually is.
You know what the solution is? Get out in real life. Go out an organize. Go read theory (I know, it’s a bit of a meme, but really try to further your understanding of capitalism). We’re building a mass movement, which means the involvements of you know… the masses. Normal people don’t even know who Peter Coffin is.
They’re thinking about climate change, and their decreasing pay and working conditions, and universal healthcare, and all manner of other not terminally online stuff. Don’t be worried about what fringe parts of the online ‘left’ are doing, because the vast majority of their audience will never leave the house and do real organizing.
Oh faytjeblyths video on cults involves internet ones with, also of personality, discourse, how that would show up. Recommand as red flag educator if the community is hralthy too.
I too am an academic masochist. Very relatable content
12:12 I do need to update my phone to keep up with work. Security patching last year's phone is contrary to pure captialism, and needs a better regulatory solution. I say, require labelling with final patch date, in a way similiar to how many governments have forced warnings on the labels of dangerous products like cigarettes, conditioning customers to understand that security fixes are important, alongside how pretty the photos are. Seldom does keeping devices safe and secure require new hardware, and most of what we're throwing out could be kept around longer.
that's the nature of planned obsolescence and profit-oriented technology
listening to this again while doing chores, moppin' and coughin' 😆
Jackson Hinkle is Jason Hickel's Wario. No, I will not be taking questions at this time.
Less than a minute in and I'm already overwhelmed by the absolute nothing that Peter Coffin's book is.
sEeMs LiKe MaLtHuSiaNiSM 😂
That persistent whine is driving me batty, and I'm sadly not absorbing much at all, but, from the parts with voiceover audio, I'm sure it's a glorious and thorough debunking and a wonderful introduction to de-growth for our Internet-addled, conflict-addicted brains. The algorithm should definitely promote the video.
Even if I need to practically mute it and watch with subs to gain anything.
Left Reckoning discussed degrowth as if it was austerity too and I was so disappointed 😞
So many people lose all critical thinking skills when it comes to degrowth
If i here mauplin say malthusian again im going to lose it.
Omg I'm so glad I'm not alone in feeling disappointed in Jacobin's takes that are antithetical to acting on climate change
My vibe is evolving towards/ influenced by solar punk and doughnut economics.... thriving not striving/growing
You might want to watch some of the channels on urban planning. Not Just Bikes is a good starting point. Once you watch a bit you understand that most US cities (and some cities elsewhere, but the US is the worst) are laid out in such a way that it's near impossible to live there without owning a car. City blocks surrounded on all sides by eight-lane roads, crossings that are outright dangerous to pedestrians, zoning rules which ensure no residence can be built within walking distance of a shop or workplace. Sometimes even roads with no sidewalks at all, because there's no-where to walk to. The costs of the car are also shifted and hidden: They manifest in higher retail prices to cover the cost of the store's vast parking lot, the higher housing costs because every house needs a space-consuming driveway and garage. An understanding of this will help to inform any solarpunk vision to include the practical aspects as well as the asthetic.
That is: Your solarpunk art needs to put people in multi-story apartments, not single-family two-story homes.
wow. before looking at those excerpts, I would've placed Coffin at least a *little* above Psych Lobster in writing competence but..... here we are and nope, Coffin is way worse. Peterson's points may be utterly divorced from any reality but at least he can find them. from what I'm seeing here, you could give Coffin a compass to a point right in front of their nose and they still couldn't find it.
Me in Skyrim tho
@@joypomeroy1452oh god flashbacks to coffin’s arrow in the knee rap
John the Dunk-man.
Thanks for the content!
16 minutes in, and I'm loving this!
Finished it. This was very insightful and well thought out! Amazing 👏👏👏👏👏
I'd use so much less energy if i could just Be Allowed To Have A Garden!!!!! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
What a mess of a pamphlet!
Tidy video 🤠💚💜
I don't find "population control" or the debate around it (which is definitely eugenicist in nature, yes) would be necessary if everyone had access to effective family planning. Most folks I know don't want more than 1, 2, or 3 kids, and i don't think it is "limited resources" driving that. More kids than that is just stressful.
Also, I'll add, commodity production isn't all that bad if you own the means that produce the commodities. I didn't hate working in a production plant. It was kinda fun when I didn't have weeks of work over 40 hours without any additional pay. I say that as a means of encouraging the global north to take on more of its own production. Regenerative agriculture is also rewarding and fun, as well as effective land management. Once again, as long as you control the means of production.
It used to be grounds for real concern - back when it looked like population growth would continue until forced to an end by famine and resource wars. Now that most data on developed countries is available though, it does appear that population growth does naturally slow and even go slightly negative when the right conditions are met: Gender equality, high education standards, and access to contraception.
Although, based on current projections, the global population is still going to stabilise at a level which is unsustainably high.
Somehow I just realized that. Duncan -> Dunkin' -> Dunking
I remember a time when Coffin wasn't an obvious grifter. Barely.
You briefly mention Marx's metabolic rift concept. I was wondering if you could maybe make a video on this subject and if you are familiar with the work of Kohei Saito. I think it would be great to have a nice analysis/explainer on this, as Marx is often seen as an industrialist who got sustainability wrong and that is not really the case. Just a suggestion, of course.
Great video :)
The only thing about communal laundry mats, as someone who has used both personal and public laundry facilities....Accessibility towards those with social anxiety, and or those with physical limitations might make communal stops a bit....much. If there could be folks who would step up for those who might struggle in these community settings, sure. Though it might make sense to just, I don't know. Have both, and make both as accessible as possible. Those who won't need it personally, may make the change, and vice versa. Definitly, bringing down the rate of creating them, and rather making them more energy efficient and long lasting, I think would help loads too. Getting rid of the idea of oppulence, and short term gratification.
Of all the things to cut back, necessities of life like cleaning and cooking facilities are about the worst. Yes, there should be communal ones for those who actually want them, but that does NOT mean everybody should be forced to use them exclusively. One of the most hated bits of Soviet architecture was the shared kitchen, and for good reason.
Your point about physical limitations is well made. We all start life unable to so much as roll over, let alone sit or stand, and we often live many years with limitations later. Being "abled" is a temporary condition not everyone ever gets to experience. When you need a powered chair to move at all, you're not in any position to bring your soiled clothing or bedding to that communal facility. There's a non-zero chance you can't do anything with those items unassisted. The people doing that don't need to be saddled with the extra work of going to communal facilities. Their work is already difficult, even when they're not overworked and in dire poverty, as many--possibly most--are today.
Great video!! ✊
appreciate the audio fix attempts! maybe i'm the only one, but i can still sort of hear a whine in the bg? i'm mostly leaving a comment for the algo given that you had to repost this video + those can do worse sometimes, but also like...
i'm a pretty baby leftist as it comes; i haven't read a ton of theory and most of my involvement in politics is mutual aid efforts or harm reduction, i don't even have an accurate political summary of my beliefs other than 'things currently are bad' - i think some points mls and anarchists both make are resonant with me and i don't know enough to be authorative there.
that being said, i kind of don't understand how degrowth is something people have such an immediate kneejerk reaction to/assume immediately is malthusianism? i'm sure my view is overly simplistic, but upon learning about things like planned obsolescence or food waste or fast fashion or just Conceptually the american suburbian layout, the bare bones concept immediately makes sense to me - we've got an economy that runs around making more stuff than we fundamentally Need and we need to not do that so much, especially if we want to make standards of living more equitable and not bleed out the global south and make climate change way worse? i kinda wonder sometimes if the view of degrowth = austerity comes from genuine misunderstanding, malicious/bad-faith reading, or people's kinda innate selfish desire for things not to get "worse"/not change from the status quo/the idea they might lose something
idk if i've got a point to all of this, really! good video, will rewatch sometime soon!
The reaction comes from the presence of AnPrims, whose ideology and plans are indistinguishable from eugenicists' when it comes to anyone who isn't perfectly abled at the moment. There's an awful lot of fantasizing about people doing a shitload of manual labor, but not them personally, which quickly gets to people just flat-out describing how current inequities will go on into an infinite future. If you live in the Global South, or empathize with people who do, this does not sound great.
Any chance of improving your audio? I like your videos, but they are always hard to hear unless it's voice over and this one his a high pithced whine that makes it a little painful. 😅
Tbf this is a re-upload to try and improve the audio
@@slvinaja9213 💀
great video! it's wild to see coffin's downward spiral. they're either a liar or just lack reading comprehension.
as others have said, the vid's volume levels were really low and there was a soft electric hum in the background
you can make so many kinds of jams from the local edible flora :)
I just have one issue with degrowth as a concept
Is that why we need to name the phase of changing from capitalism,to socdem then state capitalism ,then socialism as degrowth (as in the process of those changes mentioned above ,will automatically involve "degrowth" in that process)
It might be best to not use the S word at all. It's too politically tainted by three generations of propaganda.
Caleb Maupin the yankee spanky with the hanky panky tankie! Lol
1:13 with it's WHAT presence in the discourse???
The point about Degrowth is that its proponents would say that it is going to happen either way. Do we want to try to manage the collapse or just waltz headlong into the firestorm? If these are not the choices, please show us the data.
Excellent video so far, might be a me problem but the audio is a little low
Yeah I did the best i could with treating the audio but it's meant it's ended up a little quiet
@@JohntheDuncandude you did a great job :) just wasn't sure if it was an upload problem :) thanks for your hard work, it was nice to listen to while sweating my ass of at work lol
The title of Coffin's book bothers me so much. 'Less IS Less' is right there and much more poignant. But then again, it's not like the rest of the book had any more thought put into it...
RIGHT!? Like less is less isn't great but at least its an actual phrase. Less sucks??? What is that?
@@JohntheDuncan That's the problem of storing what little wits you have in your balls, I suppose...
I think a relevant tangent to the topic of degrowth could be "bioeconomy", bc it's a neoliberal proposal to tackle resource scarcity and climate change through technological advancement. If someone like you or other scholars of neoliberalism could create content to demystify that shit it would certainly be great.
Excelent
Oh nooooo guess i'll watch this again 🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️
Lighting made nose feel closer.
Wonder how that works.
Way back in the day, when I was watching Coffin's content, I frequently found myself wondering if I was out of my depth. Is this dude just going way over my head? Then it clicked, finally. No. He's just talking gibberish. No idea how anybody could be charmed by Maupin's takes. He strips gibberish of what little charm it has left. Free clicks to anyone dunking on them every time.
What Ebenezer Scrooge was saying is if the poor who refused to work would die, then the labor supply would go down raising wages for the poor who did want to work, thus making them less poor. It was a real but very old argument against welfare. Now economics holds that poor people who don't work are good for the economy since they boost aggregate demand just by existing.
Play it again, Sam 🍻💙
Id like it if the laundrette had a dry room for boots and backpacks and raincoats.
awesome video!
bUt My BaNaNaS
What about optimization?
Using less resources to produce the same quantity amd quality. I mean, not for all, but some things.
It's amazing how much people vastly underestimate the impact of little changes that wouldn't even effect the end-user experience in degrowth. Like, what if there was just ONE kind of power and data cables that worked for everything? Do you realize how much less rubber and metal we'd go through if electronic and personal appliances didn't have proprietary power and data inputs!?
Or, how many times a year do you use your leaf-blower? Do you think one leaf-blower could actually cover your entire city block? I'll bet it could! Capitalism wants to sell an entire tool shed to each individual home for them all to use each tool for maybe 5 hours out of the year. Would it make your life worse if there was a collective toolshed on each block, or in each apartment building, and you'd go there to get a power drill when you need one? And, sure, if you're a professional or even a hobbyist craftsman, maybe you get your own because you use it that often, but you're not the norm! The sheer number of fewer hammers and wrenches that would be manufactured would be staggering!
Or if phones were modular and didn't need to be outright replaced every 3-5 years and instead could be upgraded! Or if things in general were simply designed to be repaired instead of replaced, and there was ample access to repair supplies and specialists to do the repairs!?
Not one of these solutions is possible under a capitalist mode of production. Every one of them would see entire industries tank and tens of thousands of jobs disappear. Millions of labor hours and kilotonnes of materials simply unneeded. We could all be more free and the planet could breathe easier. But the logic of capitalism makes this impossible.
agree with all this except for leaf blowers - they need to be outlawed :)
@@guapochino140 Look, my driveway is gravel, and a rake is just not a very effective tool for getting leaves off it.
I get the whole thing about rewilding yards, but there are walkways and driveways, and patios and such where it's not ideal to just leave fallen leaves to accumulate.
Underrated comment
@@nfinn42 Thank you, I agree!
Late to this video (and writing at the midpoint so if you mention it by the end I'll delete/modify this comment) but the things are now in my head so I'll type the comment now.
For one, I believe we should not only reject but eliminate the false idea that combines degrowth with scaling back technology and science. To do that we should point at the deliberate inefficiency of capitalism and show how it can be replaced while also fully embracing technological advancement, if not accellerating it. (personally I think that the longer humanity remanins between type 0 and type 1 civilizations the more we tempt fate and we need to advance FAST to get out of this dangerous transitionary stage)
I believe that what would aid degrowth/vastly reduce environmental impact would be to change the manufacturing process.
Namely instead of producing thousands of thingimajigs, hoping that you'll corner a certain demographic to sell enough that results in massive inefficiency and waste. Manufacturing could be refocused on making base components that can then be distributed to local "assembly centers" where said components can be assembled, programmed in ways that would allow for the desired end product to be made while also allowing for personalization through 3D printing, thus instead of the massive waste of mass production and subsequent distribution you instead have production to demand, reducing resource drain as well as a lot of shipping resource drains.
Other areas that could be revolutionized is food production(a field I know quite well since it's my field) : putting aside the fact that we already produce more than enough food for 10 billion people, we could house vastly more people with vastly smaller environmental impact by using localized hydroponics and aquaponics for any and all food that can be produced that way, multiplyting the carrying capacity while reducing the environmental impact, eliminating the malthusian "arguments" as well as the misguided calls of some among both sides of the political spectrum who cite environmental and resource causes as an excuse to lessen medical research and prevent reseach into transhumanit technologies that could cure disease, disability and aging.
As for energy production renewables and nuclear energy could have already replaced fossil fuels, we just lack the political will to do so.
Now as far as asteroid mining goes. It's not a bad idea per se.
Mining the earth is catastrophic to the environment and reaching space can be without pollution since hydrogen is a fully viable rocket fuel.
In addition there's asteroids that are just pieces of cores from dead proto-planets, meaning they're extremely rich in vital elements that could cover our needs for thousands of years.
However there's no need for humans to do this as the whole process can be automated.
the problem with asteroid mining arises when it's privatized as the logistics of a corporation having enough platinum to dwarf the annual GDP of the planet a few times over would.....not bode well for everyone else.
two big problems with that initial quote about how we can't do degrowth because we need more wealth or otherwise global north worker's will suffer:
1) it implicitly accepts the capitalism framing of wealth=resources which is, obviously, not true. basic example, not everyone has the money to buy food but we do have enough food for everyone. "economic growth" will not create more food, just more money with which to buy food (supposedly). if we untie these 2 concepts, the whole point becomes bunk.
2) it is also extremely racist because it quite directly states that we can't do it because global north workers would suffer if they had to share their spoils with global south workers, ie. hypothetical future global north minor suffering is more important than real current global south major suffering.
Good points. They confuse inequality, which causes misery, with absolute poverty, which causes starvation.
His latest video has been out over a month and got 710 views.
Anyway, I hope Ash Coffin's doing ok these days.
Oof
bump for reupload
What the /fuck/ happened to Coffin?
Thank you for cleaning up the audio I enjoy your videos but I also wear headphones.
how Peter Coffin knows how much money is in the world? is that even a thing? wtf what a weirdo
At start: Please admit the text bits at the start are parody. Nobody possibly could have written that in earnest.
*keeps watching*
Oh no...
Do folks actually take folks like coffin seriously? Dude always seemed like a grifter.
How does that make any sense
Duncan I absolutely adore your thoughts and videos however can you PLEASE get rid of the constant background noise 😭
Yeah it was a problem with this particular recording. I tried to fix it as much as possible but it was there to stay. Audio has much improved since then
❤
I'm from a net zero place in south asia, even our forests suck other places co². We still have household washing machines 🤷🏻♂️ people in global poor south also have washing machines and phones and internet. Washing machines aren't the problem, they're literally run on electricity 🤷🏻♂️
I genuinely love your stuff, but there's a really high pitch noise in the background of your recording (sounds like it could be something with your mic?) For me that makes it really hard to focus. Also your videos tend to be a bit quiet... Is there a way for you to have a look at that? Still, the content goes hard!
Yeah this was a reupload to deal with the noise in the background. It was an issue with the recording which couldn't be totally fixed. It's a much improvement from the previous upload but it has meant it's quiet too
This is a reupload, right? I was looking forwart to watching a new video from you and when I finally found the time to do so, I realize I already watched it.
Still enjoyed it, just saying.
Hey, I REALLY wanted to watch this but the high-pitch sound the description says was removed is still very much there.
I imagine you "treated" the audio and reuploaded it without checking w someone who has those sensitivities.
Is there a text transcript of this I could read? If I try to sit through this my ears will blow up.
Damn I was really looking forward to this video but then it played at like 15 decibels.
It might be a statement on degrowth but I couldn't hear it to find out.
It was a bad audio fuck up. Heres the script if youre interested docs.google.com/document/d/1QLCT0roy2YMAKz8hEsKKz3kARiNWW1G8J-NlL-4nnbU/edit?usp=drivesdk
@@JohntheDuncan I appreciate that. I isolated myself from all ambient noise and am listening to it now. I'm even doing the thing where you listen to the *whole* video before you make comments about how you'd rather be dead than forced to use a communal laundromat.
thanks for putting closed captions on this. yeah, the audio is still pretty bad
Isn't Peter Coffin the guy who pretended to have a Japanese girlfriend by posting a bunch of pictures of some Korean model he found online?
*they found
Would you have a chat with Varn if it was set up?
lmao i didn't know that book was transcribed from a video. some of those quotes are unbelievably badly "written". I guess because they maybe weren't written at all lol.
Great video, learnt a lot about degrowth here!. Always found it odd that self-called leftists would be against degrowth. Obviously a lack of growth within a capitalist system is bad but that's still thinking within a capitalist framework. Degrowth advocates are almost always talking about moving away from a capitalist system. Generalised commodity production needs to go to allow us to have a fully functioning degrowth economy
Another excellent video. I will say that the climate catastrophe we're in is a predicament, not a solvable problem. The overshoot we humans have been asserting on our planet for centuries or longer, and modern capitalism has made overshoot so much worse, are absolutely undeniable. We on the left must get our heads around that too many tipping points have already been passed to turn this ship around. I agree that the capitalist and PMC are incapable of trying to address this predicament, but I think it's just too late for this to be 'fixed' by any ideology, left or right. So sad.. 😢
The "lie down and die" option is certainly available to people who have options, and some will certainly avail themselves of it. I'd like to think that those of us with agency will use it even against overwhelming odds. Especially then.
This is why I advocate for nuclear energy, by the way. What chances we have are drastically lessened by trying to do this on muscle power alone, that being what we're reduced to when the wind's not blowing/sun's not shining/rain's not falling and we depend on "renewables."
A questions to JD and anyone else who finds this idea convincing. HOW exactly is de-growth likely to come about given the current economic system and trade position between the global north and global south - both of which currently rely on each other? What are the specific steps necessary to ensure there is not economic collapse during the transition - and who would ensure those steps are taken? You say that degrowth would lead to greater abundance - of what? Some further clarification is needed before this can be taken seriously.
Literally the entire video is about how degrowth necessarily implies revolution
Ok, but the question remains - how to bring about revolution? Where to start? You are coming across as a dreamer.@@JohntheDuncan
@@GeoffV-k1h Go outside and organize with people as a start. TH-cam videos aren't here to tell you what/how to do something, these actions can only be determined in community with others fighting for the same goal.
How does the global south rely on the north? What does the north provide other than violence, lol
The things that people need to live a materially comfortable life are not that big a deal, and are more or less self-limiting - there's only so much food a person can eat, etc. It's the insatiable drive for _more_ beyond what actually satisfies one's needs that creates problems; and this is a feature of the capitalist mode of production, for which the word "enough" does not exist. "You can never get enough of what you don't need..." or, put another way, "Mo' money, mo' problems."
(This long- and oft-observed fact could be taken as an argument, under the current mode of production, for a total confiscatory tax on incomes over, say, $150,000/year - the amount shown by at least one study to produce optimal material satisfaction - as a measure to protect the well-being _of the rich_ - and while that's not my program, I wouldn't argue against it in the interim.)