Our economic system and the FIRE economy, based on finance and exponential expansion, cannot handle de-growth. The whole system depends on infinite and exponential growth. Too many people extracting more than they contribute.
The wholesale resistance to slight changes to the current paradigm, makes de-growth unlikely. Persuading everyone against their own immediate interests to accept such fundamental changes, is almost an impossibility. Especially as our Neo-Liberal economic settings mean the down sides will be born by those who can least afford it. Note the backlash from farming alone, even though it is a sector that is, in reality, better able to absorb transition costs than many others.
The wealthy and powerful will never give up enough, to support the “just transition” needed to get majority democratic support for change.
The folly of “infinite growth in a finite world” is obvious. But even minor steps, such as polluters bearing their true costs, towards the paradigm change needed to a more socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable civilisation are resolutely opposed by those with power. It doesn’t fill me with hope that more effective changes, such as the “Circular economy”, are possible in time.
Without a “Just transition” change is also unlikely to be democratically supported by the rest of us.
https://thestandard.org.nz/can-we-have-a-future-with-capitalism/
https://thestandard.org.nz/what-we-were-doing-wasnt-working/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRE_economy
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