EA have disregarded the possibility to degrowth the economy in rich countries without engaging the arguments
Do you have some references for this? Is the claim more that EA hasnât seen the degrowth arguments at all, or that it has and has dismissed them unjustifiably (in your opinion)?
The EA community has not addressed these reasons, just argued that economic growth is good and that degrowth in rich countries is anyway impossible.
Again, has the EA community made these arguments as opposed to a few individuals? Iâm not sure I can think of a canonical source here.
The best example I can think of here is Growth and the case against randomista development but the argument here is not that growth is good as an end in itself, but that it is the best route to increasing human welfare, and indeed that post explicitly says that âeconomic growth is not all that matters. GDP misses many crucial determinants of human welfareâ
***
Nevertheless, I do you think your intuition is right that the âdegrowthâ movement and the âEAâ movement are not friends, and in fact often in opposition. But I think thatâs because both movements have a set of auxiliary ideological claims which are often in conflict. For example, Jason Hickel is one of the worldâs most prominent degrowthers, and he often argues that the charts showing that global poverty are biased and incorrect (I think heâs wrong), which are often core parts of EAs argument for problems of global health being tractable. But often this argument actually rests on an even more foundational argument of âis the world getting better or notâ and so on, so what actually seems like an argument about âis the current rate of GDP growth sustainableâ actually turn out to be deep arguments about âhow should humanity live morallyâ
Do you have some references for this? Is the claim more that EA hasnât seen the degrowth arguments at all, or that it has and has dismissed them unjustifiably (in your opinion)?
I donât have references but, for example searching for the term Degrowth in the forum only returns 22 results. The claim is a bit of both, but more that EA has dismissed them unjustifiably. And I partly understand it because the term degrowth is very misleading.
That the world is getting better in some senses and worse in some others I think it is nothing anyone in either side disputes, no? Their argument rests in the fact that past a certain point, the relationship between GDP and social outcomes breaks down *or becomes irrelevant* (see linear plots of Child mortality vs GDP, for example -below). And it is not about how to live morally, it is about what the carrying capacity of Earth can sustain. This carrying capacity depends on our technology, and the âstocksâ are very large, so it is not a problem to follow a trajectory that goes outside the carrying capacity for a while as long as it comes back sufficiently inside on time. But this is nothing that can be lightly disregarded.
Thanks for sharing your take :)
Do you have some references for this? Is the claim more that EA hasnât seen the degrowth arguments at all, or that it has and has dismissed them unjustifiably (in your opinion)?
Again, has the EA community made these arguments as opposed to a few individuals? Iâm not sure I can think of a canonical source here.
The best example I can think of here is Growth and the case against randomista development but the argument here is not that growth is good as an end in itself, but that it is the best route to increasing human welfare, and indeed that post explicitly says that âeconomic growth is not all that matters. GDP misses many crucial determinants of human welfareâ
***
Nevertheless, I do you think your intuition is right that the âdegrowthâ movement and the âEAâ movement are not friends, and in fact often in opposition. But I think thatâs because both movements have a set of auxiliary ideological claims which are often in conflict. For example, Jason Hickel is one of the worldâs most prominent degrowthers, and he often argues that the charts showing that global poverty are biased and incorrect (I think heâs wrong), which are often core parts of EAs argument for problems of global health being tractable. But often this argument actually rests on an even more foundational argument of âis the world getting better or notâ and so on, so what actually seems like an argument about âis the current rate of GDP growth sustainableâ actually turn out to be deep arguments about âhow should humanity live morallyâ
I donât have references but, for example searching for the term Degrowth in the forum only returns 22 results. The claim is a bit of both, but more that EA has dismissed them unjustifiably. And I partly understand it because the term degrowth is very misleading.
That the world is getting better in some senses and worse in some others I think it is nothing anyone in either side disputes, no? Their argument rests in the fact that past a certain point, the relationship between GDP and social outcomes breaks down *or becomes irrelevant* (see linear plots of Child mortality vs GDP, for example -below). And it is not about how to live morally, it is about what the carrying capacity of Earth can sustain. This carrying capacity depends on our technology, and the âstocksâ are very large, so it is not a problem to follow a trajectory that goes outside the carrying capacity for a while as long as it comes back sufficiently inside on time. But this is nothing that can be lightly disregarded.