Degrowth and the Great Reset

17 October 2021
Article category: Highlights. Tags: 
economy
Green New Deal
political
Democrat
Marxism
oligarchy
progressives
society
great reset
growth

Degrowth and the Great Reset

by Fred Elbel

Growth

Western capitalism, as well as Chinese Communist Socialism, thrive on continuously growing economies. In other words, bigger is better; growth is good.

Yet physical growth cannot continue indefinitely within the constraints of any given nation, or planet.

Professor. Al Bartlett observed that "Every increment of added population, and every added increment of affluence invariably destroys an increment of the remaining environment." He then asked the salient question:

Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally?"

In 1972, America was well on the way toward a smaller, sustainable economy. American women voluntarily achieved replacement level fertility (2.1 children per woman) in that year. Yet Congress has forced unending growth upon our children. America's population is projected to double because of mass immigration.

For more information, see:

Steady-state economy

Many contend that a steady-state economy will be a viable, functional, and prosperous economy. From CASSE, the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy:

A steady state economy entails stabilized population and per capita consumption. Birth rates equal death rates, and production rates equal depreciation rates. Minimizing waste allows for a steady state economy at higher levels of production and consumption...

Economic growth entails increasing population times per capita consumption, higher throughput of materials and energy, and a growing ecological footprint. Economic growth is distinguished from “economic development,” which refers to qualitative change independent of quantitative growth...

The steady state economy may be pursued in the policy arena with the same policy tools that have historically been used to facilitate economic growth.

In other words, a steady-state economy can be a highly prosperous economy with a high standard of living.

The questions addressed later in this article is how to transition to a steady-state economy, whether it would be voluntary, and what form of government will implement the transition.

Degrowth

Degrowth is the term used to describe the transition from a growth-oriented economy to a steady-state economy. The Research and Degrowth website states:

Sustainable degrowth is a downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well-being and enhances ecological conditions and equity on the planet. It calls for a future where societies live within their ecological means, with open, localized economies and resources more equally distributed through new forms of democratic institutions....

Degrowth is built around a common sense according to which “people should live simply so others, human and non-human may simply live”.

We probably will need to embrace degrowth in some form. While some believe natural sustaining resources are virtually infinite, they aren't. Chris Clugston documents the situation in his well-researched book: Blip: Humanity's 300 year self-terminating experiment with industrialism. Clugston writes:

Humanity's persistent and increasing depletion of Earth's finite, non-replenishing, and increasingly scarce NRRs (nonrenewable natural resources) - the fossil fuels, metals, and nonmetallic minerals that enable our industrial existence - is causing our deteriorating natural environment, which is causing our deteriorating cultural environment... a geological reality that cannot be "fixed".

Clugston predicts that increasing NRR scarcity will result in global societal collapse, almost certainly by 2050. Presuming that Clugston and others are right, planned degrowth offers an alternative to catastrophic collapse.

A nation may voluntarily decide to go through a period of degrowth in order to achieve a steady-state and more sustainable economy. Or it may be coerced into doing so by an inept and/or authoritarian government.

For additional discussion, see:

Coerced degrowth

It seems evident that under the Democrat Biden regime, America is being forced into a degrowth scenario. Consider the overall impact of the Green New Deal, cancelling America's energy independence and increasing energy costs, supply chain disruptions, China virus lockdowns, tax and spend, corporate taxation which causes taxes to be passed on to consumers, and rampant inflation. Mark Levin, author of American Marxism, contends that all of this amounts to an orchestrated plan to force degrowth upon America. The regime is doing everything it can to condition its subjects to live under more austere and authoritarian conditions.

Levin discusses degrowth extensively in the chapter "Climate Change Fanaticism" of American Marxism, stating "For many of the 'environmental' intellectuals behind this amorphous yet widespread movement, the goal is to spawn myriad sub-movements aimed at taking down the capitalist system."

In this 3 minute video, Mark Levin Explains Today's Radical Environmentalism: It's a Marxist Degrowth Movement. Notwithstanding his initial questionable assumption that Earth's resources are essentially infinite, he observes that forced degrowth is fundamentally Marxist.

In the July 23, 2015 article: Mark Levin: The Reds Are ‘Saving’ Us From Capitalism, M. Dowling wrote:

Mark Levin rattled off their goals: massive redistribution, economic contraction, forced integration through open borders, elimination of competition, they want a “living wage” and a work week of 20 hours per week, they hope to bring material production back to the level of the 1960s and they want a return to small scale farming, they insist upon a moratorium on technological innovation, re-orientation of science to the new aspirations aka the communist global warming movement.

They want anti-Capitalism, post-Capitalism, or anything that is not Capitalism, which they don’t seem to understand is the most successful economic system in known history.

“Imagine the power, folks, and the power of the police state necessary to enforce this form of autocracy,” Levin warned.

“The Degrowthers would de-industrialize advanced economies, destroy modernity, turn plenty into scarcity. The Degrowthers reject experience, knowledge and science for a paradoxical abstraction while claiming to have mastered them all,” Levin said...

In the April 13, 2021 American Thinker article: The Roadmap for the 'Great Reset' Janet Levy writes:

As far back as 1996, Mikhail Gorbachev laid bare the agenda driving climate alarmism: “The threat of environmental crisis will be the international disaster key to unlock the New World Order.” He was underscoring the importance of advancing Marxist objectives by creating an emergency to convince people they must surrender freedom to be safe. That idea has been parlayed over the decades into a global campaign of the Left to control vibrant economies, end individual freedom and national sovereignties, and impoverish the world. In America, it is being served up as the Green New Deal (GND).

Author Marc Morano exposes that elaborate con game in Green Fraud: Why the Green New Deal Is Even Worse Than You Think. Morano is a former senior staff member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and narrator of the film Climate Hustle. His book shows how the GND -- which dovetails with the U.N.’s Agenda 21 -- has nothing to do with “saving the planet” and is actually about “transforming modern America into a centrally planned and managed society and imposing an ideology that will rein in the freedoms of individual Americans.”...

In truth, the GND is an all-encompassing attack on capitalism, wealth creation, and freedom; it’s a vehicle for a “fundamental transformation” of our constitutional republic....

Also see: What Biden And The Environmental Left Are Really Planning For Us, by Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian, May 22, 2021.

Wealth redistribution

In the April 26, 2021 Canada Free Press article: Green is the new Red, John Eidson documents:

Christiana Figueres served as Executive Secretary of the UNs Framework Convention on Climate Change. In a frank admission that laid bare the stealth agenda behind climate alarmism, Figueres said during a February 2015 press conference in Brussels that the UN’s real purpose in promoting climate fear is to kill off capitalism throughout the world:

This is the first time in human history that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally changing [getting rid of] the economic development model that has reigned since the Industrial Revolution.

In a Nov. 14, 2010 interview with Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung, [Dr. Ottmar] Edenhofer, co-chair of the UN IPCCs Working Group III, made this stunning admission:

One must free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. [What were doing] has almost nothing to do with the climate. We must state clearly that we use climate policy to [re]distribute de facto the worlds wealth.

On the same date, Edenhofer added this:

Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with protecting the environment. The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which [re]distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated.

Dr. Ottmar Edenhofer, one of the UN’s top climate officials, effectively admitted that the organizations public position on climate change is a hoax. The same admission was made in July 2019 by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezs chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, who told Gov. Jay Inslee (D-WA) that the Green New Deal is not about saving the planet:

It wasn’t originally a climate thing at all ... we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.

In other words, climate change and the Green New Deal are being used as instruments to dismantle capitalism and the American economy, and redistribute wealth to other countries (Communist China comes to mind).

Toward totalitarianism

While degrowth is a precursor to a steady-state economy, it's pretty clear that Americans didn't vote for this agenda in a rigged election. Indeed, the agenda was hidden from Americans until after the Biden regime was installed.

The regime may argue that degrowth is good, but glaring inconsistencies reveal a different agenda. America's borders are wide open. Mass immigration is driving America's population to double within the lifetimes of children born today. That will mean twice as much housing, twice as many cars, schools, hospitals, and prisons. Twice the demand for dwindling resources, including water. That's growth, not degrowth.

But all these new Americans will vote for the party that promises them citizenship and the most free stuff at taxpayer expense - the Democrat Party. Which will lead to permanent power for the party.

The Great Reset

The Great Reset is the global elite’s plan to dismantle capitalism, implement a communist world order, and abolish private property. The degrowth agenda of the Biden regime fits in nicely with the globalist agenda.

The Great Reset appears to be one form of implementing degrowth. But it involves much more: authoritarian, corporatist global rule (the exact form is yet to be determined), loss of individual privacy and freedom, and of course a substantial reduction in the Western standard of living.

If unchecked, the end result probably will manifest as some form of corporate feudalism involving a commingling of government and corporate interests (fascism). Indeed, it almost seems that degrowth is but an inadvertent consequence of the globalist agendas.

Presuming that degrowth is a desirable goal, is a forced Great Reset the best way to achieve it? Surely there must be a better way.

See these articles and video:

 

Klaus Schwab - the pandemic and the Great Reset

 

Klaus Schwab - you will own nothing and you will be happy

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