Decoupling the Economy is Horsesh*t

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Our global institutions want to sell us fantasies that infinite capitalist growth is sustainable.

Other Critiques:

[BadMouse]

"In order to get to a preferable Warfare society, we just need to remove certain negative parts of Warfare society" hah.

[danmorgan]

Externalizing social/economic/environmental costs is how capitalism remains viable as an economic system.

[kevincrady]

Another potential downside of "decoupling" (assuming it could be made to work in some sense) is that reducing our dependence on the biosphere could result in further devaluation of the biosphere. If we imagine skyscraper arcologies powered by Thorium reactors presumably running closed-loop industrial ecosystems (where the waste of one industrial process is a needed input for another--this would require economic planning rather than laissez-faire), it's not too hard to imagine the elites thinking, "Hey, rain forests and zebras aren't contributing to GDP, so we don't really need them--but the land they're on could be turned into lovely resort properties! And who cares about what happens to the exterior climate?" And so, they end up becoming Paolo Bacigalupi's "People of Sand and Slag."

[YaBoiHakim]

Damn was this video excellent, well done comrade!

[lesliefluette]

I just can't with this....how do people not see that capitalism is killing us on every level. Do you think people really believe there is a way to decouple economic growth from increased environmental pressure? It just doesn't make sense!
Btw I love your sarcastic commentary and add ins like Stewie haha

[ricomeitzner]

Hey, nice video, there is only one minor mistake. The second law of thermodynamics, which you state as a problem for growth on earth, does not really apply to earth, as earth is an open system and the second law only applies to closed ones. But there is another issue with the idea of infinite grwoth, you do not even mention. At a certain point we would have to built so many renewables, that we would have to consume so much land, that nothing would be left for the environment. Though even long before that for example solar PV would change the albedo of large swaths of land, by so much, that we would see a global warming effect, simply by an increased absorption of solar irradiation, kind of similar to the heating in urban areas due to the generally darker hue of roofs and streets.

[katherinemorelle]

And they say we socialists are idealistic and unrealistic. Wow.

[johnnyt]

Hey thanks for a nice video. As David Harvey says, "Capitalism never solves it's crises, it just moves them around."

[Crowley]

6:30 I was thinking that myself just before you said it. "We can do this if we can overcome the basic laws of physics!"

[Highonfruitaprivilegedvegan]

I love your sass in this video, made me laugh so much :)) Super informative and interesting as always.

[Zarex]

Very compelling argument in this video, granted I already agreed with the conclusion before watching the video, I think it really helped me understand the problem more by framing it in the the same terminology and argument structures as you would hear from arguments in support of capitalism and ever increasing innovation etc.

After graduating and starting working I dove headfirst into understanding how the financial systems work because I was a spreadsheet and math nerd and wanted to optimally plan my resource allocation for maximum comfort with minimal effort (including retirement obviously). One thing that never sat well in my brain was this juxtaposition of compounding growth that was expected in the markets ad infinitum. Given that I also had a background in physics it was jarring to expect *any* system based in physical reality to have an exponential growth rate that was entirely unrestrained. It was explained away in most finance related material as being exponential because of the "growth and innovation" of the economy, which wasn't physically limited, but as you point out these processes ARE ultimately based in physical reality rendering that assumption completely false. As I currently understand it, that exponential growth is probably *partially* due to innovation and efficiency gains, but most of the exponential growth is due to the fact that economic growth can be supplemented by exploiting an exponentially growing (roughly speaking, in areas where capitalism runs most rampant) population or by exploiting the environment's resources further, which seems to be exactly what you point out in this video.

If you do read this Mexie, I am very curious to know how you personally plan for your future with your own resources given your opinions expressed in this video (and this is not meant to try to call you out as being hypocritical or anything dumb like that, we all exist within capitalism where there is no ethical consumption).

I ask because I'm currently trying to figure out what my own best course of action is given my beliefs and "typical" advice says to throw tons of money into investing in the stock market, get dem capital gains, and then retire comfortably. Problem is, that is extremely at odds with my beliefs that capitalism is wrecking the environment and exploiting people and not sustainable, but there are very few resources that I've been able to find that address what I should consider doing with my own resources to "plan for my future". This is probably because there is very little consensus on the left about what the future will even look like (I did love your video on radical creativity).

[BionicTapeworm]

Mexie:
Did the U.N. Development Goals propose eventually replacing GDP with the GPI (gross progress indicator) instead?

Thanks for answering my question.

[imice]

i knew from the title it was going to be a stupid idea but oh goodness the size of stupidity of the actual idea doesn't fit in my head, can any serious economist defend this with their own mouth? they should desintegrate by sheer force of contradiction

[DrayseSchneider]

Decoupling is one reason that I could never get on board with Eco Modernism. It's one of the movement's main pillers and, while there are some specific things I agree with them about, I just find infinite growth with some sort of magical unlinking from the environment wishful thinking. Reducing growth rates or, I don't know, redistributing wealth, resources and power so there aren't inequalities might be a better idea. What's that called again?

Good video and I want that can of maple syrup behind you!

[Gee-xbrt]

Eco-economic decoupling even sounds like one of those god awful TED Talks that everyone goes and claps for themselves and feels better for doing nothing after. Once you lose all faith in humanity you feel a lot better, you don't expect anything from anyone anymore, so they can't endlessly disappoint you.

[DavidLindes]

When will more folks realize (as it seems you have, so that's something) that "sustainable growth" is an oxymoron? Sigh.

[guyoflife]

The only argument I've heard is that capitalism will innovate things so they're more efficient and that socialism is very slow at innovating and will lead to environmental decline which I fail to see any evidence of. In Socialism we would probably have much more innovation faster considering innovation isn't hindered and sabotaged by profits and patents. In socialism we'd probably master 100 percent clean technology in five or 10 years and find alternatives to things like plastic and have full recycling of everything. Then there's the fact that socialism won't intentionally waste massive amounts of resources for massive consumption and manufactured obsolescence. It's simply too expensive to focus on the environment in any way that happens fast enough or significantly enough to make a difference in capitalism because it's not profitable.

[discountchocolate]

As a grad student of economics I have had the misfortune of dealing with professors who insisted that infinitely increasing technological efficiency will solve the problem of infinite economic growth with finite physical resources. Once the credibility of this con job by the global ruling class wears off in about 15 years I fucking guarantee this same class of technocrats will be arguing for fascist policies (e.g. keeping refugees out, and other zero-sum neo-Malthusian bullshit) in the name of economic or ecological sustainability.
I can say this confidently because after seeing through this entropy-defying lie I initially drew the conclusion that fascists had the only answer to this contradiction, having been thoroughly conditioned by my education, the youtube skeptic community, and state propaganda to believe socialism was either impossible or even worse than fascism, even though I preferred social democracy.

[alanX]

Decoupling (of energy/resource use from GDP and other measures of economic performance) is a statistical reality. But that does not mean that capitalism is sustainable, much less desirable. This issue is multifaceted and not simple; should be explored.

[JohnBrockman]

The second law of thermodynamics says that entropy always increases for a closed system, but the Earth isn't a closed system. If we were to expand out into space and use the resources we find out there to harvest energy from the sun, we could expand a great deal *and* stop senselessly destroying the planet. At least until we construct a Dyson sphere and run into the same hard limit.

Now, whether we could even *start* that project before the system collapses in a Malthusian nightmare and we start cannibalizing ourselves is another matter entirely.