How Degrowth Can Defeat Fascism

[@DrustZapat]

Great video! Thanks for making it 😊

[@VladBunea]

I am glad you enjoyed it, I think this is a vital topic to be talking about now more than ever.

[@davidwhite1982]

Having come to many of the same conclusions myself many years back and been a strong advocate for change, so as to stop what we are currently seeing happen, before it happened, I am extremely disappointed in the lack of bold leadership. However, with so many alternative options to the failing systems we currently have the fact remains - that those with all of the wealth and power are extremely unlikely to ever change a broken system that favours them.

[@robertprice2148]

Excellent, another good one.

[@anewagora]

You should use self determination theory to come up with strategies- which will be at both the individual level and community level. I say this because in my work as a youth mentor and in the research I had this revelation that materialism has been falsely treated as the intrinsic definition of wealth for so long, that intrinsic wealth is now being divorced from materialism. Intrinsic wealth should be based on innate human needs and abilities, thus self determination: autonomy, competence and interconnection. What is the point of any particular materials if you are dependent, ignorant and isolated? At that point you're the king of a landfill. It is no surprise that the poor in America are more likely to be obese and sick; extreme materialism is drowning people. We need to return to nature and form deep personal, trusting, intergenerational communities. It's extremely hard but precisely the work that must be done.

[@VladBunea]

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination_theory It is very interesting to see how SDT links to limitariansm (the philosophy of having a maximum limit on wealth, say at $10 million). I'll look into it. Thank you!

[@anewagora]

@VladBunea I'm glad you find it promising, thanks for the reply 😊 my top recommended book is Free to Learn by Dr. Peter Gray- it demonstrates the childhood need for free play (the childhood expression of autonomy towards self determination) and how this differs from schooling. The latter was developed in authoritarian ways and has some features that could lead to fascism. "Democratic schools" is the commonly used term for educational groups forming around families/ kids that want to promote authentic self determination. This is basically my life's mission and I am building a nature- integrated community with my friends & family for this purpose. If you can see how this way of living leads to human thriving and discovery of truth and meaning, and is in fact spiritual for most people, then it will be quite easy to get people on board across vast political differences.

[@thosethatcan]

2:43 ✍🏽🕵🏽✅⚡🚗👍🏽

[@timothyrussell4445]

Some great ideas, but the real question is how we get from where we are to where we need to be - it's a journey that needs to be planned and to evolve.

[@VladBunea]

Citizen assemblies are part of the answer to the "how do we get there" question.

[@timothyrussell4445]

@@VladBunea Sure, but there are many parameters to sort out such as how they're constituted, terms of reference, powers etc. that would need to be agreed before they could even start functioning. Perhaps the most pressing problem we have right now as a collection of global societies is how much disagreement and social discord there is. Ironically much of that is down to social media imo.

[@VladBunea]

Since 2010, over 250 citizens’ assemblies have taken place in the 38 nations of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) alone, with a large proportion of them focused on environmental themes. So, they are already happening. We just need more of them and make their decisions obligatory for governments. (See chapter 6 in History for Tomorrow by Roman Krznaric).

[@timothyrussell4445]

@@VladBunea It's encouraging to see such developments, but the hard part's going to be making their decisions binding on governments. We live in hope!

[@davidwatson7604]

This is a comment for the Algo boost!

[@myobioma]

When will these policies finally be implemented?

[@VladBunea]

My desire would be to see citizen assemblies get started immediately to work on these policies. However, I suspect a massive crisis (bigger than Covid) might have to happen first to force governments to accept these policies.

[@MaVOfficialHD]

The Soviet Union is what defeated fascism the first time.

[@VladBunea]

Not alone. And this does not make fascism a good thing.

[@MaVOfficialHD]

@@VladBunea I am saying Socialism must once again defeat fascism. None of this liberal attempting to "democratise" or institute "fairness" will stop fascism. Especially in the 21st century, capitalism's hold on the general psyche makes anything else unimaginable.

[@danielmaher964]

Democracy won't fix democracy

[@VladBunea]

There are many kinds of democracies. Electoral democracy has largely failed us. I advocate for the abolition of elections and the transition to sortition (legislature by lot).

[@danielmaher964]

@VladBunea as a traditionalist I see value in this, it is essentially a legislative jury

[@VladBunea]

Indeed! I wrote about it here: vladbunea.substack.com/p/against-elections-fix-democracy-with

[@danielmaher964]

@VladBunea thanks for sharing. Your proposal is too artificial and has too many parts. The salaried jury concept is great, but unless you give that jury direct power, they will atrophy. Of course, like all political forces, democracy needs to be balanced. I would suggest a monarchical executive accountable to a supreme jury, and for this to be replicated at all levels of government.

[@VladBunea]

I'm afraid models that include unelected representatives (such as monarchies) are profoundly anti-democratic. Some argue for a mix of elections and sortition. See the book Legislature by Lot.

[@intboom]

If you guys do all of this revolutionary stuff and everyone else gets to freely keep doing market stuff, we all get to prove whether or not your ideas work without having to strongarm compliance from random third world countries and western mephedrone addicts

[@collegesandcannibals241]

Communist rant.

[@MeleanDialogue]

If we don't change, humanity is doomed. If you can't see that you are delusional.

[@VladBunea]

Anti-fascist rant, to be more specific.

[@tomislavpuklin1676]

Imagine focusing on substance, and not form like a child.

[@collegesandcannibals241]

@tomislavpuklin1676 imagine the moron who cannot parse a two-word sentence.

[@collegesandcannibals241]

@@VladBunea Promoting communism.

[@Avianthro]

These are all ideas that sound rational and agree with our basic hunter-gatherer residual social-political guidance system, BUT we have a deeper problem: Our political systems evolve in response to/to optimally (for power maximization) mesh with our technological "progress". The agricultural revolution set the stage for unfair hierarchical superorganisms to develop. Monarchies* came first and were dominant until the industrial revolution which enabled monarchies to be replaced by neomonarchies (as colony is to neocolony), and now with the 3rd and 4th IRs we are entering into techno-fuedalism. Unless "degrowth" also involves ending technological "progress" and even reversing-banning many of its aspects, our love for tech, for the godlike power it gives, will be the end of humanity. ...Would democratic citizens assemblies decide to abandon technological "progress"?? Fascism is therefore the least of our worries, and our deepest problem is what we are: life forms. All forms of life seek to increase their power using their technologies, and we human forms of life, social forms that form superorganisms, evolved abilities that also led us to become masters of exosomatic technologies which now threaten to master us as we continue to build and extend their powers and as our dependency on them grows. Now, saying that our fundamental problem is that we are life forms really means there is no "voluntary" way out for us...We must continue on this trajectory until it either transforms us fully into transhuman borg-destroys-replaces us or unless it becomes physically impossible, due to our tech&resource paradigm breaking down before we, our technologies, can establish a new one that enables the process to continue. The only thing that can save us from ourselves is modern economic collapse, and no one wants that to happen. *Fascism is really just a monarchy without the royal trimmings.

[@jacobpadilla9256]

It's a lot of words to summarize a reductive take on technology that boils down to being a Luddite.. Like, how in all that analysis can you unceremoniously end with a world philosophy as simplistic as 'all organisms utilize their technologies to increase their power' like that doesn't sound like a tween fiction novel. It's not really true with any scrutiny either, it's as easy to falsify as grabbing any example of any technology not being used for power or exploitation at any time There isn't some arbitrary rule demanding that any technology discovered must be used exploitatively, there are significantly more fitting and well suited explanations for why we see the things we do in history

[@Avianthro]

@@jacobpadilla9256 BTW: I really don't mind too much being called a Luddite, but I'm not saying that I am. You leaped to that conclusion without really understanding that my concern is with ongoing tech "progress" and with many techs that we should actually not even have developed...See Bostrom's "Vulnerable World Hypothesis" and have you ever read Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle"? I guess I'm an "enoughist" on tech...OK to continue refining-improving some of our existing tech, but not OK to keep going down the path of "progress" and we'd be much better off to simply forget about and put a moratorium on a number of techs we now have. Another thing we need to understand is how we are already so trapped by our tech...Ronald Wright's "progress trap" concept. As it is now, with economic growth as our basic life-form prime directive, i.e. increasing our power as energy&material throughput per capita X population, we are trapped into continuing with tech "progress" and so that's why degrowth will necessarily involve ending tech "progress".

[@jacobpadilla9256]

@@Avianthro I've heard of the concepts, is it genuinely necessary for a specific book to be read fully for the concept to have any grounding in reality? Like, I have plenty of history knowledge to work with, is it really not possible to communicate why they would believe this to be universal.. The premise that all living organisms have a prime directive to economic growth is laughably falsifiable unless you redefine terms so heavily that it's useless, I'm not sure how a book about it changes that. If that is a genuine postulate, it doesn't sound that credible. Our economic arrangements are not hard natural rules, they're the results of complicated interplays between many people and systems. The ways people organize change drastically in response to past situations. A fixation on growth or expansion with technology is not universally present in history or even in all humans today. Youve assigned universality to a concept that is fully optional. Social or economic conditions that feel difficult to change being deemed inevitable is hard to take seriously. Luddite isn't meant pejoratively here, but you not technically being one frankly isn't even true, I doubt most people who consider themselves luddites want every technology removed, it's all pick and choose. The ridiculous thing is that it is so not necessary to remove technology to make changes to our uses of them. Technology being demonized as a whole because of extremely irresponsible handling and inequitable distribution of gains is irresponsible in itself imo

[@Avianthro]

@@jacobpadilla9256 Well, someday I hope you will do some more reading and thinking, and actually make an effort to digest what I have tried to pass along to you, but it seems you already have everything figured out on your own. Good luck!

[@Avianthro]

@@jacobpadilla9256 Funny thing too is that you have simply proven my case that citizens assemblies would never reach universal agreement to abandon "progress". Thinking like yours always comes up saying that new technology can be controlled, used only for the good to benefit humanity, and then you leap to the conclusion that people who warn as I do are anti-technological Luddites, that we demonize technology as a whole. It should be clear to anyone who reads carefully, that's not what I wrote. Therefore, what's ridiculous and laughable is your total lack of rigor in interpreting my comments and in dismissively refraining from any deeper thought on these matters...""I've heard of the concepts." Well, that's impressive...LOL. You don't even seem to have taken the time to try to understand my comments let alone to really dive into this area of thought...Sad!

[@aluisious]

"Degrowth" is an inherently stupid way to describe anything. Call it contraction, or shrinking, or something that isn't self-negating in it's definition.

[@3dartxsi]

While I may be mistaken, the concept of "degrowth" is not about opposing all forms of growth, but about kicking the addiction to growth for growth's sake.

[@aluisious]

@@3dartxsi I hadn't considered that, that makes more sense. No one bothered explaining it as such, though.

[@3dartxsi]

@@aluisious frankly, we've all been so thoroughly conditioned to think of the current way of doing things as the ONLY way to do things, that any terminology that suggests anything more than the most incremental of changes to the system is met with a reflexively hostile reaction. "Defund the Police" is an excellent example. It really means "reduce police funding and divert those funds to more effective social programs in order to reduce crime" but because we've all been conditioned to see the current way of doing law enforcement in very rigid terms, most everyone thinks it means "nobody enforces the law ever again" even though there is no justification for such a belief.

[@anewagora]

@@aluisious Nate Hagens calls a broader idea around this "The Great Simplification" and I think it's an excellent descriptor. Check out the documentary, it's incredible.

[@VladBunea]

I follow Nate Hagens. Unfortunately he rejects degrowth on the grounds that it would not be adopted voluntarily. But, his so called Great Simplification is actually a version of degrowth, but unplanned and by some sort of crisis or disaster. I still hope and think we can have a planned, orderly, fair, just degrowth via citizen assemblies.

[@davidkerr4630]

To attend equally to every individual person's different needs. Socialism. From each according to ability to each according to needs.

[@nomore2001]

Explain Xi Jinping then