Money is not inheritly bad, just think of it as a tool to make accounting easier

Is it though ? Not saying it is inherently bad, but in itself it forces a market value on everything - which is a rather limited proxy to usage value. In that sense money in itself is not neutral, not “just a tool”, as it shapes how exchanges are made in a society.

We shouldn’t be so angry that we think something as broad/simple as a marketplace has no use, and should not even be attempted, in creating a sustainable society worth living in.

It looks like you are conflating market economy and capitalism. These are two different concepts, and the first one predates the second by a few millenia.

So in the end the question was about capitalism but you argued in favor of market economy.

Ministry for the future, by Kim Stanley Robinson

Yes, and here you are also assuming “people” is a homogenous group, that the western culture you are from (aren’t you ?) is hegemonic.

But looking at how geopolitics are evolving lately, the world is increasingly multipolar, with multiple models of civilization competing. I don’t know, maybe India will wake the fuck up before us and thrive, while Europe rots and USA goes down the toilet drain?

You are passing a lot of assumptions as facts here.

But the problem is: the world won’t stop polluting, won’t stop growing its economies, won’t stop expanding.

Unless you are a time traveler, this is a belief, not a fact.

Even if the US and Europe cut their emissions and slow down, the developing world, India and China and Nigeria and Kenya, and so on, won’t. They see the standard of living in the West, they think their people deserve to live just as well, and they see we got there through unchecked resource consumption within a capitalist economic system, and how the hell do we have the right to tell those countries to stay poor for the sake of the environment when we got rich by fucking the environment?

Here you are assuming a lot about how those countries / populations might analyze the situation. Also, that the path we followed to develop is the only one, and that they are bound to follow our example. That’s quite a colonialist point of view.

So the only things that will save the world are globally organized, probably UN coordinated, technological solutions to mitigate the damage done by unchecked capitalist expansion, because we can’t stop capitalism.

If you start from the premise that there is no alternative to capitalism, that this rather young form of social organization is the end of human history, I can understand why you reach that conclusion. But don’t assume that your line of reasoning is the only logical conclusion one can reach.

Such is the power of economic orthodoxy - to trick you into thinking there is no alternative, that economic laws are laws of nature when they are “only” social constructions …

True. But there has been experiments, especially around melting currencies (is that the correct English name ?).

A recent example (in French, but I guess automatic translators are good enough now ?) : https://monnaie-libre.fr/

I see what you mean, but I think it’s true up to a certain point. Without growth, wealth concentration converges to a point where one actor owns everything. This is the perfect recipe for political instability and systemic failure.

Hey.

Most degrowth advocates I’ve seen or read in France are not talking about lifestyle changes for individuals - or at least, not without radical changes in the organization of society.

I agree that blaming poor people for driving shitty cars and living in poorly insulated buildings is stupid and counter-productive. But that’s how ecology is concieved by the ruling political class, not degrowth advocates.

Maybe if everyone had access to roughly the same wealth, market economy could be a good method of balancing economy ?

Not sure I agree with everything, let me rephrase this.

The way I see it, capitalism is a way of organizing an economic system that is based on accumulation of wealth (capital). Instead of sitting idle, capital is injected back into the economy through investment, with the promise of a juicy return on investment (and also, it gives power to those who own capital for they decide who gets investment).

For this juicy ROI to be possible, economic growth is a necessity - you can’t give back more to your lenders if what you did with the investment didn’t generate more value than the investment itself. So economic growth is at the very heart of capitalism.

When the market comes to a saturation point, growth starts to slow down. So you have two options:

1. open new markets, expanding the economic sphere (either geographically or in new segments of life)
2. make disposable products, through engineering (planned obsolescence) or advertisement (you need the new iPhone, believe me)

In the end, I don’t see consumerism as an ideal for a society, but rather the logical consequence of an economic system reified as an ideal. It doesn’t mean something similar couldn’t exist in another economic model, but I don’t think it can be separated from capitalism.

You are describing market economy, not capitalism.

How would you envision capitalism without consumerism ? I fail to see how capitalism would work without mass consumption.

This is wrong on so many levels … Leaving aside the trollish sociopathic nature of the comment, the billion who will die does not pollute much, so it won’t make much difference for those who survive and keep on gulping fossils and materials.

Maybe we should, but I’m not sure we can - because one (nuclear + desalination) acts as a disincentive to the other (actually chaning practice).

Also, building a nuclear reactor takes a lot of time (do we have it ?), changing agricultural practices can start right now and scale progressively.

… or maybe switch to a less water intensive form of agriculture ?

Edit : I mean, how sustaining a wasteful practice with a huge wasteful infrastructure is progress ?

Just to be sure this is sarcasm, right ?

That could be an approach, but as a leftist I would argue that leftist ideologies are not necessarily ecology-friendly. For example the soviet economy was not capitalist but very extractivist and destructive nonetheless.

I like the notion of conviviality as defined by Ivan Illich. A technique is convivial if it serves humankind and not a small elite. It is convivial if I can choose to live without it …

Hey there. New member, freshly registered.

I would say that the biggest threat to a solarpunk community like this one is greenwashing. More specifically, I’m thinking about techno-solutionism - a devious form of magical thinking that lets us think that tech is going to solve everything.

It is okay to share news about the latest technological advancement, to marvel at the ever lowering price of solar energy. But if it leads people to think that we can just replace fossil with another energy source and keep our societies and economic structures as is, this is toxic.

And I get that if you get enthusiastic about some tech and post it here, but then someone starts raining on your parade in the comment section, that person could easily be disqualified as a doomer.

How can we foster a sane debate about technology in this community ? Honestly I don’t know, but I’m eager to try!

All the best,

Hey there. As a non-architect interested in self-built housing, I found the barefoot architect quite interesting. I see this book as grassroot, community oriented architecture and urban planification (on a small scale). Maybe you’ll find some inspiration here?

Also, I don’t know where you’re from, but in some countries legislation makes it mandatory to have and architect review what you plan to build - maybe with your expertise and your ability to sign construction plans, you could assist self-builders in their projects?