I’m sorry to hear that you’ve suffered as much or more of listening to Hossenfelder trampling outside of her circle of competence as me.
When it comes to federal spending in states like the US that have fiat monetary sovereignty, I’m careful never to frame that money as *taxpayer* money. Firstly because it just factually isn’t, but more importantly because that false framing serves the interests of the bourgeoisie. One of its more subtle sins is that it leaves the impression that those who pay federal income taxes ought to have more say than those who don’t, and that the more one pays the more say one ought to have. But just in general, this framing is foundational to the bourgeois project of obfuscating how fiat money actually works. For instance, we’re not supposed to understand the intentionally complicated, obfuscatory nonsense that the government must sell treasuries to the bourgeoisie in order to fund itself. The government doesn’t need that money at all, and all that really does is give the wealthy a safe place to park their capital with interest, temporarily removing it from the productive economy.
Thanks for sharing the links! You're right, there's a lot of nonsense surrounding the very premise that modern finance relies on "taxpayer" money in the first place. In the video linked in the post, Cockshott makes a great point that the US Dollar (for the US) is backed by one needing to pay their taxes in USD, that's why it exists. He makes a lot of great points in that video, it's a shame it's basically him reading his powerpoint slides for 30 minutes lol. But it's always an eye-opener.
Can I ask you something? I've been wondering this for a long time when talking to communists... If ever a system is implemented worldwide that is an even more effective machine for creating goods, services, resource extraction, infarstructure, technology, agriculture etc than capitalism is, I am positive that that would be the coup-the-grace of what remains of the ecosphere. Wouldn't it?
This is the reason that I don't really consider China's 'miracle of productiveness' a reason to celebrate. I've rarely heard any communist talk about this. Except for Kohei Saito I suppose. The 'next stage' will have to be less productive not more if we want to continue enjoying a planet with ecosystems on it. It's honestly why I hope this next stage is neither capitalism nor communism. At least not communism as most communists seem to think about it.
I'm not sure if at this time we can say for sure what such a world will look like in practice for sure. At the moment, China has to live in the capitalist hegemony. They don't make history as they please but inherit conditions and have to contend with the current conditions. Their system of course has contradictions within it, but this is true of all systems in the theory and so the question is more what do these contradictions imply and how do we resolve them. They made the choice to integrate into this global system to the extent that was required to survive until the conditions develop and they don't have to anymore. Or in other words, I don't really fault a revolution for doing what it takes to survive and protect itself. More broadly they saw and learned from the dissolution of the USSR and discovered what it would take for them to avoid this fate.
I'm not necessarily a proponent of degrowth because I'm not sure it's actually required to sustain life or the only way forward; I think to some extent this is something we come to think because we live under capitalism, which caused this crisis, and the simplest solution seems to be "what if we kept doing what we do, but do less of it." But when looking at China once more, we see that they are the only country in the world who has reached the Paris Climate Agreements not only ahead of time, but will likely be the only country to reach all conditions of the agreement at all, and we have to ask: why could they do that when no other country could? What was special about China? So in that way I don't doubt that we can find ways to sustain life and quality of life without killing the climate. I just don't have any hope that it will happen under capitalism.
It does require some blind trust, i.e. trusting that we will be able to do something about the environment in another system. But I think countries like China and Cuba show great results in sustainability (Cuba mostly because of the embargo that forces them to be creative about it, but the possibilities do exist). The common retort regarding China is that they produce a lot of greenhouse gasses but they also manufacture everything for our own companies, so we're just offshoring our GHG to them and that's why their stats are so high. We can also safely trace the climate crisis to the fossil fuel industry, for which capitalism has no answer and has refused to have an answer to for over 50 years. To me, the answer there is as simple as a state program forcing the green energy transition with no ifs and buts. Capitalists pearl-clutch when you say this because to them private property is sacred (only theirs though), but with no for-profit energy production, there will be no pearls to clutch. Finally, I think by default anything other than capitalism is "less productive" in that we will not be producing frivolous things that serve no purpose other than make money. I mean, a few years back a company was selling empty plastic packaging branded "the gift of nothing". This has no reason to exist, people should be going to prison over this.
Thank you for your reply, yes it answers my question as to what you think about this. Thanks for not getting defensive as well.
I personally still think that China is transgressing planetary limits just as the West is. I am pretty sure that degrowth is a neccessity. I also think that ultimately, we'll be forced into degrowth anyway due to resource constraints, we that is humanity. Also, I can only imagine a communist system implementing a controlled, humane degrowth. But I also don't see anyone (any state that is) worldwide choosing it of their own free will.
"At least not communism as most communists seem to think about it." Well I can't speak for these imaginary Communists you brought up, but as for me this conception of Communists producing and consuming product for the sake of it is new to me. I've not heard it from fellow communists or from Communism's detractors. I've in fact heard the opposite where the Berlin wall was taken down due in part due to the desire for pizza hut and gucci handbags and mercedes benz that were seen as superior luxuries compared to austere, utilitarian Soviet cars and basic goods. So which is it?
Communism wasn't the mode of production that invented the Advertising Industry, an entire division of the economy devoted to getting me - the consumer - to buy double the pizza hut and buy the fast fashion that falls apart in 3 years and buy the lifted F150 because only THAT car can make me a man! Communism doesn't do these things because it is the mode of production driven by the needs of the many, and not the wants of the few. Even then, there's room for luxury, but not consumption to the level of the upper 1%.
You can see this in the case of China, which is the world's leader in renewable energy, and growth in renewable energy is projected to grow. That's facts. Would be even better if economy wasn't reliant on US consumption, but that may soon change with the tariffs.
"So which is it?" Talk to me and not to strawmen. I'm not whoever you have heard complaining about Soviet austerity.
As for 'imaginary' communists, I frequent communist message boards - and they really are communists and call themselves that, and not random libs. I'm talking about these people. And pretty much without exception they are glorying in just how fantastically productive China is. And China is producing an unfathomable amount of unneccary stuff. I've heard degrowth mentioned on there basically never on therre. They have in my experience, zero relationship to planetary limits, if and when these limits are being reached by China/communists and not by the West.
You're the one bringing up imaginary communists, now on unnamed message boards apparently. All the ones I've met in real life and on message boards are deeply concerned about the climate crisis.
Anyways, you have no answer to the drive for demand from the Global North. We buy things we don't need, that's the crux of it. China has a growing middle class that it would prefer to supply with its own consumer goods.
On the other hand, the United States has pulled out of the Paris climate agreement which was already a thread bare way of protecting the biosphere. It's leader Trump is eyeing mineral reserves in Greenland and Canada, frozen ones today. Maybe he and other bourgeois class leaders are in fact counting on that ice cap to melt, huh? These aren't plots I see China making, so I remain hopeful. A degrowth economy cannot thrive in capitalism, it has a chance in a state with more central planning and defense from scheming business interests. Like China!
"All the ones I've met in real life and on message boards are deeply concerned about the climate crisis." - They are concerned but they cannot fathom actually stopping economic growth - the exact thing that is causing environmental crises.
"Anyways, you have no answer to the drive for demand from the Global North. " - Why in all the world should this demand be fulfilled? Why should anyone answer it? Or do you think I'm in denial of this drive existing? Do you think I support global North insane consumption? Then you're still arguing with strawmen.
"China has a growing middle class that it would prefer to supply with its own consumer goods." - That's precisely the kind of consumption that's causing environmental descruction, you realise that do you? And environmental descruction includes far more things than the climate, you realise that?
"A degrowth economy cannot thrive in capitalism, it has a chance in a state with more central planning and defense from scheming business interests." - I agree with that. You are still arguing with strawmen.
"They are concerned but they cannot fathom actually stopping economic growth - the exact thing that is causing environmental crises." You can't seem to fathom it either. You haven't given any ideas besides "we need less consumers, specifically less consumers in China."
As I've explained, the development of China is occurring predominantly with green energy. It's also occurring in the Global South with mostly green energy as well. It's not my fault or any imaginary leftists that you are ignoring this.
Do some soul searching as to why you focus your climate anxiety on bashing China and GS countries with no data instead of focusing this somewhere more productive, please.
I’m sorry to hear that you’ve suffered as much or more of listening to Hossenfelder trampling outside of her circle of competence as me.
When it comes to federal spending in states like the US that have fiat monetary sovereignty, I’m careful never to frame that money as *taxpayer* money. Firstly because it just factually isn’t, but more importantly because that false framing serves the interests of the bourgeoisie. One of its more subtle sins is that it leaves the impression that those who pay federal income taxes ought to have more say than those who don’t, and that the more one pays the more say one ought to have. But just in general, this framing is foundational to the bourgeois project of obfuscating how fiat money actually works. For instance, we’re not supposed to understand the intentionally complicated, obfuscatory nonsense that the government must sell treasuries to the bourgeoisie in order to fund itself. The government doesn’t need that money at all, and all that really does is give the wealthy a safe place to park their capital with interest, temporarily removing it from the productive economy.
- Alan Greenspan: “The United States can always pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWo0HvPpEtw
- PEGS Institute: Your Taxes Pay for Nothing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg0R9Ye2ovM
- PEGS Institute: What Caused Hyperinflation In Weimar, Zimbabwe And Venezuela? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U7t47toB5E
- Second Thought: Why The Government Has Infinite Money https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFhKVCaadzE
- Michael Hudson: The Use and Abuse of MMT https://michael-hudson.com/2020/04/the-use-and-abuse-of-mmt/
- Finding the Money: https://findingmoneyfilm.com/
Thanks for sharing the links! You're right, there's a lot of nonsense surrounding the very premise that modern finance relies on "taxpayer" money in the first place. In the video linked in the post, Cockshott makes a great point that the US Dollar (for the US) is backed by one needing to pay their taxes in USD, that's why it exists. He makes a lot of great points in that video, it's a shame it's basically him reading his powerpoint slides for 30 minutes lol. But it's always an eye-opener.
Can I ask you something? I've been wondering this for a long time when talking to communists... If ever a system is implemented worldwide that is an even more effective machine for creating goods, services, resource extraction, infarstructure, technology, agriculture etc than capitalism is, I am positive that that would be the coup-the-grace of what remains of the ecosphere. Wouldn't it?
This is the reason that I don't really consider China's 'miracle of productiveness' a reason to celebrate. I've rarely heard any communist talk about this. Except for Kohei Saito I suppose. The 'next stage' will have to be less productive not more if we want to continue enjoying a planet with ecosystems on it. It's honestly why I hope this next stage is neither capitalism nor communism. At least not communism as most communists seem to think about it.
I'm not sure if at this time we can say for sure what such a world will look like in practice for sure. At the moment, China has to live in the capitalist hegemony. They don't make history as they please but inherit conditions and have to contend with the current conditions. Their system of course has contradictions within it, but this is true of all systems in the theory and so the question is more what do these contradictions imply and how do we resolve them. They made the choice to integrate into this global system to the extent that was required to survive until the conditions develop and they don't have to anymore. Or in other words, I don't really fault a revolution for doing what it takes to survive and protect itself. More broadly they saw and learned from the dissolution of the USSR and discovered what it would take for them to avoid this fate.
I'm not necessarily a proponent of degrowth because I'm not sure it's actually required to sustain life or the only way forward; I think to some extent this is something we come to think because we live under capitalism, which caused this crisis, and the simplest solution seems to be "what if we kept doing what we do, but do less of it." But when looking at China once more, we see that they are the only country in the world who has reached the Paris Climate Agreements not only ahead of time, but will likely be the only country to reach all conditions of the agreement at all, and we have to ask: why could they do that when no other country could? What was special about China? So in that way I don't doubt that we can find ways to sustain life and quality of life without killing the climate. I just don't have any hope that it will happen under capitalism.
It does require some blind trust, i.e. trusting that we will be able to do something about the environment in another system. But I think countries like China and Cuba show great results in sustainability (Cuba mostly because of the embargo that forces them to be creative about it, but the possibilities do exist). The common retort regarding China is that they produce a lot of greenhouse gasses but they also manufacture everything for our own companies, so we're just offshoring our GHG to them and that's why their stats are so high. We can also safely trace the climate crisis to the fossil fuel industry, for which capitalism has no answer and has refused to have an answer to for over 50 years. To me, the answer there is as simple as a state program forcing the green energy transition with no ifs and buts. Capitalists pearl-clutch when you say this because to them private property is sacred (only theirs though), but with no for-profit energy production, there will be no pearls to clutch. Finally, I think by default anything other than capitalism is "less productive" in that we will not be producing frivolous things that serve no purpose other than make money. I mean, a few years back a company was selling empty plastic packaging branded "the gift of nothing". This has no reason to exist, people should be going to prison over this.
Hope that answers your question!
Thank you for your reply, yes it answers my question as to what you think about this. Thanks for not getting defensive as well.
I personally still think that China is transgressing planetary limits just as the West is. I am pretty sure that degrowth is a neccessity. I also think that ultimately, we'll be forced into degrowth anyway due to resource constraints, we that is humanity. Also, I can only imagine a communist system implementing a controlled, humane degrowth. But I also don't see anyone (any state that is) worldwide choosing it of their own free will.
"At least not communism as most communists seem to think about it." Well I can't speak for these imaginary Communists you brought up, but as for me this conception of Communists producing and consuming product for the sake of it is new to me. I've not heard it from fellow communists or from Communism's detractors. I've in fact heard the opposite where the Berlin wall was taken down due in part due to the desire for pizza hut and gucci handbags and mercedes benz that were seen as superior luxuries compared to austere, utilitarian Soviet cars and basic goods. So which is it?
Communism wasn't the mode of production that invented the Advertising Industry, an entire division of the economy devoted to getting me - the consumer - to buy double the pizza hut and buy the fast fashion that falls apart in 3 years and buy the lifted F150 because only THAT car can make me a man! Communism doesn't do these things because it is the mode of production driven by the needs of the many, and not the wants of the few. Even then, there's room for luxury, but not consumption to the level of the upper 1%.
You can see this in the case of China, which is the world's leader in renewable energy, and growth in renewable energy is projected to grow. That's facts. Would be even better if economy wasn't reliant on US consumption, but that may soon change with the tariffs.
"So which is it?" Talk to me and not to strawmen. I'm not whoever you have heard complaining about Soviet austerity.
As for 'imaginary' communists, I frequent communist message boards - and they really are communists and call themselves that, and not random libs. I'm talking about these people. And pretty much without exception they are glorying in just how fantastically productive China is. And China is producing an unfathomable amount of unneccary stuff. I've heard degrowth mentioned on there basically never on therre. They have in my experience, zero relationship to planetary limits, if and when these limits are being reached by China/communists and not by the West.
You're the one bringing up imaginary communists, now on unnamed message boards apparently. All the ones I've met in real life and on message boards are deeply concerned about the climate crisis.
Anyways, you have no answer to the drive for demand from the Global North. We buy things we don't need, that's the crux of it. China has a growing middle class that it would prefer to supply with its own consumer goods.
On the other hand, the United States has pulled out of the Paris climate agreement which was already a thread bare way of protecting the biosphere. It's leader Trump is eyeing mineral reserves in Greenland and Canada, frozen ones today. Maybe he and other bourgeois class leaders are in fact counting on that ice cap to melt, huh? These aren't plots I see China making, so I remain hopeful. A degrowth economy cannot thrive in capitalism, it has a chance in a state with more central planning and defense from scheming business interests. Like China!
"All the ones I've met in real life and on message boards are deeply concerned about the climate crisis." - They are concerned but they cannot fathom actually stopping economic growth - the exact thing that is causing environmental crises.
"Anyways, you have no answer to the drive for demand from the Global North. " - Why in all the world should this demand be fulfilled? Why should anyone answer it? Or do you think I'm in denial of this drive existing? Do you think I support global North insane consumption? Then you're still arguing with strawmen.
"China has a growing middle class that it would prefer to supply with its own consumer goods." - That's precisely the kind of consumption that's causing environmental descruction, you realise that do you? And environmental descruction includes far more things than the climate, you realise that?
"A degrowth economy cannot thrive in capitalism, it has a chance in a state with more central planning and defense from scheming business interests." - I agree with that. You are still arguing with strawmen.
"They are concerned but they cannot fathom actually stopping economic growth - the exact thing that is causing environmental crises." You can't seem to fathom it either. You haven't given any ideas besides "we need less consumers, specifically less consumers in China."
As I've explained, the development of China is occurring predominantly with green energy. It's also occurring in the Global South with mostly green energy as well. It's not my fault or any imaginary leftists that you are ignoring this.
Do some soul searching as to why you focus your climate anxiety on bashing China and GS countries with no data instead of focusing this somewhere more productive, please.
Disengage