Nature Mag Jump the shark with a new sheet of paper. Pure communism disguised as an economic one. – Watts Up With That?
Featured photo: Idioms “shark jump” was coined in 1985 by Jon Hein in response to a 1977 episode from the fifth season of the American sitcom The happy daysin there soft candy (Henry Winkler) jumping over a shark while water skiing. This phrase has a pejorative connotation and is used to argue that a creative work or outlet appears to be performing a stunt in a seemingly radical attempt to gain attention or public opinion. increasingly high for something that was once considered popular but is no longer.
As opposition against ESG grows louder, this economic deafening and illiterate tone is driving pure communism central economic control appear in naturewith title and tagline:
Degeneration can work — here’s how science can help
Rich countries can create prosperity using less raw materials and energy if they forgo economic growth.
This article comes just as the response against ESG is gaining traction, with many US states divesting from ESG and ESG fund managers being investigated for breach of fiduciary duties.
Here are three articles we have published in the past week on the negative aspects of ESG.
The Nature article is more fallacious and naive than I would normally expect.
The global economy is structured around growth – the idea that companies, industries, and countries must increase output every year, whether it is necessary or not. This dynamic is driving climate change and disrupting ecosystems. The high-income economies, the corporations and the wealthy class that dominate them, are largely responsible for this and consume energy and materials at an unsustainable rate.first,2.
However, many industrialized countries are currently struggling to grow their economies, due to the economic upheavals caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the scarcity of resources and productivity improvements stalled. Governments face a difficult situation. Their efforts to stimulate growth conflict with the goals of improving human well-being and minimizing environmental damage.
Eco-economy researchers call for a different approach – recession3. Wealthy economies should abandon gross domestic product (GDP) growth as a goal, scale down unnecessary and destructive forms of production to reduce the use of energy and materials, and focusing economic activities on ensuring human needs and welfare. This approach, which has gained traction in recent years, could enable rapid decarbonisation and prevent ecological degradation while improving social outcomes.2. It frees up energy and materials for low- and middle-income countries, where growth may still be necessary for development. Decreasing growth is a purposeful strategy to stabilize the economy and achieve social and ecological goals, unlike economic downturns, which cause social chaos and instability and occur when An economy that depends on growth cannot grow.
The paragraphs above take the short-sighted view that the problems they note are caused by economic growth and not the reverse, sustainable development, unreliable electricity production, and responsiveness the damage of governments around the world to Covid.
The article was nothing more than a bulleted list of socialist demands. Because everything is a human right if they want to.
Below is a list of spots without comment.
- Less production is needed.
- Improve public services.
- Introducing a green job guarantee.
- Reduce working time.
- Enables sustainable development.
And here are their five main “research” challenges.
- Eliminate dependency on growth
- Public Service Fund
- Management cut working time
- Reshaping the supply system
- Feasibility and political opposition
My favorite of the five is the first, removing the reliance on growth.
Today’s economies depend on growth in many ways. Benefits are usually funded by tax revenues. Private pension providers rely on stock market growth for financial returns. Companies cite projected growth to attract investors. Researchers need to identify and address such ‘growth dependence’ on an industry-by-sector basis.
For example, the ‘fiduciary duty’ of corporate directors needs to be changed. Instead of prioritizing the short-term financial interests of shareholders, companies should prioritize social and environmental benefits as well as take social and ecological costs into account. Sectors such as social care and pensions need secure funding mechanisms for public service providers, and better regulation and removal of improper financial incentives for providers. private service4.
Balancing the national economy will require new macroeconomic models that incorporate economic, financial, social and ecological variables. Models like Low growth SFC (developed by TJ and PAV), EUROPE and MEDEAS has been and is being used to forecast the impact of policies that depress growth, including redistributive taxes, global public services, and reduced working hours.
So ESG, wealth distribution, economic planning and control is centralized. Yes, that’s the ticket.
Overall, I have two questions for anyone who claims to be against the concept of economic growth.
Have you ever received a raise?
Are you willing to forgo any future pay raises?
If you have a strong stomach, you can read This is the complete indictment of the modern education system.
HT/Orange_WORLD
Eric Worrall – Charles invited me to add an addendum.
It’s not just a pay rise that growth participants won’t miss.
Most of us change jobs at least a few times in our lives, but Job change is an integral part of economic growth. If you move to a higher paying job, the higher pay will only come because your new employer needs you more than your previous employer and is willing to pay more for your services. Shifting resources from low-value uses to high-value uses is the very definition of capitalist wealth creation, even if those resources happen to be transferors. job. Wealth creation is the engine of economic growth.
But we probably wouldn’t want to change jobs, if everything was perfect.
Zero economic growth and everyone’s needs met evoked in my mind a fleeting vision of Shire‘s idyllic house Hobbits In Lord of the Rings. A captivating vision of everyone happily working, but not too hard, drinking beer at the pub at the end of the day, belonging to the group and the village, and trying to muster up the courage to ask the waitress. that sexy.
Then reality begins and idyllic vision is banished, because reality has always been very different.
Every time the attempt to grow to zero on a large scale, the result is always thousands, even millions of deaths. In one of the worst recent examples, the end result of Pol Pot’s attempt to return Cambodia to idyllic agricultural bliss is skull mountain – An estimated 1.5 to 3 million people died in Pol Pot’s zero year experiment.
Zero-growth researchers seem to claim that their economic models will get them right at this point, but the risk of doing it wrong and the dire consequences of doing it wrong is an argument. strong to be cautious.
Some groups that try to live a simpler life have gotten less gruesome results, but the distinguishing feature of the groups that make it work and avoid committing mass murder seems to be that they don’t have the key. on the gate of the complex. People are free to leave, if they find life is not right for them.
For example, when I was a student, I used to like accommodation hare restaurants, powered by common farms and funded by donations.
I never had any urge to join their group, but they were very gentle in their conversion, at least that was my experience. Working on my uncle’s Christmas Tree farm with hand tools is great holiday work, but I’ve learned for the first time how hard farming can be – so I know. even as a student, this was not the life I wanted.
Not everyone is like me, there are many people who enjoy life focusing on goals other than economic growth, they spend many years, maybe even a lifetime, living and working in agrarian communes .
So here’s a hint – if researchers are so sure about their economic models, why don’t they try to put them into practice on a smaller scale? A self-governing Hare Krishna-style commune operating on modern zero-growth economic models, trading with the outside economy for materials they cannot supply on their own would be a small-scale experiment. great for their theories.
I am not a pompous person, I would be very interested in the results of such an experiment. I might even want to visit, maybe even stay a few nights. But I doubt I’d want to live like this for the rest of my life – unless they actually get it right, and figure out how to satisfy everyone’s needs, even a staunch capitalist like me.
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