Meet the lefty Europeans who want to shrink the economy
mental health. Fair enough. A bit further from the mainstream are the “post-growth" advocates, who think people can be just as happy with economies going up or down.
If policymakers stop caring about ever-higher output, they can throttle bits of societal activity campaigners don’t like, for example big cars, private jets and so on. Instead of trying to grow the pie, the idea is to take what there now is and share it more equally. One panel decried the “addiction of labour to growth" by advocating a four-day week.
In the very seats where MEPs crafted rules for minimum wages, campaigners were discussing maximum allowable wages. There is an even more exalted tier—the actual de-growers. By far the majority at the conference, their aim is to shrink the pie deliberately.
Growth damages the planet, and only benefits the rich anyway, they maintain. The idea that emissions can be cut enough while economies keep growing is “a fairy tale" designed to prolong the neo-liberal world order. It is better—necessary, even—to force a diet now, and get rid of any aspirations for growth later.
How, exactly? “We need to determine democratically what kind of production we need to be doing," and nix the rest, one participant advocated. Panels of citizens can advise what is wasteful and what is socially desirable. Any resemblance to some of the more stringent policies of the early Soviet era are presumably not intended.
Sometimes utopians fail to notice that they have already reached the promised land. For what is Europe, if not a post-growth continent already? Parts of it, like Italy, are scarcely bigger than they were 20 years ago. Yet, somehow, that has not prompted the contemplative contentment that the de-growers expect.
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