As far as I know, this person is an economist—they should know that GDP measures the volume of transactions, that welfare reducing marketization gets counted as GDP growth, & the difference between throughput, output, welfare, GDP & growth. Frankly sad! https://twitter.com/jdcmedlock/status/1308108982158897152
Both Medlock and Noah show their intellectual bankruptcy—basically all degrowthers say that if the kind of growth measured by GDP truly indexed welfare & could become absolutely decoupled from throughput & impact, then it wouldn’t matter https://twitter.com/noahpinion/status/1307830107763929088?s=21 https://twitter.com/noahpinion/status/1307830107763929088
Degrowthers are not Austerians—their argument is quite simple, actually:
1. GDP is a fundamentally capitalist metric—even its progenitor said it shouldn’t be the sole metric of use—it doesn’t measure welfare, it uses arbitrary indices, it discounts externalities, it only measures
the volume of transactions of goods & services in the money economy, counts welfare reducing commodification/marketization as growth, and relies on arbitrary weighted indices. It reifies human interaction & society—metrics pursued as targets become meaningless as metrics.
2. Degrowthers separate throughput, impact, waste, ecosystem deterioration, & land use, from GDP, economic growth, etc, from output & production, from utility, quality & welfare—why? Because every economist & ecologist does who is honest, they’re defined differently
Claims that GDP can be decoupled from throughput absolutely—even if true (which they aren’t)—are meaningless—degrowthers are *precisely* calling for decoupling of utility & welfare from throughput & impact, just not through the medium of GDP.
This fact alone proves neither Medlock nor Noah have read any works by any degrowthers, nor do they understand it, or the basis economics & ecological formalisms at issue. They just instinctively react, reproducing fundamentally capitalist ideologies as projects of socialism.
3. The simple fact is that whatever relative decoupling there may be, there is no *absolute* decoupling of what GDP measures & throughput/impact, & even a 0% static increase in impact/throughput would be unsustainable because of past forcing, level rises, & irreversible impacts
4. There is simply no way to maintain the consumer socialist fantasy paradise they mention, without turning half the world into a sacrifice zone—the US’ production, impact, govt activity & other rates would require 5 earths, given earth’s carrying capacity, if generalized
There are plenty of critiques of degrowth to be had in its intellectual & political components, but doing so would require they actually read and understand the material they are critiquing—not the made up fantasy strawman they’ve constructed to suit their needs
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