this post was submitted on 17 May 2025
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Degrowth
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Only the last 30 seconds or so are not just scratching the surface. The general idea and its click-baity way to present itself on YouTube are mainly status quo affirming, if anything. In a hyper capitalist world, the pure number of people won’t change anything. Neither good but bad. Only the means of oppression and exploitation, and how intense they are applied, changes. At its core the problem is, that people are just used to make rich people richer. And as more and more gets funneled to the top, more and more people are living more constraint lives. Opening this discussion as an actual way to solve problems is just affirming the false competition between us.
The moral imperative of less people equals better also devalues human life itself. This opens the door for problematic worldviews and hurts the optimistic community-based idea.
If you wait in a line, it would be better for you to have less people in front of you. That does not devalue the life of everybody in front of you. Same story for demographics. There are advantages to having a shrinking population. That does not mean that it is the morally right call to commit mass murder or something like that.
The reality is that fertility rates on all continents, but Africa are below replacement today. That means many countries are going to have shrinking populations in the near future. Obviously that has consequences and at least I do not see a problem in discussing them.
Also no demographics are not going to destroy capitalism by themself. However less workers means workers gain power. If and how they use that is a different question and the fact of the matter is nobody knows. It is a bit like watching a weather forecast and complaining that it does not include a call to revolution.