[tomp]

This is actually something I 100% support. As long as degrowth or similar non-sensical ideologies ("luxury beliefs") are practices within free-market capitalism.

The obvious problem, of course, is that 99% of people won't willingly choose lower quality of life (as described in your post, and as most "green" solutions end up being) voluntarily. So ultimately degrowthers end up trying to coerce others.

[theossuary]

Creating communes of tools and such is not "within free-market capitalism." It's individuals choosing to ignore the free-market imperative to make profit for common good. The sooner we deprogram people the better, but sadly I don't think we'll make it before capitalism destroys this beautiful world.

[tomp]

Sorry I meant the whole Western civilisation framework of "democracy + rule of law + contract law + freedom of association + free market + capitalism (private property) + ...".

As in, you create a non-profit (rule of law), buy tools under this non-profit (private property / capitalism), maybe put some specific language in the non-profit's charter to specify what rules members must abide by (contract law), etc.

There's plenty of existing examples of this (such as cooperatives, e.g. Waitrose/John Lewis in the UK and Mondragon in Spain).

The beauty of free market capitalism is that it supports all these!

Instead, communism / degrowth want to trample on several of these principles, starting with "private property":

1. steal stuff from other people

2. ...

3. run out of stuff to steal

4. collapse

[theossuary]

To be fair, almost none of that is free market capitalism, or requires it. To me, you're implying democracy, rule of law, contract law, freedom of association, or free markets require capitalism. I don't see why this would be the case, just because we happened to package all those together doesn't mean they all necessitate one an other.

Getting rid of capitalism also wouldn't require getting rid of the concept of private property. Capitalism is simply the concept that wealth can generate revenue through investment. It's a way of allocating money by way of a ruling class of the most wealthy. This isn't the only way, or in my opinion the best way, to decide what resources are allocated where.

I think coops, nonprofits, and even open source software all show the limits to capitalism. They are examples of people rejecting capitalism in order to persue higher goals than the ever increasing profit margins capitalism demands. I think our economic system should reward them.