China ain’t degrowing, they’re growing, like rapidly.
You can totally argue it’s a more well planned, sustainable growth (I’d argue that), but Xi ain’t exactly making people go back to living in mud huts and farming rice now is he.
Growth is a weird thing to be for or against. Housing one more person than last year is growth. Bombing one more country than last year is also growth. It’s a weird amoral, inhuman amalgamation of priorities.
Capitalism allocates resources to maximize growth (in profits) and lumps all causes - good bad and meaningless - into one category with no distinction between them. It is firmly pro-growth. It is firmly pro a weird amoral, inhuman amalgamation of priorities.
The idea is that no matter what you’re growing, you’re increasing the rate of extraction, which has negative consequences for the land and frontline workers.
A “degrowth economist” would say that if you want more housing you should take it out of the resources we currently use to make highways and military hardware.
