this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
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Degrowth

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Discussions about degrowth and all sorts of related topics. This includes UBI, economic democracy, the economics of green technologies, enviromental legislation and many more intressting economic topics.

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[–] MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 month ago

The import part is "can be just ad damaging". Which is why we have to come up with a better alternative.

As for a command economy. That has proven itself to be a somewhat good idea in times of war, as it allows for quick massive changes. Certainly intressting when you want to transition to renewables, built up public transport everywhere and so forth. However in 1989 Russia had per capita emissions of 16.3t per capita making it one of the worsed countries in the world on that metric. Besides some small countries only the UAE, US, Canada and Czechia had higher emissions. Czechia also being a command economy. All of that while the material quality of life in the Soviet Union was worse then many countries in the West.

The problem with that is that command economies turn into dictatorships, when they lack control mechanisms. The only examples I can think of are war economies, which have been rather command economy like and have not turned into full dictatorships. Those however have also been limited.

So imho the best way of doing it, is to have the government set limits and have a mix of state owned companies, workers cooperatives, consumer cooperatives and some companies run by foundations in it as well. That way you avoid the concentration of power held by private companies and especially command economies. It also comes with a good set of checks and balances and can be adapted to local needs. The good part is we also know all of this works at least on a small scale.