johnhemming2 wrote:Limits to growth means fewer resources and a constraint on growth and most likely a reduction in economic activity. If there is less economic activity then there have to be some cuts of some form. It cannot be that the state consumes for ever a greater and greater proportion of the GDP - coming to a point at which it goes over 100%.
Defining austerity as cuts in government spending of some form.
Firstly, we would do well to stop referencing the diversity of
life itself as 'resources', especially when such compartmentalised operating systems of consumptive
growth strips that diversity above and beyond the cyclical replenishment rates of
life itself, this in-turn has lead to catastrophic ecological systems collapse and
potential runaway climate change, both of which require ever
increasing amounts of
declining NET energy from the same operating systems in attempting to mitigate against it's own consequences. These consequences are the inevitable and direct product of a cultural narrative which views
life as 'resources' and simply renders it as an inert material conduit to facilitate an abstract financial exchange and maintain delusional notions of
privilege.
Obviously, none of that, is, or ever was, sustainable and yet.....in at least the case of Greece, you insist that they have some kind moral obligation to pay back the debts incurred from an operating system which now has a, as you yourself have just stated.....
'constraint on growth and most likely a reduction in economic activity'
The contradiction of acknowledging the limits of the finite physical reality, whilst simultaneously championing the pseudo morality of the infinitely abstract, is clear to see...and from someone educated on PPE and a degree in physics ( your comment on energy
production has been removed I see), it's not possible for you to miss these contradictions, unless of course you actually believe that by conflating the two will somehow justify 'austerity', It doesn't. The financial debts from a system of exponential consumptive growth, cannot and never will be paid once the velocity of that growth decreases, it is a physical and mathematical impossibility, unless of course....Oxford actually taught you that money
is energy, which I doubt and low entropy isn't high entropy.
'Austerity', in the context that you're forwarding it, John, is simply the political tool of social engineering, no bad thing in and of itself, however...the direction of
this austerity is founded on deceit and does absolutely nothing to encourage the sparks of human creativity that we desperately need for bringing about systemic change, yes we need to use less, but we won't do that by subjugating and punishing folk, indeed..this will have the adverse effect as folk become ever more desperate and angry at the inequity of it all, moreover....it's wasting time and attention needing focused on activity of educating and employing ourselves in repairing the primary biospherical systems, from which we derive all else, because if we don't do that... there will be
no delusional perceptions of privilege to cling to.
We need cuts to the problematic and investment to the positive across the
whole of the spectrum.
