In defense of the washing machine
I write reasonably often about degrowth, the movement to save the world by shrinking the economy. Why? After all, it’s an extremely niche ideology, one basically confined to European socialist academics, with absolutely no chance of ever becoming law or policy anywhere. Is it even worth continuing to rebut?
I think so, and the reason is that while the actual proposals of degrowthers are unserious, laughable, and stand no chance at becoming law, the underlying antigrowth attitude is far more widely held — and that attitude does shape our policy priorities. I often get replies to this newsletter pushing back on our degrowth skepticism, repeating the line “we can’t have infinite growth on a finite planet” or similar ones.
The most recent round of degrowth arguments was kicked off by a Dutch PhD candidate who wrote that we shouldn’t have washing machines — yes, washing machines.
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