I was gonna suggest The Dawn of Everything. I think one of the major arguments they make in the book is that humans have lived in very differing cultures and societies throughout (pre-)history. So attaching any one mode of societal organization to “human nature” is hardly possible.

I agree that in the long run degrowth is not compatible with capitalism, at least not capitalism as we know it. Even if markets and private property continued to play some role in the economy. However, I think it’s important to emphasize that we don’t need to first somehow completely rid of capitalism (that would require some higher order magic) and then implement degrowth. There are many reforms that can start building the path of a prosperously degrowing society. A good overlook of degrowth policies can be found in this article. Of course, the need to reduce material flows is absolutely urgent, and I definitely advocate building popular support and implementing degrowth policies asap.

Just adopted Joplin (FOSS all the way) for notes on desktop and mobile, using my own Seafile instance as the cloud service through webdav. Very happy with it so far, be it short and quick or long and complex notes.

Also using Zotero for bibliography management and related notes, also backing up to Seafile webdav. Joplin and Zotero also play together, but haven’t tried that out yet.

Clarence Kennedy

While a tempting logic, in my understanding of the dairy market this is not correct. To my knowledge, here in Finland the big retail chains initiate auctions for the milk contracts, which are highly competed. If a producer tries to raise the price, they will likely not sell any milk at all. On top of that, milk is an important loss leader for the retail chains. The price is kept as low as possible, and it might even be sold at a loss, to tempt customers who will then compensate for this loss with the rest of their shopping basket. Against this, it would be very incorrect to assume that nobody bats an eye if the price of milk increases ten cents.

For anyone wondering whether to click: yes, the article is very critical of this and gives a lot of space to experts who think that this is an absolutely terrible idea. I think the value here is in knowing what the oil industry tries to do and how they try to lie to justify their crimes.

I don’t understand your logic. Say SUV’s were on average 50 % worse emitters than regular cars. Now when picking a car you face the choice of emitting 1 unit or 1.5 units of emissions, for basically the same service. If we look around, these kinds of choices are everywhere. Transportation, food, housing, electric power. Often the difference is even bigger than 50 %. Being consistent in choosing/forcing/promoting the better alternative results in a HUGE difference. Of course, if you look at one decision, it’s not decisive. But transportation and cars definitely are a major factor.

I find it quite convincing. I’m involved in activist groups with a lot of young people here in Northern Europe, and I see a lot of this “smash capitalism” attitude. And I think it’s very relatable, and in some places has real potential for changing things. But I wish to see it combined ever more often with concrete goals and plans in eroding and taming capitalism. And I think it is important to keep the rage there, in the spirit, not to become cynical and calculative and opportunist.