As the title says, the post is about "moving to a sustainable system of food production within a degrowth paradigm." The basis of the discussion is whether this can take place within the context of "capitalism."
Bill argues for the position that it cannot. I have set for reasons previously explaining my agreement with this view. A major reason can be summarized as "perverse incentives." Of course, it is more complicated than that but the rubric "perverse incentives" sums up Marx's notion of internal contradictions inherent in the capitalism system.
However, even granting a critique of capitalism, the fundamental question remains unanswered, namely, how does global production get from here to there. Without specifying a potentially fruitful route the project remains utopian. Bill proposes to undertake at this from the perspective of André Gorz, a project on which he is now working.
William Mitchell — Modern Monetary TheoryMoving to a sustainable system of food production within a degrowth paradigm
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia
13 comments:
...how does global production get from here to there.
By having no other choice. Replace globalism with localism - or die.
And trust me, this is not an exclusive "or".
Bill may want to listen to this:
William Rees | Confronting Overshoot: Changing the Story of Human Exceptionalism
https://youtu.be/3MVmkIYy9aI
Oh, but Bill Rees in not MMT aware...
“Replace globalism with localism – or die.” ~ Peter Pan
Yes. This describes the war now raging in the West between [1] gigantic mega-conglomerates and [2] medium and small competitors in multiple industries. The giants seek to destroy their smaller competitors in a quest for more power and profits.
Giant mega-conglomerates own politicians, plus the corporate media outlets, plus the minds of woke liberal urban-dwellers. All these parties use woke propaganda about “racism,” “trans-phobia,” “climate change,” and “Russian aggression” to conceal their attack on the masses.
In Europe for example, giant food conglomerates (aka Big Ag) seek to destroy small and medium competitors by using a two-pronged attack….
[1] Big Ag pays politicians to use b.s. about “nitrogen,” “climate change,” and “carbon dioxide” as excuses to shut down small and medium-sized farmers, without touching the biggest corporate farmers. (Puppet politicians never apply their “climate change” measures to the giants.)
[2] Big Ag also pays European politicians to remove all quotas and tariffs from agricultural goods imported from Ukraine. This is one reason why the circus continues in Ukraine. The endless "war" is a corporate attack on average Europeans. Rich European importers get richer by importing cheap food from abroad, and then marking up the prices in Europe, thereby wiping out small and medium farmers in Europe.
In other words, media garbage about “Russian aggression” is camouflage for Big Ag’s attack on Europe. Under orders from Big Ag, the European Commission keeps sending endless billions of euros to Ukraine to prop up this game.
Urban dwellers in Europe love all this, for several reasons. First, it causes slightly cheaper food prices in the larger European cities (for now anyway, until Big Ag destroys all its smaller competition). Second, woke liberal crap lets urban dwellers feel “superior” to everyone else. Wokery lets them take revenge on older “boomers” who the urban losers imagine are all millionaires who never had any problems in life.
Because of this war by Big Ag and its puppet politicians on farmers throughout Europe, the farmers are now rebelling. In France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, and elsewhere, farmers are using trucks and tractors to block the streets. (“No farmers means no food!”) More and more shelves are empty in European grocery stores.
Meanwhile the popularity of populist / nationalist parties keeps rising in rural areas and smaller cities.
Against them, woke liberal masses in the larger cities march to condemn “Nazis” and “fascists” and “racists” (i.e. farmers and populists). These self-righteous urban maggots are mindless servants of Big Ag and its puppet politicians.
In Germany the desperate and corrupt Greens want to outlaw the populist Alternative for Germany Party. In the USA the desperate and corrupt Democrats (and establishment Republicans) want to outlaw Trump.
This war of the agricultural giants on their smaller competitors is also happening in the pharma, medicine, insurance, and banking industries, and with the energy giants who pay urban imbeciles to stage “Just stop oil” vandalism, and with big media companies that pay politicians to pass ever-stricter censorship laws to crush smaller producers of content on the Internet.
Likewise corporate giants and their puppet politicians push racial tension and LGBTQ(P) depravity in order to keep the peasants fighting each other, so the peasants remain divided and powerless.
Continued below . . .
Continued from above
What we have in the West is a total disconnect between [1] ultra-corrupt central governments, and [2] the masses they rule, and who serve as their hosts.
This is why Trump is so controversial in the USA. Corporate media outlets have programmed woke urban morons to hate Trump. On the other side, populists praise Trump as a symbol of resistance against the corrupt federal swamp and its woke foot soldiers.
The divide grows wider every day between [1] giant corporations and their puppet politicians vs. [2] everyone else.
This gap is unsustainable, and it is causing Western civilization to disintegrate. Nothing can stop the coming collapse. The only question is what (if anything) will rise from the ashes.
Decentralized communities will rise from the ashes. Unless those ashes are the remains of a nuclear war.
"Decentralized communities will rise from the ashes. Unless those ashes are the remains of a nuclear war."
Yes. My diatribe above is an attack on centralization, and on the lies that conceal centralization.
Extreme centralization leads inevitably to a collapse, or to a war.
The good news is that after a nuclear war, no one will care about pronouns or BLM or DEI or LGBTQ(P) psychoses. And women that don't treat men like human beings will be left alone to starve.
Speaking of centralization, the European Commission is engaged in a single-minded campaign to force EU states to finish surrendering what little remains of their sovereignty and their veto powers to the unelected bureaucrats of the European Commission. The bureaucrats themselves are chosen by Zionists and big corporations.
Under this scheme, currently being put in place, there will be no more “Italy,” or “Germany,” or France, or whatever. There will only the “European Federation” -- i.e. a super-state under centralized tyrannical control, utterly woke, corrupt, pro-Israel, pro-monopoly, and pro-censorship.
This is the Verhofstadt Plan, named after Guy Verhofstadt, former prime minister of Belgium (1999-2008). Verhofstadt is a euro-fanatic, and has been a member of the European parliament since 2009.
All Europe must be under the heel of Zionists, big corporations, and their corrupt and unelected bureaucrats. Freedom is slavery. Democracy is undemocratic.
There are many “federalist” groups pushing for this communist-style nightmare -- e.g. the Union of European Federalists, European Movement International, European Federalist Party, Stand Up for Europe, Volt Europa, and others.
Also, many corrupt European politicians support it.
Major moves have already been made, with no public votes at any time. (Democracy is too important to let people vote on anything. Elections threaten "democracy.")
The masses are increasingly realizing that it doesn’t matter who they vote for. This is why the globalists, Zionists, and corporate elitists want to imprison the masses now before the peasants fully awaken.
European Federation - only hope is for Russia to invade and sack Brussels.
Or perhaps European farmers will get the job done. Bury Brussels and its Eurocrats under manure.
Here’s another example of how centralized government is increasingly disconnected from the public. Yesterday Nancy Pelosi (former Speaker of the U.S. House) said that her fellow Democrats who call for a Gaza ceasefire are “Russian agents” that should be arrested by the FBI. She said that calling for peace is “Putin’s message.” Pelosi shouted at her fellow Democrats to “Go back to China!”as she got into a car.
As you can see, centralized Western governments now accuse their own voters of working for Russia and China. They condemn anyone who questions the USA’s or Israel’s latest atrocities as Russian and Chinese agents.
Republican politicians (most of them) are at least as pro-war and pro-genocide as are Democrats. Republican Senator Tom Cotton calls the head of TikTok a Chinese government agent for allowing people to question Israeli crimes on TikTok. Presidential candidate Nikki Haley says the U.S. host needs the Israeli parasite far more than the parasite needs the host.
Establishment politicians on all sides are unified in their compulsive shilling for Israel. They work for a foreign country while they attack millions of voters as working for a foreign country.
In the UK it’s the same with Tories and Labour.
In the rest of Europe it’s slightly more complicated, but again it is centralized government versus the masses.
This will continue as long as centralized governments make sure that the urban masses have enough food to eat. The urban masses (especially the younger ones) hate themselves and their lives. They hate the crowds, the street vagabonds, the crappy jobs, the high rents, and the impossibility of owning their own homes. They want revenge on everyone they imagine suffers less than they do. Therefore they push the woke liberal causes that sustain all these problems. They do this to tear down society. They support BLM, LGBTQ(P) supremacy, the Ukraine circus, “climate change” idiocy, and so on – but they don’t support the Gaza bombardment. This anomaly angers the centralized politicians, who want pro-peace peasants arrested.
If food becomes unavailable in urban settings, then woke liberal garbage will become obsolete as everyone struggles to avoid being killed by starvation and by each other. When there are revolutions, regardless of the causes, 95% of the time the trigger (the actual match thrown into the gasoline-soaked woodpile) is when food becomes too scarce or too expensive. Until that point, the peasants will submit to any abuse. They will submit to poverty, tyranny, military conscription – anything but famine.
This is what causes locusts, lemmings, voles, rats, etc. to swarm outward. Food scarcity causes stress to build until animals (and humans) collectively go mad and become marauders. This was Rome’s biggest problem in the late empire. Not enemies, but starving masses invading and decmimating Roman territory like locusts.
In Europe today, small and medium-sized farmers seem to understand this food factor. Food shelves are becoming empty. Do urban peasants blame this on centralized government and giant corporations? Or do they blame the small farmers that are being crushed? This is not yet settled. If the urban peasants end up siding with the farmers, then European governments will impose 100% martial law, with 100% Internet censorship.
This is coming in any case. It’s only a question of when.
The widening gulf between the masses and the centralized government in Germany
The German government is ruled by the ultra-corrupt “gang of five” -- the Social Democratic Party, the Christian Democratic Union, the Christian Social Union, the Greens, and the Free Democrat Party.
This ruling coalition comprises 83% of the German parliament (613 out of 736 seats) and it includes German corporate media outlets. It is allied with ruling coalitions and corporate media outlets throughout most of Europe and the West.
Against the “gang of five” is the populist / nationalist Alternative for Germany AfD. It has only 10.8% of the German parliament (80 out of 736 seats), and yet the ruling coalition it is so hated that it (and German corporate media outlets) have spent weeks organizing young urban dwellers to march against “far right extremism” (i.e. march against any challenge to the corrupt “gang of five” and the corporate media outlets).
This is part of the ruling coalition’s push to destroy small and medium farmers, maintain unlimited immigration, maintain LGBTQ(P) supremacy, and maintain unlimited support for Israel, Ukraine, and the European Commission in Brussels.
Such policies (and “climate change” propaganda) are designed to keep the ruling establishment in power. Most German politicians support these policies in order to stay in office and get rich without having to work.
Throughout the West, the media outlets call any opposition to tyranny a “threat to democracy.” It was the same with the ultra-corrupt Senate in ancient Republican Rome. The beauty of modern “democracies” is that no politician in the ruling coalition is ever accountable for anything (unless they defy the establishment), and the peasants are kept submissive by the illusion of “choice.” All major elections are rigged, and anyone who exposes the rigging is attacked as an “election denier.”
In Germany, three quarters of the population live in urban areas. Despite this, and despite the ruling coalition’s extreme numerical advantage (maintained by election-rigging), the coalition knows that German peasants are increasingly unhappy, and are quietly turning to the AfD. Therefore the coalition keeps organizing peasant marches against the AfD, and keeps threatening to outlaw the AfD. In Sep 2024 the political establishment will have to rig three state elections in eastern Germany to prevent the AfD from winning.
During these staged marches, the corporate media outlets interview staged protesters, all of which claim to be marching to “protect democracy and inclusion” (i.e. marching to exclude all challengers to tyranny). Never anything specific; just “protect democracy and inclusion.” And also “destroy Nazis and far-right extremists.”
Most of the marchers are young losers, but the media outlets only interview adults so that the media pretense doesn’t seem too obvious.
When 300 people join a media-staged march in one place, the media outlets claim that it is 30 million people across Germany so that German individuals feel alone and helpless.
In humans the herd instinct is so powerful that most people believe whatever they are told to believe. They don’t question the lies too closely. Hence their general anxiety continues to grow. Crime, alienation, inflation, economic stagnation, and hopelessness continue to worsen. The gulf continues to widen between the masses and establishment politicians.
Therefore the West is disintegrating.
This is the way of things. Civilizations grow, thrive, reach an apex, rot from the inside, and die.
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