When I was a kid, I believed in the same shit Klaus Schwab was pushing. I thought Limits to Growth was correct, and that we were due for a resource collapse, and if we didn't embrace degrowth immediately, we'd hit a wall. Billions would starve as peak oil made farming equipment impossible to run profitably overnight, the rare earths necessary for all our electronics would dry up, farmland would turn to desert, aquifers would run dry, and fertilizer would run out. Civilization would revert to barbarism, and we'd all be living in a Mad Max-esque wasteland, nuclear exchange or not. Liberals and right-libertarians did not like this stance at all. They thought it was anti-humanist, illiberal, and cynical in the extreme, which is technically correct.
That's why, when I saw what the WEF kept going on about, I knew immediately what it meant, because I'd already spent years debating this shit with center-liberals (very unproductively, I might add). Ten years ago, I was on the WEF's side, playing Devil's Advocate and arguing that we need to take a wrecking ball to large sectors of our economy and implement various technocratic "efficiency" changes so we don't deplete resources so quickly. This is also the same position advanced by the likes of Kate Raworth and Herman Daly. Basically, eliminating GDP growth and trying to achieve a zero-growth society while still maintaining some semblance of the prior living standards.
There are people who rather fervently believe in this stuff:
The problem with degrowth as a means of averting resource depletion is that it makes middle-class people into poor people, and starves poor people to death, but the rich keep chugging along, completely unaffected, insulated from what they've wrought. There's a reason why the richest and most powerful people on the planet push for degrowth; they want our share. Our meager per-capita share of energy and resources. They're pushing for this without people's knowledge, understanding, or consent, and then gaslighting us when we point out how diabolical this is. That's why I no longer support degrowth. It is the position of hypocrites and monsters.
However, I'm sure glad I supported degrowth at one time. The effort I put into researching it back in the day gave me a head start in understanding the exact Neo-Malthusian techno-socialist mindset of the tyrants trying to enslave all of us, which is how I'm able to tear them a new asshole so effectively.
If you're on the cornucopian optimist side and think that additional humans mean more human capital and more minds solving problems, you should be very concerned about the advent of AI automation.
Robots and AI don't need healthcare, they don't need maternity leave, they don't get sick and call out, they don't file lawsuits against their handsy boss, they don't need bathroom breaks or lunch breaks, they don't need entertainment, they don't need housing, they're not politically active and won't vote against the interests of the wealthy, or, failing that, stage protests or strikes. They are automatic wealth generators. If we automate large sectors of the economy, with bipedal robots performing factory work and skilled trades and stocking shelves, and next-gen versions of GPT doing coding, coming up with prose and "journalism", and managing our workforce, do people really think that they're going to get an equal share in the way of an UBI to make up for lost income?
No. That's not going to happen. We will never live in a Star Trek-like post-scarcity society. Instead, the rich will simply kill you and pocket your share of the GDP and sip Mai Tais on the beaches of their private islands while enjoying impossible levels of wealth and prosperity, just as I said they would, ten fucking years ago.
In an oligarchy, having control over automatic wealth generators basically obliges you to kill everyone else. After all, humans are unpredictable, and those workers whose wages you pay today may be holding signs in the street and calling for your head tomorrow. If you're a rich motherfucker, the working class are your enemies. Workers want things that run contrary to what you want, like good wages, a house with a garage, and a stable nuclear family capable of building dynastic wealth. If you allow them to have these things, they will be able to politically organize themselves and act against your interests. You, on the other hand, want to pay them peanuts, force them to live in a pod and eat bugs, and make them pay rent to you for the privilege of living. Why? Because then, they're politically disenfranchised and dependent on you for everything, like serfs. This is the way the Free World ends; not with a bang, but with a whimper, as rich cunts and their asset management firms buy it, gentrify it, and price the rest of us out of it.
Whig history was wrong. Francis Fukuyama was wrong and retarded. We are not at the "End of History". There is no such thing. Things don't actually get better; they merely run in cycles. There is nothing at all to prevent us from backsliding into Feudalism.
tv.gab.com
