The fact that there's starving folks and throwaway-food, and more empty apartments than homeless persons, is an argument against growth... at least on a global level. In a system based on private property, where a piece of paper determines ownership and speculation determines production (instead of actual needs), production is necessarily harmful.
Anti-productivism is not about not producing anything at all, but rather admitting we can take other angles to the problem before extracting as many resources as we can and polluting as many water streams as we can just to produce more bullshit that's gonna end up in the trash soon.
That there's people starving is arguably not a bug of the capitalist system, but rather a feature. If you desire another outcome, expropriate the owners, dismantle the police and organize into autonomous communes.
Humans once operated like this. We were violent, suspicious of one another and traded from time to time. Most people died violent deaths or starved. (Absent any police force, I can take command of my commune on the promise of improving its wellbeing by taking your’s stuff.)
Also, I can’t autonomously grow good avocados in New York.
What's your source? Some people argue the exact opposite. Personally, i don't believe in human nature but i believe in the power of cultures to shape our lives, so the two situations are entirely possible in my view.
> Absent any police force, I can take command of my commune
That's not how it works. It's precisely when there is already power and privilege that a police force is established, to protect those, not the people. When there is less authority/privilege in a community, there is no police force: the people arm and defend themselves directly (popular self-defense).
> I can’t autonomously grow good avocados in New York
Is it a bad thing? I'm not entirely against some goods crossing some distances for some reasons, but of course you couldn't eat avocados in NY everyday.
What good does eating avocados bring to yourself and your community, compared to the social/environmental damages caused by huge monoculture of avocado and transport of it over long distances using fossil fuels?
> What's your source? Some people argue the exact opposite
As you say, it’s controversial. The data I’ve seen popularly summarised and responded to [1] agree that rates of violent death stayed stable or decreased from when we abandoned nomadism until the present.
> When there is less authority/privilege in a community, there is no police force: the people arm and defend themselves directly (popular self-defense)
Authority doesn’t require a font of honor. It just benefits from one. Power exists in a vacuum, and can mobilise people with the promise of a better life. For example, if my commune made dumb decisions and ruined its crops while the neighbours didn’t. (Or for taco night.)
> What good does eating avocados bring to yourself and your community, compared to the social/environmental damages caused by huge monoculture of avocado and transport of it over long distances using fossil fuels?
It brings me pleasure. It also brings me pleasure to know I’m not trashing the planet, but sometimes those desires intersect. Separately, if if my cultural awareness is small and local, I may care less about my long-term effects on faraway places.
What does it mean that you don’t believe in human nature? Surely there has to be some baseline that’s based in genes and hormones and so on (that we’re not yet sophisticated enough to precisely define, of course). Obviously nurture plays a huge role as well.
Or do you believe that if you were raised like a tiger in the wild, you would think and behave exactly like a wild tiger?
The apartment and food issue is actually a consequence of rigid logistics. Stuff doesn't just magically move. Yes. Food is thrown away. Why? People aren't buying it. Why? Not enough buying power/willingness to do so/capability. People are not naturally static. They have urges. They have tastes/desires etc. Industry is however, static.
The Apartment issue is perverse incentives (housing as "investment vehicle", and not everybody wanting to live where the Market assumes they want to).
The funny thing is, from the advertiser's point of view, they think they are solving both these problems by reaching out to that poor uninformed consumer to pull their attention to what it is they need. It completely discounts the tendency for natural damping of aggressively constant stimuli as an adaptive response. It also discounts the enormity and disturbing nature of the infrastructure implemented to further that pursuit.
Anti-productivism is not about not producing anything at all, but rather admitting we can take other angles to the problem before extracting as many resources as we can and polluting as many water streams as we can just to produce more bullshit that's gonna end up in the trash soon.
That there's people starving is arguably not a bug of the capitalist system, but rather a feature. If you desire another outcome, expropriate the owners, dismantle the police and organize into autonomous communes.