ARM | REICH
MONEY, GROWTH, AND HOW TO AVOID
Natalie Stypa
Always strive for more. Get a degree so you can later get a good job. Be grateful for each unpaid work experience. Add line after line to your CV. Beware of blanks; avoid them by all means. Get a paid job. Move into a bigger flat. Work more to earn more. Buy a new espresso machine. Buy those expensive shoes. Work more to earn more. Earn more to buy more. Consume. Consume more.
According to our current economic system, this is what life is all about. Our privileged Western culture inoculates us with the drive to accumulate wealth. Strategies as ludicrous as planned obsolescence[1] or the hype around the ‘release’ of a new telephone wouldn’t function without the constant want for more of both those of us who consume and those who make the profit. The accumulation of money has become an intrinsic value in our society – something we are after for its own sake while relegating values like compassion, solidarity and responsibility to the back seats. But this system has its own built-in obsolescence. Exponential growth on a finite planet with finite resources isn’t bound to last forever. The exploitation of nature as well as people is too big not to lead to collapse. What could an alternative look like? Enter degrowth. Degrowth as a socio-economic model describes the downscaling of consumption and production. Aiming to create a society that allows both nature and people to flourish, degrowth is a multi-faceted movement and vision of what our world could look like. A world that halts its constant rushing and swaps it for more consciousness and consideration. A world not of coffees to go at 6 in the morning, hurrying to catch a crowded train. Degrowth focuses on different economic, ecologic, and societal aspects like the values we base our lives on. Therefore, it can have a variety of meanings. It can mean not having your own digital camera (which most of the time lies unused on a shelf) but sharing it with your friends or neighbours. It can mean that jobs like cleaning public restrooms or taking care of the elderly are truly valued and paid accordingly. It can mean buying fruit and vegetables that are in season to minimise the amount of water and energy needed for them to grow, and choosing regional produce to avoid long and fuel-intensive transport routes. And here’s a little thought experiment: what if we rid the concept of wealth of the abstract concept of money? What if we take the definition of rich as someone who has a large amount of money at their disposal and turn it into someone who doesn’t need money? Imagine someone who has access to a garden where she can grow the fruit and vegetables she eats throughout the year. During summer, she preserves and pickles and cans for winter. Imagine there is a stream on the grounds and a hydro power generator, enabling her to produce her own electricity. She trades carrots and potatoes for butter and flour that she uses to bake bread. She can play the guitar quite well and she weaves pretty baskets from twigs and thin branches from the garden. When she goes to the dentist, she can pay with baskets or guitar lessons. When she goes on holidays, she stays with people and helps them in their house and garden in return for food and shelter. She supplies her favourite café with homemade cakes, so when she goes there to meet her friends, she gets her coffee without having to use money to pay for it. Granted, those little pieces of paper with numbers printed onto them are handy for they are small and we can easily take them with us wherever we go. But on the downside, they have an alienating effect. What does it mean that a loaf of bread costs a few euros? If I give you a fiver – what is the actual value behind that paper scrap? A few cents, because paper is cheap? Five euros, because that’s what it says on the paper? Imagine getting your bread from the woman with the garden who bakes it herself with flour that she gets from a local mill. She could tell you exactly how many hours of work both the miller and herself put into your bread. Suddenly, the sentence “that’s three euros fifty please” has a whole new meaning. Imagine she would show you the stream and tell you how many tons of water have to come together to power your laptop for one hour. Imagine you were that woman. Imagine what it would be like to experience a direct connection between your work and subsistence, to be paid for your labour not with abstract numbers that merely exist in your electronic bank statement but with tangible things that keep you alive and happy. This little thought experiment may seem illusory but in fact it’s not. Women like the one above who live self-sustainably do exist – but you don’t have to move to the country in order to take a step towards a new kind of economy. Community supported agriculture (CSA) for example forges partnerships between groups of people and regional farmers, offering an alternative to anonymous monetary transactions. Farmers are paid directly by CSA members for providing them with fresh produce. Members are invited to experience the time and work that goes into their food firsthand by helping with planting, weeding, or harvesting a few times each year. As farmers are paid in advance, the risk of production is shared, allowing farmers to produce what soil and weather permit as opposed to exploiting their land in order to fulfil the demands of the market.[2] Another possibility to foster changes to our economy are online sharing platforms. Often subdivided into local networks, you can use them to offer goods that you no longer need – or even food that might otherwise go to waste – to others for free or swap them for something else.[3] And the list goes on. Local currencies or the internet currency bitcoin are further examples that show the emerging desire of many to create alternatives to our monetary system. Examples that permit optimism: already today, people are transforming society by choosing a degrowth way of life that values time, consciousness, and shared responsibility more than money. 1 The strategy to equip products with a built-in expiration date. Once the limit is reached, the products stop functioning and can’t be fixed. 2 You can find further information and links to different groups in Germany on www.solidarische-landwirtschaft.org. 3 See for instance www.freecycle.org or www.foodsharing.de. |