Bit #8: Radical System Change: Bitcoin & Degrowth — Issue #1
Originally published on Medium on May 4, 2022.
This issue’s topic: what’s degrowth?
Just thoughts on the connection between bitcoin and elements of the “degrowth” movement that argues that never-ending economic growth is destroying the planet.
First of all, let’s start with what this is and what this isn’t. This is a newsletter of sorts. I’ve had several people ask me for my writings or if I have a newsletter. If you’ve looked around my Medium profile, you’ll see that I don’t have much more than my nearly 10,000 word series on bitcoin’s role in ending inaction on climate change, and an essay on CBDCs. Outside of this, most of my ideas have been disseminated through tweet threads and podcast interviews.
The reality is, I like to write very thoroughly researched articles and I often hate writing opinion (scientist in me, I guess). However, I can see the use in writing more free-form, sharing my thoughts on the various issues surrounding bitcoin, energy and the environment, without the anxiety of producing the most perfect final form.
What this isn’t. These writings are not a final say on the issues surrounding bitcoin’s connection to climate change, sustainability, and degrowth. At some point, I will write that definitive article (or book). So you are warned: my ideas are likely to shift as I acquire more knowledge and gain a better understanding of the big picture.
So let’s get started. First, what I want to explain is what degrowth means. As Noam Chomsky has noted, it’s a TERRIBLE name for an eco-social movement.
“When you say ‘degrowth’ it frightens people. It’s like saying you’re going to have to be poorer tomorrow than you are today, and it doesn’t mean that.” — Noam Chomsky
I challenge my readers to come up with a better one! At any rate, degrowth is many things rolled into one. It’s a social, ecological, and economic movement that believes that the growth imperative of the existing economic system (which I call capitalism, you may choose to call it something else) is what is pushing our society past planetary limits.
Degrowth.org has a really nice definition:
Sustainable degrowth is a downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well-being and enhances ecological conditions and equity on the planet. It calls for a future where societies live within their ecological means, with open, localized economies and resources more equally distributed through new forms of democratic institutions. Such societies will no longer have to “grow or die.” Material accumulation will no longer hold a prime position in the population’s cultural imaginary. The primacy of efficiency will be substituted by a focus on sufficiency, and innovation will no longer focus on technology for technology’s sake but will concentrate on new social and technical arrangements that will enable us to live convivially and frugally. Degrowth does not only challenge the centrality of GDP as an overarching policy objective but proposes a framework for transformation to a lower and sustainable level of production and consumption, a shrinking of the economic system to leave more space for human cooperation and ecosystems.
How does bitcoin fit into this narrative? The obvious way is that bitcoin promotes frugality (through saving and low time preference) and is antithetical to debt-money (money created from credit). It is money that has a physical world constraint through proof-of-work’s link to energy use. This means that not only is there a monetary cap of 21 million bitcoin, but there are also physical constraints on the growth of the network’s security apparatus.
The less obvious connection is that bitcoin promotes a philosophy of decentralization or localism. Bitcoiners are generally anti-consumerists and proponents of ideas like permaculture and local circular economies. Many bitcoiners see inflation as a direct cause of endless growth and consumption. Bitcoiners are also demanding system change. In my opinion, degrowth and bitcoin are really the same movement, but they are birthed from different origins. This isn’t so uncommon, and it’s actually a good thing. This means that we’re moving toward convergence on the solution to the existing system’s problem.
That’s it for now. Until next time.
