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Comment by andrepd | Hacker News Reader

>(it is impossible to convince societies to take massive quality-of-life reductions)

Why do you say degrowth = lower quality of life?

Let me give you a simple and practical example: an American living in a suburb takes her gas-guzzler 3-ton SUV to go shopping or to the park, stands in traffic in a 4-lane freeway for one hour. A Dutch living in a suburb takes her bike to go shopping or to the park, rides it through a nice street for 10 minutes. The former consumed much more resources than the latter. Who has the better quality of life?

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It doesn’t matter what you or I think; what matters is that the American living in a single family house driving a big car will perceive anything else as a reduction in quality-of-life and vehemently oppose it.

Also, not even the worst suburbs require you to regularly wait in traffic for an hour to go to the supermarket or a park. These are usually 10 minute drives away. And if it’s raining, or too cold, or too hot out, I would gladly take the (electric) SUV over the bike.

A typical American in the suburbs certainly does not go on a highway to go to the supermarket or park. Those are all local amenities. I know some regions have problems with sidewalk coverage like Florida and way out west, but the suburbs are perfectly walkable anywhere in the northeast. Cities less so due to crime. And you definitely wouldn't have highway traffic in the suburbs, that's more of a downtown thing.

> suburbs are perfectly walkable anywhere in the northeast. Cities less so due to crime

This isn't true. I've lived in and visited plenty of northeastern suburbs and cities. The suburbs are largely not walkable: no sidewalk, long distances, and as a result basically nobody walks to any shop. The cities are walkable and with a large amount of residents actually walking.

I don't know where you lived, but everywhere around Philadelphia/NYC/Boston had sidewalks unless you were way out in the sticks. I lived within a 10 minute walk to the closest supermarket, and 5 minutes to the closest Wawa. You'd see people jogging and walking their dogs at all hours of the day. Conversely, in North Philadelphia the general advice was to stay off the streets after dark unless you were in a car.

What exactly do you think is degrowth? Allowing construction of dense, walkable cities would likely dramatically _increase_ economic growth in the US.

Who has the better quality of life?

I don't know, isn't "quality of life" a personal, subjective measure?

The best example I can give is Singapore. Fantastic public transit, high vehicle import taxes (like 100%) and a system where you need a separate permit to own a care that costs >$100,000 for 10 years.

And yet no lack of people who buy cars. The people I worked with there all owned cars. They could certainly get around without one, but they wanted one, despite the alternatives.

The US has about 6× more cars per capita than Singapore.

Sure, but clearly the demand is still there despite the alternatives!

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