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Comment by xwdv | Hacker News Reader

The problem is getting people to settle for less. We have an entire generation that expected to own single family homes, travel frequently, have new outfits every season, new car ever few years and live lavish lifestyles they see in the media.

How do we put the genie back in the bottle and get people to accept a smaller, maybe generational home? And maybe only travel out of the country a handful of times in their life? And buy a good pair of clothes and shoes and make it last for a decade? Maybe forgo owning a car all their life? How do you get entitled people to live more humbly putting less pressure for economic growth at all costs?

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Perhaps the ability to work fewer hours. As the number of 'human' jobs reduce (consider the number of bullshit jobs that exist already). I would gladly accept this trade off. To me, time is more precious than things. Of course, on the presupposition that we can live somewhere between basic needs met and the modern luxury of today's North American. I can have lot's of fun cheaply: going outside, playing cards, playing music. Maybe I am being naive.

For now, I feel we have so much work ahead of us.

No.

This kind of zero sum thinking is rightfully rejected by most in the US. We don’t need to live with less, we just need to do a better job. More efficiency, lower footprint.

We need to do better, not do less.

This comment exactly what I’m talking about. Eventually someone will have to live with less. The lifestyle I described above is not too far from what life was like over a hundred years ago.

There is no efficient way out of the problem. Any efficiency gains will be used to pursue even more growth, not simply sustain what we have now.

Accept less.

Living with less is exactly being more efficient. Wasting less, replacing stuff less often is using real goods more efficiently.

Can you expand on the 'do a better job' part? Is that a 'we need to do a better job driving big trucks around for pointless reasons' or 'do a better job of flying jets around more efficiently'?

It's very obvious that you think everyone around you is an idiot, so can you please expand on your ideas for those of us too dim to understand?

Degrowth = anti-humanism

So basically we're fucked.

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