{"id":3500893,"date":"2024-05-01T08:36:29","date_gmt":"2024-05-01T08:36:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/?p=3500893"},"modified":"2024-05-01T08:36:50","modified_gmt":"2024-05-01T08:36:50","slug":"crazy-town-episode-86-escaping-growthism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2024-05-01\/crazy-town-episode-86-escaping-growthism\/","title":{"rendered":"Crazy Town 86. Escaping Growthism: Wendigo Economics, Mystery Houses, and Becoming the Bear"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"height:15px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div><div id=\"buzzsprout-player-14944660\"><\/div><script src=\"https:\/\/www.buzzsprout.com\/244372\/14944660-escaping-growthism-wendigo-economics-mystery-houses-and-becoming-the-bear.js?container_id=buzzsprout-player-14944660&#038;player=small\" type=\"text\/javascript\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><div class=\"gb-button-wrapper gb-button-wrapper-af35d9a5\">\n<a class=\"gb-button gb-button-736fa41c gb-button-text btn res-btn-blue\" href=\"https:\/\/lnk.to\/crazytownWB\">Listen on your favorite app<\/a>\n\n<a class=\"gb-button gb-button-f8db5292 gb-button-text res-btn-yellow\" href=\"\/crazy-town-podcast\/episodes\">See all episodes<\/a>\n<\/div><div class=\"gb-container gb-container-b18365bc\">\n<p><strong>Show Notes<\/strong><\/p>\n\n<p>Grow or die. It&#8217;s the governing principle of companies, investment portfolios, national economies, and even philanthropic foundations. Oh, and cancer. Asher, Jason, and Rob lay bare the stats on everything from human population, energy consumption, global GDP, greenhouse gas emissions, and the size of cars and cruise ships, before concluding that the global economy should be named after the Wendigo from Algonquian folklore. They turn to the natural world for examples of self-regulation, along with promising new economic frameworks and on-the-ground models, for how to end Wendigo economics before it ends us.<br><br>Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.<\/p>\n\n<p><strong>Sources\/Links\/Notes:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Timeline of <a href=\"https:\/\/winchestermysteryhouse.com\/timeline\/\">Sarah Winchester&#8217;s story<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li>Timeline of the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Timeline_of_largest_passenger_ships\">largest passenger boats<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Ish8NBunrQU\"><em>Parks and Rec<\/em> clip<\/a> on soda sizes<\/li>\n\n<li>Kaitlin Smith, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facinghistory.org\/ideas-week\/more-monsters-deeper-significance-wendigo-stories\">More Than Monsters: The Deeper Significance of Wendigo Stories<\/a>&#8220;<\/li>\n\n<li>Winona LaDuke discusses <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yesmagazine.org\/video\/ecological-civilization-sustainability\">Wendigo economics<\/a> in a Yes! Magazine online conversation.<\/li>\n\n<li>Hannah and Kevin Salwen, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Power_of_Half\"><em>The Power of Half: One Family&#8217;s Decision to Stop Taking and Start Giving Back<\/em><\/a><\/li>\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?app=desktop&amp;v=HgJIffsYJTw\">CBS news story<\/a> about a family giving away half their income<\/li>\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/about\">SparkToro<\/a>, an unusual tech company that doesn&#8217;t believe bigger is better<\/li>\n\n<li>Report: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.iied.org\/14670iied\"><em>Resilient Biocultural Heritage Landscapes for Sustainable Mountain Development<\/em><\/a>, which contains information about Peru&#8217;s Potato Park<\/li>\n\n<li>Krystyna Swiderska, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.greeneconomycoalition.org\/news-and-resources\/nature-based-inclusive-development-why-indigenous-peoples-economic-systems-are-key\">Here&#8217;s why Indigenous economics is the key to saving nature<\/a>&#8220;<\/li>\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=sI1C9DyIi_8\">Al Bartlett lecturing<\/a> on exponential growth<\/li><\/ul>\n<\/div><div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h2 id=\"at-35008930\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">Transcript<\/h2><div id=\"ac-35008930\" class=\"c-accordion__content\"><pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted\">Rob Dietz  \r\nI'm Rob Dietz.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nI'm Jason Bradford.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nAnd I'm Asher Miller. Welcome to Crazy Town where the population of delusional ass clowns is only growing at 7% a year.\r\n\r\nMelody Allison  \r\nHi, this is Crazy Town producer Melody Allison. Thanks for listening. Here in season six, we're exploring escape routes, pathways that just might get us out of Crazy Town. In today's episode, Jason, Rob, and Asher are escaping growthism. Here's a quick warning. Sometimes this podcast uses swear words (LANGUAGE!). If you like what you're hearing, please let some friends know about Crazy Town. Now, onto the show. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nHey, guys, Rob, Jason. How are you? \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nGood afternoon. I'm doing well. Doing well.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nI think I'm doing pretty well, too. We'll see at the end of this episode. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYeah, we'll see how this goes. We'll check in.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nAlright. Okay so, I want to start today by asking a hypothetical question, which may be not actually that hypothetical, you never know what happens. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nSure.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nSo let's just say you were to inherit $600 million -- half of the shares in a company that makes billions of dollars every year from people getting killed. And then a bunch of your loved ones die in a matter of years. So yeah, just curious. You know, what would you do with all the money you had? \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nThat's a weird hypothetical. I thought you would just stop at what if I inherited money. But it has to be in a company that kills people and then all my loved ones die?\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nExactly. Yeah. So just channel that for a minute. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nWell, I think I'm buying an island. I mean, I've been listening to Crazy Town. This is the sixth season. It's clear that you gotta get a bunker somewhere down in the Indian Ocean or the South Pacific maybe.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nCan you get an island for $600 million?\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nI think the Indian Ocean might get too hot. So something else.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nI own a bunch of shares in a killing company. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nOh right. If you hold onto the ships you can keep going. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nWell, and maybe they got like warships, and I can get one all right, and it can defend my island.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYeah, you can be one of those sea-steaders, or whatever, and outfit a survivalist ship or something. Alright. Well, I think I would stay closer to home because I have existing relationships. I have friends here, you know. So if I'm missing my family, because they're all dead, I would probably want to hang on to close friends. Rob will be gone on a ship somewhere, but I have others.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nI didn't say you both get the money. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nOkay. But anyhow, I'd send him off on a ship? I'd have plenty to do that too. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nThat's nice of you. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nBut I also want to kind of feel better after what just happened. So I'd build grass and clay tennis courts here at the property. I'd hire a full-time bird guide. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nSo you're really feeding the local economy? \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nOh yeah. And they would help me develop the place to be a bird sanctuary, kind of heaven. I'd probably build one of those giant biodomes, you know? Have you ever been to one? You go to these at, like, Academy of Sciences? \r\n\r\nAsher Miller\r\nYou'd have your own Arboretum. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nAnd tropical plants and birds and little marmosets in it.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nYou'd have lorikeets landing on your shoulder to drink nectar. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nAnd heliconias and all this sort of stuff. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nThat's nice. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nI would probably have this business that someone would run for me of like a like doggy camp. Like people show up and there's like doggy spa day and there's playthings. I'd just go out and I'd hang out with the dogs whenever I wanted to. I'd do that. I'd hire a full-time chef to cook food for me, but of course it'd be food coming from the farm. And it\u2019ll all be seasonal and stuff and organic. And the farm would be like this permaculture blitzed out place, you know. 100 acres of just incredible, you know, orchards, and grains, and beans.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nSee, this is why you're our visionary. I'm more misanthropic. I'm like Tom Hanks in Castaway, living on an island by myself.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nIt also seems like you've given this a lot of thought. Like maybe it isn't hypothetical. Maybe there's something in your backstory we're not aware of because you've put a lot of thought into it. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nI would like that to be. You know, if anyone's thinking about like leaving some fortune to somebody, I've got a plan as you can tell. I'd raise those pigs for you, and I'd hire an entire staff to deal with those thyroids.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nYeah, so our billionaire listeners, we've got a proposal for you here. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYeah. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nOkay, so here I thought you guys are just gonna say that you take like an already gigantic house and you'd just spent decades building and building like weird rooms and dead end hallways on end until you died.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nOkay, so I know this place. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nYou know what I'm talking about. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nUh huh. Because I grew up in Cupertino, California. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nHome of Apple. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nHome of Apple, yes. I was actually programming when I was 11 on an Apple.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nSo this is where you got the $600 million. You invested early in Apple. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYes, I invested early. Uh huh. Yeah, BASIC -- that's as far as I went. Anyhow, but this is the Winchester Mystery House. And it's about 15 minutes from my house, right next to a bunch of movie theaters. So I would go see like \"Indiana Jones\" and \"Star Wars.\" I remember \"The Empire Strikes Back.\" I'd be in line and the Winchester Mystery House is right next to these movie theater complexes in San Jose. Right off of 280.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz \r\nI like that it's not just the Winchester house, you've gotta add the mystery history to it.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nWell, so the history was in the 1800s, this woman inherited the Winchester Rifle fortune.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nExactly. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nAnd she moved from Connecticut to San Jose, which at the time was a paradise. This is in the mid-1800s. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nOrchards, right? \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nOh, I mean, the weather there is incredible. And it was just bucolic as can be. And there's this big old farmhouse she inherited, or she bought to get better weather. But she just started a building. I guess she was into architecture. And her husband died and her sister died. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nYeah. A bunch of family members died. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYeah, so she just started building, building, building, and it just went on and on.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nIt took me till just now to understand your hypothetical question. So she inherited $600 million.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nThe equivalent of $600 million, yeah. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nAnd then she inherited her money from all the people getting shot by Winchester Rifles. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYes. And that place --\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nAnd a bunch of her family died. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYeah, it's a weird place because it's -- I mean, at one point, I think there were 500 rooms in the house, but part of it burnt down during like the earthquake of 1906, or whatever. And so now it's down to 160 or something. So, it's not all there but it's plenty. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nAnd it's nonsensical. That's the whole point. It's that there literally are hallways that dead end. There are stairs that go nowhere.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nRight. So, the idea was that she was completely insane, and that she believed in ghosts and that if they stopped building, she would die. But maybe she was just thinking about future additions. So the hall ends now, but it's gonna keep going later. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nIt almost sounds like the mentality of a hoarder, but instead of putting a bunch of stuff in your house, you're just adding more house. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nBut maybe she's just doing what you were just describing Jason, which is employing a lot of people in the local community. She was just, you know, she was trying to spend her money on local families.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nThink about the craftsmanship. And the wood in this place, like the redwood and all this -- amazing. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nSo did you ever go there, Jason?\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nOh yeah. Of course. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nYou went inside? \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nAll kids did. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nSo you can just run around and find the dead ends? Or what happens?\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nNo, there are tours. You're like with 20 people shuffling through these dark hallways and stuff.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nThat's sad. It would be awesome if it was a free-for-all, and you'd just get lost.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nGet lost. Like a maze. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nThey find somebody who's been there for 32 years. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nYeah, right, a skeleton. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nThis wing is a very large escape room.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nRight. Anyway, the reason I thought about the Winchester Mystery House is it's not so much about her, Sarah Winchester, or her story. It's thinking about that house as kind of a metaphor for the global economy. You know, like the need to just keep growing, which leads to a bunch of dead ends, illogical rooms.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford\r\nYeah, why are we doing this? \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nJust a ton of absurdity, right? And that is the topic of today's episode. We're talking about escaping growthism. So we've talked a lot about growth on this podcast. I mean, it's kind of like the underlying, in some ways, the underlying driver of all the stuff that is the expression of Crazy Town. So I don't necessarily think that we should spend a lot of time talking about growth in the unsustainability of it and our dependence on it. But you know, maybe we just wanted to do like a quick, just a quick jaunt through growth town.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nIs anyone here an expert on this?\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nWell boy, howdy! Did you guys come to the right place? \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nYou tee'd him up. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nThanks for that. So yeah, I've done my deep dive into ecological economics and the ravages of economic growth. And we've actually got a buddy here in Post Carbon Institute, David Hughes. He's on our board of advisors. And he is excellent at compiling stats. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nHe loves spreadsheets. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nHe loves spreadsheets. He told me. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nAnd graphs. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nSo we just grabbed a few to let you know how the scale of things is increasing here on home planet Earth. So global human population has grown eight-fold since 1800. That seems a long time ago, but it's really not that far back. From 1 billion to 8 billion people today.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nThank God it's decreasing, according to Marc Andreessen.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYeah. It might soon\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nYeah, well, we'll see. Global GDP or gross domestic product, the total value of goods and services, is estimated to have grown over 11,000% since 1800. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nThat's a big number. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nWe had an eight-fold increase in people and an 11,000% increase in GDP.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\n11,000% would be 110 times. Is that right? \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nYeah. Anyway, we went from $1.1 trillion worth of goods and services to 126 trillion. Pretty crazy. Global energy consumption has grown over 3,000% during that same time. So, using a whole bunch more energy to do all of this stuff.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nSo 30 times. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nYeah. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nOkay. See, you started with eight times for the population. So I'm trying to homogenize. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nSorry. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nOf course you are.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nYeah, we should give our stats in a consistent format.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\n800% in population. Okay, keep going. Sorry about this. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nWell, that's enough of the stats. I think, though, we do want to talk about the underlying mathematics of growth. And in particular -- \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nWhich can just keep going. That's the math, right? No problem.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nThat's kind of the idea. I mean, let's look at exponential growth for just a bit. And I remember when I was young, like, right out of college, I got this job. And you could join the 401K, where some of your salary gets invested into stocks and bonds, or whatever. And I was really at the edge of being able to afford daily living expenses because the job didn't pay that much, rent was high, student loans were high. But I was talking to an older co-worker, and he gave me this dressing down. He's like, \"You have to join the 401K.\"\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nFigure it out, yeah. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\n\"Whatever it takes. Let me show you exponential growth. If you just invest $10 as a 20-year-old versus starting as a 30-year-old \" He was just showing me how much wealth I would amass because of exponential growth. And I'd say a patron saint of Crazy Town is a professor named Albert Bartlett, who died a few years back, but he went on the academic lecture circuit talking about growth. And his insight, his famous quote is, \"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.\"\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nWhat is that? An exponential function? \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nSo the exponential function means a continuously increasing amount. So you can think of something that's growing at 5% a year. Let's say your bank account is growing at 5% a year. That doesn't sound like much, but what it means is that there's a doubling time of 14 years. So every 14 years, your bank account doubles. And pretty soon, it's just skyrocketing. It goes literally off the charts. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nSo first of all, there's great recordings of lectures that Al Bartlett did with students at the University of Colorado when he was teaching there that are worth seeing. They're on YouTube. We'll add a link in our sources. But you can also see why the rich, people who have money to invest, just get wealthier and wealthier. And part of it is this exponential function.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYeah, exactly. So, now, this is also an important concept in biology, because it's related to what's called population biology. So the idea that if you have a population of organisms, let's say, you've got a population of rabbits, or whatever. And they're growing at a clip. And maybe they can double every year. And so the rabbit population go from 10 to 20, and then from 20, to 40. So you can do this math. It's called the intrinsic population growth capacity of a species. So I used to have this exercise when I taught ecology at Washington University in St. Louis where I had students do the math on, take a bacteria, or take a pair of elephants. And calculate how long it takes that population, given an intrinsic growth rate, to reach the mass of the Earth. So they had to just take the equations from the book and start with the mass of the bacteria, the mass of the elephants, and then the mass of the Earth, and solve for it.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nAnd you're using real -- \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nYou're using the real rate of their growth.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYeah, yeah. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nLike bacteria takes like a could hours, or whater. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\n30 minutes, or whatever, to double. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nAnd elephants take months and months, or even years. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYeah. Years to double. So anyway, it would take about 500 years for elephants to equal the mass of the Earth, and bacteria was like three and a half days. Yeah.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nWow. That's scary. So we've only got a few days left here before the bacteria take over. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nWell, the point was, of course, that it doesn't matter what you're talking about. Something always stops growth from happening. And this is sort of the study, then, of ecology. It's: what are the things that are regulating growth? What are the feedback loops that keep growth from running amok?\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nEcology, that's, you know, that's just the -- Okay, it's a science. Fine. But let's turn to another science, economics. Which is a truly a science. Because they have equations and everything. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYeah, they do. They have their very complex equations. I can't understand them.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nSo you know, they figure out doing their equations, how to just put aside everything you just said about there being limiting factors. There are no limiting factors to growing the economy.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nWell, and recall, it used to be known as the dismal science. But they didn't like that. So now we just make it the science of progress, hope, and joy. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nWell, this is what's ironic, of course, is that they'll say to themselves, like, \"Yeah, economics is all about these painful tradeoffs between allocation of resources for different ends.\" And you know, \"We're just letting the market sort out what the highest and best use is.\" And at the same time, it's like,  Yeah, but we can do this forever. Like we can keep growing forever.  So it's just weird.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nAnd here's the thing. We are actually dependent upon that growth. So if we're looking at the economic system, it s not just an aspiration that we decided to tether ourselves to. It's actually something that is embedded in the entire economy. So for example, you know, when money is created, brought into the world, out of thin air, it's debt, right? So that debt requires growth. It requires it to grow in order to pay back the initial capital, but also the interest on that capital. Right? And that is our monetary system. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nYeah. And well, think about when I was talking about my coworker dressing me down to invest.  Investing in the way our economy works, and investment requires growth too. We're all aligned, I shouldn't say  we all,  because I don't think the three of us are. But many, many, many people are aligned with this whole system of,  I put some money into stocks, into real estate, into investments, and I expect it to be worth more in the future. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nAnd it's not just money. It's actually this requirement for growth, or perception of requirement for growth, of even human population. And we're seeing a lot of debate right now about the human population question. There are a lot of people sounding an alarm about what they see as declining birth rates, particularly in heavily industrialized, quote unquote, \"advanced economies.\" And they're deeply concerned about that. And the reason they're concerned about that is because we've also created a system that requires more people coming into the workforce. So you know, population -- there is constantly either maintaining itself or growing in order to pay into provide tax revenue, to provide social services for an aging population. Right? So there's this like, basically, a system that requires it -- it certainly can't decline. And growing populations often have led to growing economies.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYeah, there's a few things that are weird happening that I didn't foresee, related to the finance side of things. And one is that there's this incredible ability to sort of like refinance. So the idea being like, say you have so much debt on your books, and it's at 5%, but it's obvious that you can't pay that off. The financial system has gamed this so that it's like, well, we're going to recapitalize you at a lower percent, and we're going to restart. It's almost like you refinanced your house, right? It's like, the 30-year mortgage never gets paid off. Your house is worth more and 10 years down the line, you get a bigger loan and you start spending more money. Because now you've got home equity, and you're paying a lower interest rate, or something.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nThe people who really benefit from that are the wealthy because they have so many assets.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nI like that you're always 30 years away from actually owning a house because you refinance, start the clock over, another 30 years.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYeah. But this is what's happening in nation states. So like, you know, you see, like Japan or whatever, and the European Union. This is what's happening for government debt too. It keeps getting refinanced at lower and lower rates. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nThere's an expectation that things will grow. So eventually, it will get paid off. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYes, and they're just extending, extending. Now, the other thing about the population, now, of course, the dream is that we'll have robots do the work when everyone's old. So, you know, there's ways around this.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nWell we better get those robots, otherwise  \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nWell, as long as those robots can pay into Social Security.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nSure. We just write that into the code.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nYeah. So you're talking about growth imperatives and why it's such an important foundational concept of economics today. Economists from old were kind of debating this, and there was a pretty famous American economist and head of the Central Bank named Henry Wallach. And way back in the day, he said, \"Growth is a substitute for a quality of income. So long as there is growth, there is hope. And that's what makes large income differential tolerable.\" You think about that for a second, and you're like, yeah, we don't have to worry about how to divide up the pie at all.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nMake the pie higher.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nGeorge W. Bush, \"Make the pie higher.\"\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nThat's my favorite. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nI like the one: he knows how hard it is to put food on your family. That was a good one too.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nMake the pie deeper. Make the pie longer. But yeah, you don't even have to ever worry about the distribution. And that's a real problem. I mean, probably the biggest critique of capitalism today is that the inequality of wealth grows so large, and there's so many good studies that show how bad that is for society across all kinds of measurement.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nWell, and it's not just, you know, within societies. It's across societies, right? And one of the things -- You ran those numbers that Dave Hughes provided about energy consumption and GDP and all that. That's been disproportionately in certain countries and not others, right, who have benefited from this growth.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nYeah. One thing that you could think about with that equality and growth is you could turn that around. We'll get to this in a bit, but you know, you could have greater equality instead of more growth.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYeah. Okay.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nYou heretic. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nNow, yes, we've seen this exponential growth in economic activity, which is all basically human centered, population, resource, consumption. The decline has happened, of course, with other creatures. So, the biodiversity crisis. There is in some sense, even though the claim is it can go on forever, there's actually a zero-sum game happening with the Earth itself. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nBecause we live on a finite planet. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYes. This is also happening in cultures, in human cultures. And so, the number of languages is crashing around the world because there's this sort of homogenization that's happening. We've talked about this when we talked about globalism. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nAlright, so here we did a probably longer than I had anticipated kind of run through sort of the macro situation with growth. But let's just talk about examples of growth that we see in everyday life. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford\r\nOh yeah. This is fun. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nIt's all well and good to talk about the bigger picture. But like, the growth imperative shows up, you know, in the world around us, and sometimes in really, really stupid ways. So in the examples -- \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nI've got the stupidest way, probably.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nLet's do a competition here. I have a stupider way. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nMaybe you will. Let's see. Let's see. I want to talk about cruise ships, because that's part of my everyday life. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nOf course you do. You love cruise ships. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nI'm on cruises daily.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nThis is a pretty stupid one. That's good. I'll hand you one.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nSo I looked up the length of various cruise ships from history. So I looked at the Lusitania, which was 787 feet long. And this is from 1907. That's still really long. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYeah. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nBut then in 1912, five years later, came the Titanic. 883 feet long. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nWow. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nNow, I don't know if all these things end up on the bottom of the ocean or not, but I think those two did. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nThey did. Both of them. Geez. Why don't we hear about the Lusitania? \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nThere's a great book about Lusitania. kay. Well, and it got shot down. Not shot down. It got torpedoed.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nOh my God. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nI was gonna say, I didn't know it could fly. Incredible boat. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nThat's really incredible. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nThen I skipped ahead a few years to modern times with the Icon of the Seas, which is the new grand champion. It is 1,198 feet long. So over time we are growing our really important resources.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nWell look, they have to keep making them bigger so they don't sink. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nThat's right. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nI mean, eventually, they'll just turn them into islands.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nI kind of want to do this tour where I go see like the worst things in the world.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nDo you?\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nI kind of do. And this would be one of them. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nSo we're going to Winchester Mystery House tomorrow. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nThat's quaint compared to this shit.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nSo I mean, here's a way to do that. Get on one of these cruise ships, cruise around to horrific places.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nI think you've just invented a business. We get the cruise ship that takes you to the worst things. We're gonna go to that bar at the top of the Dubai Hotel. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nGet the margaritas. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nGreenland ice. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nSee, most cruise ships take you to places that are fast disappearing because you're destroying the environment. You want to see the product of our great genius. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nIt's a zero sum game. You're like, instead of being able to see a tiger in the wild, you can mix your drink in Dubai.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nSo not everyone gets to go on a cruise ship. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nThank God. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nBut let's bring it closer to home and in terms of other vehicles of transport. And let's look at size of cars and trucks. So we've seen a massive shift in the United States.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nThat's good, shift. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nThank you. Most people are like, shift? What's a shift? \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nYeah, what's a manual? \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nNobody is shifting anymore.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nI do in my little Toyota.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nThat's true. Yeah, it's beautiful. A real shift from like sedans which used to be the typical American passenger vehicle to now SUVs like trucks, right? That shift has enormously increased the size of the average vehicle the road, but even certain makes of cars. Like the car that I have, Toyota RAV, has grown almost a foot longer, and half a foot wider since it was first seen. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nIt to be kind of cute, like your kids. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nNow it's a huge friggin' beast which is why I liked it to drive it.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nI know. You ran me over when I was biking out there. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nI did. Unfortunately, I just clipped you. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nI thought it was a Highlander. It's a RAV, huh? \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nWe have a RAV. We got it because it's a plugin hybrid. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nIt's what a Highlander used to be.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nThat's right. That's progress.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nYou guys, have you seen a really old Honda Civic in recent times? \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nOh, they're just adorable. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nIt was tiny, tiny. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nThey get like 30 clowns in it in the circus. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nYou can pick it up with one hand.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nSpin it on your finger like a basketball. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nYeah, it was so nice.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYeah. Okay, I don't know if this is better than yours. Those are good. But the example that came to mind for me was, I'm a college freshman. And I'm at UC Davis, and I'm in the dorms and Davis, And not that far, walking distance from our dorms was his AM\/PM Mini Mart. Right? It's a gas station, but they sell hot dogs. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nSlurpees?\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYeah. So they had come out, this is in 1987, okay? They came out with the 32-ounce Big Gulp. And you bought your own cup. You know, you spend an extra 50 cents on your first beverage, and you get your own like plastic insulated mug with a cap and the straw that sits through. And so you go in, and you go and you serve self-serve ice. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nYou could reuse it \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYeah, you get some ice. I would blend stuff sometimes. I would blend flavors. So anyways . . .\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nThat's nothing. That reminds me of \"Parks and Rec.\" Have you ever seen that show? \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nOh yeah. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nThere's a great clip talking about soda sizes. Maybe I can play that for you.\r\n\r\nParks and Recreation  \r\nWell, Paunch Burger just recently came out with a new 128-ounce option. Most people call it a gallon, but they call it the Regular. Then there is a horrifying 512-ounce version that they call Child Size. How is this a child-size soda? Well, it's roughly the size of a two-year-old child if the child were liquefied.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nExactly. So I think, right? This is what's happened. The 32-ounce would be like, it's just small. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nThey're so quaint. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nJust a baby beverage. In fact, they probably give sodas to babies nowadays.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nYou gotta get them started young. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nOkay, I can't resist. I've got one more area of growth that I was thinking of. And this goes to the amount of stuff that you can view on TV or stream nowadays. So I remember in, I guess it was 1980, maybe 1979, Pink Floyd came out with their album, \"The Wall.\"\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nI remember that. I was in like third grade, or something. It was great.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nOf course. But there's a song on that called, \"Nobody's Home,\" where the singer's lamenting, \"I've got 13 channels of shit on the TV choose from.\" \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nWell, that's all I had after school back then. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\n13 channels? That's a lot, actually. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nYeah, yeah, Jason would come home with his Big Gulp and drink that while surfing through the 13 channels of shit. Well, then in 1992, so a little bit over a decade later, Bruce Springsteen has this song called, \"57 Channels and Nothing On.\" So you get this, you know, exponential growth. I mean, how many things can you access today? \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nOh my God. Hundreds.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nWell if you go on YouTube, I mean, think about YouTube channels, right? \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nBut sometimes I'll go to the local bar and I'll say put on the Tennis Channel. Okay? And they're like, \"What channel is that?\" And I'm like, \"I don't know. 700 or something.\"\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nExactly. Yeah, so this growth thing, I was thinking about it. I mean, we've talked about a sort of dependency on it. We've talked about assumptions that exist that don't question its sustainability. But it is kind of like, this sort of like hunger, right? And it made me think of the myth of the Wendigo. Are you guys familiar with that?\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nI've heard about it, yeah. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nI've only seen it in brief circles and economic discussions of endless growth.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nSo the Wendigo is Algonquin folklore in an indigenous community here in what's called Turtle Island, North America. And it's a mythological creature, an evil spirit, sometimes depicted as a creature with human like characteristics which possesses human beings .It's said to cause its victims a feeling of insatiable hunger.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nSo pretty much, the Wendigo has inhabited the souls of our bankers, our economists, our business leaders,\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nThe consumer, you know. Like people addicted to that unboxing video. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nYeah, and actually, that, I think, is a key thing. The Wendigo has been caricatured in American popular culture in different ways, like horror movies, or things like that. But really, it's a parable, you know, and it is a kind of warning. So there's a piece actually about the Wendigo that I thought was really interesting. It's written by a woman named Caitlin Smith for the nonprofit Facing History and Ourselves. And she kind of summarized this really well quote, \"In most traditions, the Wendigo is human in origin and becomes a monster through a process that results either from acts of starvation, induced cannibalism, or from possession by spirit. In the course of the transformation from human to Wendigo, the person exhibits increasing selfishness, violence, hunger, and greed, particularly for human flesh. This is a story shared not merely for entertainment, but to reinforce the communal values that allow the communities in which this practice occurs to live well with one another, and within their environments.\" So it's a warning about that selfish, you know, selfishness, the greed, that tendency that I think all humans can have. But it's sort of a corrective on that to put the community above the individual.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nIt's pretty clear if you embrace on ending exponential economic growth, it ends in cannibalism. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nIt reminds me of the character from \"Lord of the Rings,\" Gollum. \"Precious. My Precious.\"\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nOh, that's your best one.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nI did a good imitation?\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nYeah. I think so. I'll put a stamp of approval.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nThank you. That's the one I can do, I guess I'm pretty lousy on most of those things. Well yeah, you can totally see how this growthism is like a Wendigo, consuming and exploiting people on the planet. This impossible quest to satiate this insatiable hunger for more infects us in all our victims, and \"I want the ring. I want the ring. My Precious.\"\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nGeez. You praise the guy \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nEveryone just got totally creeped out, and they turned this podcast off.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nWe're going to have 60 more minutes of Jason saying  precious,  and then we'll stop. Well, I've been bringing up friends of PCI. We have in the past worked a little bit here and there with Winona LaDuke, who is an Ojibwe leader. She has talked about the Wendigo and she said, \"If you spend all your time making a civilization, which transforms Mother Earth, instead of transforming to be with Mother Earth, it just doesn't work out, and you end up kind of in what I call Wendigo Economics. That's like the economics of cannibals.\" That's what she said. And yeah, that's probably where I heard of this in the past. I was like,  Wow, yeah, we are basically consuming ourselves. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nI think we should adopt that. So when people talk about economics, modern economic theory, we should just call it Wendigo economics. Call it what it is. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nThat's pretty nice.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nThat would be cool rebranding in universities. Like, I'm taking Wendigo Economics 101. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nThis is a message to all you Crazy Townies out there. Sometimes Jason, Asher, and I wish he could be here in the room with us when we're riffing on ecomodernist nightmares, the end of capitalism, the collapse of civilization, and lines from Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. Since you can't be here, maybe we could still be in contact in another way. If you've got a comment about the show or you want to throw some shade at us. Or you've got a question --\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nOr you have any suggestion of escape route stuff. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nYeah. Maybe you've got a story of your own you want to share. Go over to Apple podcasts or iTunes and leave us a review and write your comment there. In your comment, include your idea, whatever it is, and we'll think about sharing it in an episode. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nHow's this? \"I'll be back! Is that any good?\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nOh my God. That's terrible.  \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYou try it, You try it. \"Get to the chopp-ah!\"\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nTime for listener feedback. We got a comment from Willpowers13. In Apple podcasts, he says, \"Loving the theme of the new season.\" That's the title of his review. And he said, \"I really enjoyed the first episode about industrialism. Since much of it was about industrial agriculture, it would have been nice to hear more about local escape routes in terms of creating food sovereignty, and regional food shed resiliency plans.\" He goes on to talk more about agroecology, permaculture, hopes that we might talk about ecovillages a little bit, but his final statement is, \"This continues to be the best podcast out there.\"\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nWell, that part's true.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nThe rest of it, yeah . . .\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nWell, I appreciate it. And you know, I realized that we're -- and this is something we'll get better at during this season is getting more into the escape routes and less on sort of bashing the  ism du jour.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nYeah, yeah. And I should say that I've had some correspondence with Wil in the past. He's a fan of what we do at Post Carbon Institute, and he's a fellow traveler out there trying to do good things on the landscape. So, way to go, Will!\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nThanks Will.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nAlright, this is a section on the Marvin Harris Memorial Lens of Doom. So Marvin Harris, anthropologist, the theory of cultural materialism, basically saying that to understand a society, you need to understand three levels. You need to understand the infrastructure, sort of the physical world. How do they acquire food, energy, the built environment? Structure, so there are laws, there are basically their social norms. And then the superstructure. So what that leads to that are their major belief systems and mythologies. Okay, so let's look at this growthism, through this lens of cultural materialism, starting with the physical infrastructure, right? And the usual suspects for these foundational drivers of growth are the materials, right? So the idea that you have the fossil fuels that you can mine more, you can build more equipment and machinery. And this causes a positive feedback loop that supports now a growing population of humans, right? So expanding the machines that can harvest more energy, more cement, more grains, etc., and build out cities.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nWell, like you said earlier when you were talking about elephants and bacteria, whatever. Everything needs energy to grow, right? So in this case, we've been burning ancient sunlight primarily.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nWe keep saying this, I know, on this show. But it's basic. Fundamental. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nYeah.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nOne piece of the infrastructure that I want to zero in on a little bit is technology writ large. And the reason I'm thinking about it is, whenever an economist or somebody who's a growth booster comes along and waxes poetically about technology, they're always talking about it as it's our path to being more efficient, right? Like, we can use technology to do the same thing with less materials and less energy. But that's not what we see happening in the real world. And an example I could give you is buildings. It's like over time, we've gotten better and better about how to make a building without requiring as much energy, or we can make it stronger with material advances. But instead of just building the same size building with less material, we end up building the taller and taller skyscraper. And we make more and more buildings -- kind of a rebound effect that's pretty well known, but ignored by most mainstream economists.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nI mean, we talked about that with cars. It's the same thing, right? They become more fuel efficient. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYeah, they're a little lighter per size. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nTurn that into a bigger car One of the things around infrastructure, it sounds weird to call people infrastructure, but we talked about it before, which is a growing population being needed to feel growthism. So the infrastructure of having more humans. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nThe labor force. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nTo provide the labor and the consistent tax base is sort of part of the infrastructure of growthism. Let's talk about the structure, sort of the rules and the human systems that we created that reinforce growthism. We already spoke about the existence of debt-based currency driving growth. In fact, requiring growth. GDP is the primary measure of the wellbeing of an economy, right? And we're looking for growth in GDP. It's one of the main measurements that governments use. It's how people gauge the health of the economy. You see that being true for businesses as well. The growth imperative is absolutely embedded in corporations, particularly publicly traded corporations. People buy shares, because they want the value of the share to grow, right? But you also see even things like federal tax credits, right? So there are federal tax credits in the United States for every kid that you have, you know. Which is not to say, like, people are having 8,000 kids because of the federal tax credits, but you look at the rules that are being put in place, the incentives that exist, and it's definitely towards growth in every direction. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nSure. Okay. So then this all leads to belief systems, mythologies, that reinforce and essentially, like, justify what already exists, right? So this is the superstructure. And I run into this a lot when I start to have conversations with say, city officials or you know, kind of mucky mucks in the community, maybe. Like a banker, or whatever, a professor. And you start asking questions like, \"Hey, what's the optimal size here? Have we thought about the size of our, of our city or town in relation to the broader environment?\" And we have goals, for example, of reducing our environmental impact with you know, greenhouse gases is the one that everyone cares about a lot. But most are really going to push for a bigger is always better philosophy. You run into this all the time. Like, well, an ideal sized city would have more law firms that can do more specialized work to help our businesses thrive, or more medical facilities, so we don't have to go as far to get the operation. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nI'm not even sure that most folks would understand your question. You say, \"What's the optimal size?\" And the answer is bigger. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYeah. It's almost always that. It's absolutely amazing. And you try to say, \"Well, you know, when you get bigger, you actually have more of a footprint.\" And you try to break down ecological footprint. It's like playing a pinball machine and you tilted it. You just tilted it. So the game is over, you know. You gotta put another quarter in. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nAnd this is also how you see we get completely locked in, right? Because you think well, we have to grow our tax base in this community. We have these problems we need to solve. If we had more tax revenue that we could generate then we could solve those problems. Not thinking that maybe growth could be potentially exacerbating these problems? \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nThe problem. Yeah, right. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nOn the superstructure side, it was funny. Like, I did a quick Google search, right. I just typed in, \"Examples of businesses that refuse to grow.\" And let me just share with you the first page of results because they're all negative. So, these are some of the results: \"50 brands that failed to innovate.\" \"10 businesses that failed to adapt.\" \"10 companies that failed to innovate.\" \"10 Great companies that lost their edge.\" It's all like, you know, as soon as you ask the question . . . You know, I was like, they refuse to grow. Like I was thinking about it as like a positive. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nI like that your last one didn't mention failure, at least. Your first ones were all, it failed, it failed, it failed.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYou were trying to find a positive for our show. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nExactly. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nAnd it was almost impossible. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nIt was all negative. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nI'm sorry.\r\n\r\nGeorge  Costanza  \r\nEvery decision I've ever made in my entire life, has been wrong. My life is the complete opposite of everything I want it to be. And every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nOkay, let's look to some other species to think about how to do the opposite. Jason earlier, when you were talking about the work you did to teach classes at Washington University, I think you started that talking about rabbits and doubling their population. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYeah. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nWell, you know, if we think about the term quote, \"breeding like rabbits.\" It's sort of a common phrase. And the the idea, of course, is that as long as there's food around, and there's not that many predators, rabbits just have a party, and cute little fuzzy bunnies are popping out everywhere, right? The problem with that is it turns into a boom-and-bust cycle. They multiply so much that they eat through all the resources that they're dependent upon. And they end up dying in kind of horrible ways really. And this is something we're hoping, you know, not to experience as humanity. So there are other creatures out there that do something different. I was recently listening to an episode of the \"Tooth and Claw\" podcast, and they were talking about bears, grizzly bears, and how they can self-regulate. I didn't know this. It's pretty fascinating. But when a pregnant grizzly bear develops an embryo, it floats around inside her uterus. It sounds kind of relaxing, like it's in a swimming pool, or something. But it can stay there for months. And then when that potential Mama Bear goes to the den to bed down for hibernation, how much body fat she has actually determines whether that embryo is going to implant in her uterus or not. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nOh, interesting. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nYeah. So it's like, oh, she didn't eat enough. There's not enough resources. Let's just put a hold on this, and the embryo never goes anywhere. But if she does have enough resources, you know, she was eating BLTs all fall long, or whatever. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nBig Gulps \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nYeah, she had the child sized Big Gulp, then yeah, she will have the offspring.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nThat is interesting. So yes, you're talking about these dynamics of what are called, you know, overshoot and collapse as a potential. And so the ability to not do that,, there's a regulation process. And the regulation could happen externally, because of events that are not that nice. Or there's an internal regulation. So the bear has a natural internal regulation, it sounds like. I know kangaroos do as well. There's lots of examples of this. And I would not be surprised if humans have that. There are stories, for example, of like female athletes. Like I had friends who were like in college, female athletes, and it's like, they stopped menstruating kind of thing. You know, they're just working so hard that their body just sort of shuts down that part, which is fascinating. Maybe that's a sign that you're too stressed out. But there's ways then maybe of regulation of what's going on and reproductive cycles. But it also could be cognitive, right? Like, if you're sensing that there aren't enough resources in your environment, then maybe you hold off on having kids. And that seems to be what's happening maybe now.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nWell with economic pressures things are, you know, I think people feel a lot of economic difficulty. The cost of housing and, you know, maybe student loans or whatever has definitely led some people to hold off on having kids because of a financial thing. But you know, in these cases, we're talking about sort of individual forms of self-regulation amongst humans. But the truth is, we've blown past otherwise, I mean, you talked about external limits, right. And typically, when you have healthy ecosystems there is that dynamic right. And we've just said, fuck that, basically. You know, we're the apex predator or apex species on the planet, and we've found ancient sunlight as a form of energy for ourselves and we've just gone crazy for a while. And have not so self-regulated. In fact, we've created a system that says, just keep growing.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nNow this is the do-the-opposite portion of our show.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nOh, sorry.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nSo what we're suggesting -- \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nYeah, act like a grizzly bear.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nMaybe act more like the grizzly bear, and we impose regulations on ourselves in spite of what the Supreme Court might want us to do. That we take care of the situation and impose a slowdown and maybe a reversal.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nThis may be our best do-the-opposite ever. It's to stop acting like rabbits. That's pretty much what we're saying.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nBe the bear. So let's talk about visions for -- you know, let's look through a Marvin Harris lens, but a positive one. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nOkay. Good luck. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nWhat are visions for different infrastructure, structure, and superstructure?\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nRight. Okay. Infrastructure -- You know, what drives me crazy is the buildings that go up like, you know, Corvallis is growing like crazy. And I lived in California for a long time. And I remember being there during the build out of the latest housing bust, right? And just the neighborhoods that would spring up overnight. And I've been to Phoenix, Arizona, and that, you know -- \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nAll the way to Tacoma, Philadelphia, Atlanta, LA.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYeah. Oh my God. I want to sing right now. But anyhow, I'll save our listeners. But what we do, the building materials we use . . . Like the fact that we had these industrial building materials that quickly just put up this shit housing. And of course, people need housing, I understand that. But what if our infrastructure was aligned with like, materials that were locally sourced, biodegradable, and all we could build was with what we could gather, you know, locally, and maybe semi=regionally? Wouldn't that be an amazing -- It would look beautiful. It would look like these towns that you go visit in Europe from like the 1500s that you think -- Or Italy, right? They're gorgeous, right? Or the architecture in the southwest. You go to like the Taos Pueblo and you see these places. It's not like they're not gorgeous, beautiful places.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz \r\nThey're built with quality and built to last.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nThey're built with quality and care and the people know how to do it themselves. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nSo the first thing I'm doing when we finish this episode is to pull the metal roofing off your house and replace it with straw. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYeah, if we can make good straw. We gotta do a good job. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nNo smoking is allowed near your house. Well no, I love that idea. I've been to the Taos Pueblo. It is a sight to behold and a -- \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nWell, and obviously it'd be appropriate for the environment that you're in. The materials that you're using, you know, whether you're building for heat, or cold, or a combination, or whatever. Climate might kind of fuck with that a little bit. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nWell let's turn to the structure. And there are a lot of things afoot right now that are kind of going against the policies of growth, especially in Europe and look at the degrowth movement. I've studied steady state economics. There's also now donut economics. So you've got these ideas coming up with new policies, and there are actually hubs, academic hubs around the world. You've got the Universitat Aut noma de Barcelona has a lot of degrowth action going. University of Vermont here in the United States. Leeds University over there in England. And we've got allies that have done really well with pushing ideas. I, of course, go back to Herman Daly. And he's got his predecessors where he talked a lot about uneconomic growth. The notion that economic growth at some point turns a corner. It's like, maybe it was producing benefits faster than costs. But at some point, the costs, like you were talking about Jason, the biodiversity loss and habitat destruction, we were basically undermining ourselves. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford \r\nYeah. The Big Gulp causes diabetes. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nRight. Uneconomic growth. So yeah, just shout out to Jason Hickel, who's been doing a bunch of work on degrowth. Kate Raworth and her donut economics, where she's looking at how do we meet people's needs without undermining the life support systems of the planet. All of this stuff comes down to pretty straightforward policies. I'll mention a couple, but you know, you can go back to our slew of former episodes and get a lot of this stuff. But we need limits on throughput. We should distribute income and wealth in fair ways. We should definitely re-regulate financial systems, my God. You know, we should use different measures of progress. GDP was never meant to be a measure of progress, and somehow we've done that. In our globalism episode, we talked about the rules of trade, and those need to be overhauled. So a whole slew of literature and invite you to dive into the degrowth.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYeah, there are lots of ideas for new structures, that's for sure.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nBoth with what you talked about, Jason, for infrastructure, and Rob, what you talked about structure, these are forms of self-regulation in a sense, right. And that really comes down to the superstructure. And this is the paradox that we've talked a lot about on this podcast, which is, we've talked about how infrastructure typically drives structure and superstructure, right? And we know that the infrastructure is going to change. We've talked about, there are limits. And we're experiencing those limits now. But if we want to kind of get ahead of it, if we want to try to soften the blow of that, then we need to be working on superstructure as well. And so when you think about, what is a vision for a different superstructure instead of more and more, grow and grow, it's a vision and a value set around enoughness. And if that is the mindset that we have, if it's enoughness, or self-sustainability, or sustenance, then it's a shifting of what we're seeking. And you can want more. But you know, people have talked about decoupling. We can decouple the consumer economy from material resources or carbon emissions, or whatever, which we've talked about before as being essentially bunk. But there are areas where we can grow and we can seek more. But maybe they're more about knowledge or more about wisdom. They're more about connection. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford\r\nThey're new skill sets. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nThings that don't require, you know, necessarily more resources, or growth and material consumption to achieve. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nYeah, it's the unknown Wendigo that you're talking about.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nYeah. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nI wonder if we could decouple economics departments from bunk. Would that be possible?\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nI think we should just decouple them, put them on. . . We could take the entire economics department of one of these top prestigious schools, University of Chicago, for example. Let's put it on that cruise ship, seal it off, you guys have just enough bunker fuel, or whatever you burn to get out there, and then you're on your own.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nMy whole life actually. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nThat'd be great.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nYeah. I love it. Okay, let's talk about escaping. Like, if we're talking about escaping growthism, how does that apply in the real world for us. And maybe let's start at the household level. When we were prepping for this this episode, the first thing I thought about was this book that my wife had read, which I'll admit, I had not read myself. But I remember her talking about it and being actually inspired by quite a bit. It was called, \"The Power of Half.\" And it was about a family that sold their Atlanta home back in like 2006, I think it was. And they donated half of the profits of their home sale to a group called The Hunger Project, which was a charity that worked to lessen the hunger of about 30,000 rural villagers in over 30 villages in Ghana. And it helps them gain self-reliance. It's a beautiful vision. And they downsized to a much smaller home. People don't know this, you know, our listeners don't get a peek behind the curtain too much, but we've had wonderful people supporting us and researching what we do -- \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nYeah, you stand on the shoulders of great women, primarily.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYes. Mostly. Yeah.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nSo do I. Well, we've had wonderful people helping us research and prep for shows over the years. And in this season, we've had our colleague at Post Carbon Institute, Cassady Thomas, helping us a little bit. So I asked Cassady, do you mind just like doing a little digging into this Power of Half story? And she found, I just have to share this. She found maybe not quite as beautiful of a story as I was imagining. I mean, they did what they did. They downsized. But they downsized from a house that was 6,500 square feet, five bedrooms, eight fireplaces, four bathrooms and a private elevator into their teenage daughter's bedroom. They sold it for $2 million. This is a huge mansion, right? They gave away half their proceeds, $850,000. Wonderful. And they downsized into a house half the size, but that was still 3,000 square feet. So Cassady was like well, there must be better examples of people doing this. And she found a lot. And I just wanted to share one with you, which is, the Wises, a couple who gave away, or probably are still giving away nearly 50% of their income every year. Over $100,000. And there's, you know, we'll share a link to this interview that was done with them. You know, it's very much around this idea of enoughness. Like we don't need more money. We're fortunate enough to have fairly high paying jobs. We have all this access. It's a joy for us. It's like a no brainer. The way they talk about it is almost just like, why are we even having this conversation. They're interview for like a local news station, or whatever. And they're like, why are we having this conversation? This is like a like a no brainer thing to do. We don't need this much money.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nWell, and I would invite our listeners too to go back, I think it's all the way to Season One when we had Chuck Collins in this very studio who came to the same realization at a quite young age. And he's got a book called, \"Born on Third Base\" where he inherited a bunch of money as a 21-year-old. And he was like, I don't deserve this and I don't need it. And he gave it away. Incredible\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nPretty amazing. Now, I know you did this search to try to find businesses that -- What was the term again you used? \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nExamples of businesses that chose not to grow.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nRight. Now, you did find one eventually. And it's called -- \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nOn the 17,000th page of Google results,\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nI had to use the Wayback Machine! \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYeah. Well, it turns out there is a business in Washington called SparkToro. And they're kind of a software marketing company. And it's interesting, because if you look at them, they seem like a pretty small company. And they're very explicit upfront about the fact that, you know, we're not trying to get bigger at all, and we're fine as a small company. And they basically profess that monopolization is bad. And trying to get out, you know, with some sort of venture capital idea of the 10x returns is bad. You're probably not serving your customers well. So they have this really interesting sort of page that contrasts their approach with sort of the standard approach for businesses trying to just like, capture their largest share of the market and outcompete everybody else. And they want businesses to be small and midsize. They want sector competition, and they want to be able to focus on quality and relationships. So there are some examples out there, probably more than this one.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nThey have a cool visual on their website comparing what they think of themselves as a zebra company to unicorns. I mean, unicorn is a term in the business world for a company that just takes off, like a Facebook or whatever.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYou put in 10 bucks and become a millionaire. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nYeah exactly. And they're just contrasting the purpose, the outcomes, the how, the approach, and the who. And I think it's really helpful. I will say, you're right, my Google search was disappointing. But there are many companies that are, you know, you look at the B Corp movement. There is no shortage. I mean, it's definitely not the norm. But at the margins, and I think as we see, I already think you see younger generations questioning like the career path that they might take and what's the purpose. Like, is it worth taking on debt to get a high paid job I only get an order to buy shit and pay off that debt. So people are looking for alternatives, and there are definitely companies out there that are helping.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYes. And a lot of people want to work for them. They don't want to work for a company that they think is just awful and has a bad mission.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nI mean, I would, but nobody wants me unfortunately.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nNot anymore. You're not hirable anymore.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nYou're not gonna get a job at that company because they're not growing. So forget it.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nDammit. I never thought about the downside. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nSo in thinking about how to escape growthism, we've got the household, we've got the business. If we scale up to something like a community initiative, there's a really cool one that's going on in Cusco, Peru, which I'm excited about. Because right now, as we're recording this, my stepdaughter is on a study abroad and is actually on her way to Cusco, Peru.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nNice Unbelievable. I've been there a few times, and it's one of the most spectacular places I've ever been to.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nWell, so what's happening there is something called -- it sounds a little trite, the Potato Park. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nPotatoes are very important in the Andes. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nBut it is really cool. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nThat's where the potato comes from. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nThat's right. \r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nI'm psyched about this. So what's happened is they've established what they've termed a biocultural heritage territory. And it's governed by six Quechua communities, that's the Indigenous folks that live there. And what they're doing is, they're teaming up to work on micro enterprises in food and farming in ecotourism and the development of crafts. And they figured out that they're gonna guide this Potato Park by principle that are important to them, and they're gonna have goals for wellbeing. And so, kind of similar to what you guys were talking about. They take a percentage of the revenues that they get from these micro enterprises, and they invest them in communal funds, and it gets redistributed to everybody. So, everybody in the community is benefiting. And there's kind of like side effects from this. Because they're doing this heritage with potatoes, they've increased food security. So like during the pandemic, a lot of people in Cusco were starting to face food shortages. And they were able to share their surplus and kind of put their communal values into work and to practice.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nThat is a fantastic story. And so, I think it's important for us to probably recognize that if you look around the world, the things that you can find on a Google search are often limited to people who have the technology, the reach, and the interest in sharing all this stuff on social media or wherever we're publishing a lot. And you go to these other places, and it might be harder to find, but there's probably way more interesting things happening in places like this. Remote areas like this where people are forced to face these challenges and are just as creative as anyone you've ever met probably.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nI mean, think about it, a lot of these traditional cultures, if their dominant operating system was growth, they probably wouldn't still be around, right? It was around sustainability and reciprocity and being in community with one another in the natural world. I'm not trying to, you know -- \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nRomanticize everything. \r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nPaint an idyllic picture. Right. \r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nMost of them had histories of like, perhaps, you know, empire building.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nThey were dealing with real limits, right? And now they're being faced by Wendigo economics coming for them. You know? So one of the things that -- It's a weird dynamic. We don't want to be exploiting and extracting from them models for how to do things differently. But learning from them in some ways helps protect them from the ravenous you know, rapacious economic system that we and our listeners are still a part of.\r\n\r\nRob Dietz  \r\nWell, I wonder if we can go down to the Wendigo market, like the one you went to, Jason, get us a Wendigo drink, shove that Wendigo drink down our Wendigo gullets.\r\n\r\nAsher Miller  \r\nIt makes you thirstier and thirstier is the problem.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nYeah, you'll never be satisfied.\r\n\r\nMelody Allison  \r\nThat's our show. Thanks for listening. If you liked what you heard, and you want others to consider these issues, then please share Crazy Town with your friends. Hit that share button in your podcast app, or just tell them face to face. Maybe you can start some much-needed conversations and do some things together to get us out of Crazy Town. Thanks again for listening and sharing.\r\n\r\nJason Bradford  \r\nToday's year of high energy, modernity, economic growth, globalization, and political stability has elevated finance to a position of paramount importance. But this is all about to change. Don't get caught as an unskilled buffoon during the Great Unraveling. Instead, attend Finance Finishing School, a beacon of adaptability that prepares financial professionals for a future where everything they know now is worthless. Our curriculum is meticulously designed to include practical skills, such as subsistence farming, landfill salvage and tool fabrication, primitive medicine, and cooking with dried dung, essential for survival during times of financial and social collapse. Additionally, we prioritize soft skills, like nonviolent communication and mediation strategies, fostering empathy and community building. Because odds are, you're kind of a dick right now. Our mission is to transform finance professionals into well rounded individuals, capable of thriving in a world where sociopathic norms no longer suffice. Join us and start counting friends instead of just counting money.\r\n<\/pre><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Asher, Jason, and Rob lay bare the stats on everything from human population, energy consumption, global GDP, greenhouse gas emissions, and the size of cars and cruise ships, before concluding that the global economy should be named after the Wendigo from Algonquian folklore. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128238,"featured_media":3500896,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":true,"footnotes":""},"categories":[251744,79718,251746,79720],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3500893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crazy-town","category-environment","category-podcasts","category-society"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3500893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3500893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3500893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3500896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3500893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3500893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3500893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}