This little video came past me during a heated disussion over at The Conversation. I have to say, it’s one of the very best things I’ve seen in a long time, it almost gives me hopium! It originated from http://steadystate.org/enough-is-enough
The standout statement for me, who submerges himself in all this stuff and finds it harder and harder to learn something new was this:
“Growth is a substitute for equality of income. So long as there is growth there is hope, and that makes large income differentials tolerable”
And who said this? Henry Wallich, former Governor of the Federal Reserve….. of course as the film reveals, equality of income is also a substitute for growth… This film also deals with the predicament of debt well. Tim Jackson, whose lecture on growth is featured elsewhere on DTM makes an appearance also.
Also making an appearance in this film is the idea of Guaranteed Minimum Income, a notion first introduced to me by my own son!
Also of interest, to me at least as a former member of the Australian Greens, is the appearance of a woman by the name of Natalie Bennett from the Green Party of England and Wales. I really really wish the Australian Greens would explain their economic policies better. Or at all. I cannot ever remember either Bob Brown or Christine Milne doing anywhere near as good a job as Natalie Bennett does…..
All in all, I can’t recommend viewing this enough…. and it should be shared widely.
Damn the Matrix 
Should be compulsory reading for ALL Australians.
Thanks Mike.
Hi Mike, thanks for sharing this, a great intro to the issues. I see part of the problem as the neo-cons high jacking of ‘growth’, & worry a little about the various DeGrowth/Steady State movement responses as being somewhat simplistic. John Michael Greer has written on this, EF Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful, Ted Trainer’s writings etc, that growth per se is not the evil, we want growth of Community Gardens, bike riding, micro enterprises close to community etc etc many thanks for keeping on at this! cheers julie
Reblogged this on Foodnstuff and commented:
Watch the video that comes with this re-blogged post from Mike at Damn The Matrix. I’ve just ordered the book.
I think we can fix the problems and build a steady-state economy, but I can’t see the impetus ever coming from government. It has to come from a change at the grassroots level…from every one of us. We can stop the needless consumption of resources and energy. If we don’t nature will do it for us.
[…] This video explains some of what I mean: Enough is enough…… […]
You might be interested in the 2014 Fenner Conference “Addicted to Growth? How to move to a Steady State Economy in Australia”, which is at UNSW on 2nd and 3rd October. http://www.ies.unsw.edu.au/about-us/news-activities/2014/03/addicted-growth-how-move-steady-state-economy-australia
Certainly an informative video! The problem is – how to get the new paradigm started? I agree with David Attenborough that we need a crisis, an existential threat, to get us to abandon favoured nostrums and rethink.
Forecasts say it will happen between 2020 and 2030. It has to be sooner rather than later so some resources needed in the future are still available.
The longer BaU carries on the poorer we will be. Even now it’s probably wishful thinking we can retain much of what we have into the future.
Once energy gets expensive, Liebig’s law will apply and any weak point will crash the whole system. Expensive energy will crush the excess we need to run the current economy. What used to be 100:1 energy benefit is down now to 11:1 and heading south.
[…] substantial will be achieved until consumerism, inflated by capitalism, rolls over and dies. Enough is enough. We can do better than this. Even if the majority can’t see that less is better than […]
Reblogged this on rabidlittlehippy and commented:
Enough is enough.
I’ve seen this blog before and although it just might be part of the tin hat brigade, it makes an awful lot of sense as to what will be done about the ginormous debts behind today’s economies:
and to follow it up there’s more as well, also with Bix Weir;