Borrowing Against a Future That Cannot Come

Degrowth will happen, whether you plan for it or not

There’s a basic but rarely-stated problem underlying all economic theories. Feudalism, capitalism, communism, slavery, and every other system is an attempt to solve this core truth of human behavior. It’s a problem so fundamental to our desires — but also so unattainable in our lives — as to have become nearly impossible to speak of directly:

Most of us would really like to do only the amount of work we need to do,
and would really prefer not to do more.

Read what I wrote there again.

And now, one more time.

Maybe a sigh escaped your body when you read those words, some great sadness welling up for a moment in your soul before pouring out into the world around you. Or perhaps you became wistful, recalling the ease of your younger years, the repose of a stolen nap, a long vacation you couldn’t afford but took anyway, or the slow waking on the first morning of a three-day weekend.

Or, maybe you felt something quite opposite to all this. Perhaps you nodded your head in frustration and a bit of anger. Especially if you own a business, or work as a manager, or you lead a project, or you have a partner or roommates or children who don’t really clean up after themselves, that statement reminded you of all the extra work you have to do because others don’t.

Of course, some of you might have read that statement in a different way, and thought immediately of all the effort you’ve directed towards becoming more efficient. Maybe you’ve joined Crossfit, or research “biohacking,” or take courses and follow influencers offering methods of maximizing your personal productivity and minimizing the amount of work required to attain your goals. You nodded along, thinking about how true you’ve found it to be and how much better your life has become once you grasped this.

Maybe reading it, another word came to your mind: “lazy.” Possibly you were thinking about all the extra taxes or higher prices you pay to support the lifestyles of those who’ve found ways not to do work at all. Maybe you thought of the “welfare cheat” trope, or the fat bloated capitalists who have all their basic needs met by others while doing no real work of their own. Possibly recently, you overheard some privileged trust fund kid in a cafe talking about her “passive income,” or some government program paying people not to work, and it all made you quite angry. Or maybe you were thinking about a restaurant visit where your server throw the food on the table as if you were a dog, not a paying customer. Or, maybe about that thing you saved up a lot of money to buy, only to have it break soon after because the workers who made it were just there to collect a paycheck.

And there’s one other way you might have read those words, even if you also fit into the other descriptions I offered. You might have been a bit confused, had trouble translating precisely what I meant or applying it to yourself, especially because of one particular word: “need.” Probably you weren’t sure what I meant by that, because you’re not sure exactly what you would mean by that, either. Maybe there felt to be an extra word was missing: “money.” You were thinking that you work for money, and it’s the money bit that you need. Sure, you work because you need to, but only because you need the wages you’re paid in return for that work. And because prices and rents and taxes and costs are always increasing, you’re always trying to have a little more money to keep up, and you’re really not ever certain how much you’ll actually need each year.

All those responses are completely understandable, and the fact that we can feel so many different things about such a simple statement shows how core it is to our very being. That’s also why it’s such a fundamental problem for economic theorists and political leaders, and why it is rarely stated explicitly. It’s such an intimate part of human behavior and desire that it becomes almost rude to speak of, something best talked around but never brought to light.

But once in a while, some theorist or politician admits this truth publicly. When they do, however, they often bury it within a larger argument, a defense of one system or another and its ability to mitigate or even completely circumvent this stubborn human trait.