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How to meet the ecological constraint?

Meeting the ecological constraint concretely means respecting the Earth's limits.

1. Combating the inflation of non-production workforce

Meeting the ecological constraint requires entering a degrowth logic, to reduce the pressure on raw materials, waste, and other emissions that disturb the climate.
The problem is that currently, no one knows how to implement degrowth. Indeed, growth is necessary in capitalist systems to compensate for the inexorable inflation of the non-production workforce, described by C. Northcote Parkinson, which affects both private companies and public services.

The non-production workforce consists of people performing jobs with low, negligible, or even harmful impact on society. For example, quality assurance departments, personnel management, marketers, finance, or legal services, as opposed to nurses, teachers, or sanitation workers.

2. Regulating decision-making processes

The ecological impact of production must take precedence over other considerations such as cost or marketing.
However, attempting to achieve this through regulatory constraints within a market economy, as is done today, is perfectly illusory, because it is far too crude. The law cannot account finely for every particular case. Conversely, the decision-making mechanism described in the second part of the book From Capital to Reason makes it possible.

3. Banning unsolicited advertising

One cannot artificially create needs in individuals that they did not have on one hand, and on the other hand ask them to moderate themselves to protect the planet. Given the magnitude of moderation required, the middle ground on this scale is merely a way of pretending to do ecology.
See chapter 14 'Consumption and Ecology' of the book From Capital to Reason.

4. Educating for the search for minimalism

Social ambition, stemming from our genetic heritage, drives us to want more than our neighbor. This very powerful instinct needs to be countered byeducation, through learning the search for minimalism.

5. Reducing birth rates

This is an important measure, but it requires significant work to master the negative indirect effects. In particular, it implies that the subsistence of the elderly should not be guaranteed by children of a specific gender.

Synthesis: Adopt an economic policy

Our modern states follow a ... stupid economic policy, primarily focused on more - growth - rather than on better. We therefore produce increasingly useless things, to the detriment of basic needs that are poorly met, and above all through irresponsible use of natural resources, unnecessary pollution, meaningless jobs, and an unjustified work pace and pressure.
Then, to redeem one's conscience (resolve cognitive dissonance), one financially supports a few virtuous projects at little cost, which are highlighted in the media, without worrying about the fact that the economic model on which they are based is not generalizable. Being concrete and funded is not enough.

A serious economic policy begins by defining the needs of the community members we wish to meet, and then strives to do so best, meaning with the least possible impact on natural resources, the environment, as well as an optimal work organization aimed at limiting it to the strict minimum.

Deepen

Start by properly understanding the major difficulty of the subject, exposed in the question 'Why are small gestures for the planet dangerous?'.

Understand what a serious economic policy is by referring to the question 'What is an economic policy?'.

Read chapter 14 'Consumption and Ecology' of the book From Capital to Reason.

For a more detailed explanation of Parkinson's Law, and of what we mean by non-production workforce, see the question 'What does Parkinson's Law teach us?' on this site, or read chapter 2 'Generalized Nepotism' of the book From Capital to Reason.

For an explanation of what we mean by regulation of the decision-making process, see the questions 'Why do humans reason massively incorrectly?' and 'How to take decisions consistent with the general interest?', then read the second part of the book From Capital to Reason.

Regarding the individual aspect, consult the third recommendation '' of the question 'How to succeed in life?' consult the third recommendation concerning the search for minimalism.

 

2022-11-10 12:01:29 Cyril Reducing the birth rate: a complicated measure

La consommation des ressources, la production de déchets et la pollution sont évidemment proportionnelles à la population, "toutes choses étant égales par ailleurs" comme disent les économistes.

Selon une projection moyenne du département des affaires économiques et sociales de l'ONU publiée le 11 juillet 2022, la population mondiale - qui devrait atteindre 8 milliards d'humains le 15 novembre - pourrait atteindre environ 8,5 milliards en 2030 et 9,7 milliards en 2050, avec un pic à environ 10,4 milliards de personnes dans les années 2080 avant un maintien à ce niveau jusqu'en 2100. Malgré la baisse générale du taux de fécondité.

« La population mondiale comptait à ma naissance 1,5 milliard d'habitants. Quand j'entrai dans la vie active, vers 1930, ce nombre s'élevait à 2 milliards. Il est de 6 milliards aujourd'hui, et il atteindra 9 milliards dans quelques décennies, à croire les prévisions des démographes. (L’humanité) aura exercé ses ravages sur la diversité non pas seulement culturelle mais aussi biologique en faisant disparaître quantité d'espèces animales et végétales. De ces disparitions, l'homme est sans doute l'auteur, mais leurs effets se retournent contre lui. Il n'est aucun, peut-être, des grands drames contemporains qui ne trouve son origine directe ou indirecte dans la difficulté croissante de vivre ensemble, inconsciemment ressentie par une humanité en proie à l'explosion démographique (et qui) devient trop nombreuse pour que chacun de ses membres puisse librement jouir de ces biens essentiels que sont l'espace libre, l'eau pure, l'air non pollué. »
Claude Levi-Strauss dans le Nouvel Observateur en 2005

Pourtant, la natalité - associée au choix d'une famille de faire plus ou moins d'enfants - fait l'objet de dogmes puissants. Toutes les religions préconisent de se multiplier, le capitalisme exige la croissance. En France, le système de retraite dépend complètement de la capacité des générations actives à cotiser pour leurs aînés.

Si on regarde de plus près les projections de l'ONU, on s'aperçoit que la question ne concerne finalement pas tant que ça l'Europe et l'Amérique du Nord, dont la population semble avoir atteint un palier et devrait décroître pour être à la fin du XXIe siècle ce qu'elle était à son début.

Mais si "réduire la natalité" n'est déjà pas politiquement correct, que dire de "réduire la natalité en Afrique et en Asie" ?

source des données : https://population.un.org/wpp/

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