The global economy is overproducing in general. Abolishing overproduction would not lead to drop in living standards, since with planning and rationing we can ensure decent living standards for 8.5 billion people using 30% of current production, and use the remaining surplus for luxury, free time, and science.
<Some narratives* in international development hold that ending poverty and achieving good lives for all will require every country to reach the levels of GDP per capita that currently characterise high-income countries.
<However, this would require increasing total global output and resource use several times over, dramatically exacerbating ecological breakdown.
<Furthermore, universal convergence along these lines is unlikely within the imperialist structure of the existing world economy.
<Here we demonstrate that this dilemma can be resolved with a different approach, rooted in recent needs-based analyses of poverty and development.
<Strategies for development should not pursue capitalist growth and increased aggregate production as such, but should rather increase the specific forms of production that are necessary to improve capabilities and meet human needs at a high standard, while ensuring universal access to key goods and services through public provisioning and decommodification.
<At the same time, in high-income countries**, less-necessary production should be scaled down to enable faster decarbonization and to help bring resource use back within planetary boundaries.
<With this approach, good lives can be achieved for all without requiring large increases in total global throughput and output.==
<Provisioning decent living standards (DLS) for 8.5 billion people would require only 30% of current global resource and energy use, leaving a substantial surplus for additional consumption, public luxury, scientific advancement, and other social investments.
<Such a future requires planning to provision public services, to deploy efficient technology, and to build sovereign industrial capacity in the global South.
* i.e. liberal, third-worldist, in general unscientific, utopian or anti-communist narratives
** i.e. the imperialist center
In short,
1) abolish the parasite imperialist state, establish a dotp and end overproduction
2) centrally advance ecological transition and transfer technologies to the global south
3) usher in a new communist age
>>2854484You could have just replied to that thread with this instead of starting a new thread
every american has a car, 3 iphones, a laptop, a gaming pc, a smart watch, a fridge, a microwace, AC, and hundreds of useless little trinkets they buy from time to time, thats not even counting all the shitty food they eat
the first world is clearly overconsuming
The destruction of the global production chains will be the only realistic way of achieving a world worth living in
Anti-imperialists are unironically muh iphone lmao
>>2854484>Abolishing overproduction would not lead to drop in living standards, since with planning and rationing we can ensure decent living standards for 8.5 billion people using 30% of current production, and use the remaining surplus for luxury, free time, and science. umm fuck your science. it's bourgeois. clearly the world is a zero sum game. every calorie that goes into a westoid tummy is ripped out of a third world tummy.
(jk anon, this is totally correct and has been correct for decades now)
>>2854546>every american has a car, 3 iphones, a laptop, a gaming pc, a smart watch, a fridge, a microwace, AC, and hundreds of useless little trinkets they buy from time to timeeven the homeless. it's true
>>2854546And yet if you eliminate the inherent wastefulness of capitalism it becomes possible for literally everybody in the world to have a comparable living standard without growing global GDP.
>>2854484search copper -> no results
search soil -> no results
search coltan -> no results
search concrete -> no results
Anyway the left should figure out if we need to expand the means of production to overcome scarcity or if we're actually overproducing and just have to distribute it better. The latter is probably more optimistic unless you want to start doing asteroid mining or we figure a way to save the topsoil and vanishing fossil water.