The Flim Flam Fallacy of Endless Growth Seeems to Have Captured Canada's Political Parties

One thing that stood out for me in Canada's August 6th leaders debate was the unanimous agreement among the party's leaders that economic 'growth' is good. No caveats, no mention the impossibility of endless growth or the limits to growth in a system with limited resources.

But IMO, and that of many others, capitalism will collapse because endless growth is impossible and that we are seeing it run into the limits of that cancerous illogic. Right now we are seeing the demand for needless crap [discretionary spending] declining as consumer debt and alternative lifestyle choices fuels the mild deflation/degowth cycle that the capitalists call recession. Whatever its name, this scenario has already begun to lead to a slow reduction in commodity prices across the board, including fossil fuels. This type of slow collapse simply means folks buy bread, not oreos.

Canada has faced other commodity fossil fuel price downturns in the past but in those eras when the exchange rate dropped in response Canada's economy was buoyed by industries that manufactured goods and who saw a big bump in exports as a result. In addition the Canadian manufacturers saw another bump because Canadians bought products from Canadian sources who paid wages, bought materials - including the commodities those products are made of and the energy to run everything - in loonies as well.

The current economic tsunami would be a small ripple if Canadians hadn't bought into globalization, free trade and the free lunch promised by the capitalists and promoted by their captured politicians. Back then the rich paid a far bigger share of the costs of our cherished social safety net. Far more folks had good paying jobs that allowed them to buy goods made by other Canadians. Back then we were far less divided, far less conquered, by our reliance on the myopic delusion that mutual funds, market indexed pensions and 'investments' were a thing we have a stake in.

As the commodity markets plunge because consumers worldwide are over their heads in debt and can no longer continue to buy the many imported items of needless crap they feel entitled to and the industries in those low wage countries where Canada's former decent jobs have been shipped to by the oligarchs slolwly collapse. As degrowth/deflation/recession, by whatever name, gets used by the captured politicos to push more austerity who then, in turn, demand less crap and the cycle accelerates.

So, as the vast majority humans seem incapable of choosing to live simply and consume less and seeing as refusing to accept the inconvenience of living within the planet's or the individual limits will at some point end up running the whole thing off a cliff, as in 'nature bats last', the best solution i can see and the only solution that doesn't require conscious choice by consumers or corporate enablers, is one where this insane and unjustice capitalist system slowly crashes by virtue of its own builtin bullshit.

As for who gets hurt, the old adage 'when you've got nothing you've got nothing lose', comes to mnd. As it is now not only the corporatists but those who borrow to live - be it from the bank or from our children's future - will bitch and moan as they watch the luxuries they have convinced themselves they deserve dwindle. But, they have chosen to be where they are, they believe in and continue to live lives based on the free lunch flim flam. Some folks, hopefully many, will see endless growth as flim flam fallacy, some won't. Those that do will change course and avoid the oncoming cliff, as certainly a few of the buffalo must have turned away before they were riven over 'buffalo jump'. Those that don't will continue to borrow to finance their past mistakes and...

Those who are already dirt poor [like those billion or two who still live a self sustained pastoral village life will hardly notice capitalism's fall just as they hardly noticed its rise.

None of the political party's platforms dare to counter the impossible promises and free lunch lies of globalization. Our western capitalist governments have been captured by the corporate criminals. The only solution, IMO, is the collapse of globalized capitalism through long term mild deflation driven degrowth which will, without the consumer class themselves having to choose 'less', force an end to the gluttony of consumerism and over-consumption. The only solution to having everything you want is to want less.

i know there are other ways the limits of growth could manifest themselves, like environmental collapse, which would be much less just because all classes, not just the greed class, would suffer. Or it could manifest in more aggressive and violent ways. i guess i'm hopeful that the eventual collapse can be just and that in its wake we'll see a newly re-localized culture that re-learns the value of hard work and the real definition of wealth.

Like all empires, the empire of debt will collapse, it's only a matter of when and by what mechanism. IMO a slow mild deflation driven decline is the most favorable and just.