And Everything Shall Be Made, Badly, Out Of Wool And Bamboo
I paraphrase, of course:
In his 2017 book Prosperity Without Growth, Tim Jackson, an ecological economist at the University of Surrey, called on advanced countries to shift their economies towards local services, such as nursing and teaching, and the development of more rewarding and less resource intensive professions like handicrafts.
I’ll give you a moment to process that one.
“People can flourish without endlessly accumulating more stuff,” Jackson wrote. “Another world is possible.” Yet proposals to abandon economic growth have also been met with scepticism.
Why, yes, I am reading the Guardian. Why do you ask?
Via Mr Worstall.
Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
“professions”
Well, indeed.
Other words that are bearing loads for which they aren’t entirely suited include rewarding and yet.
A return to the Dark Ages is always possible. You just have to put people who write for The Guardian in charge of everything.
[ Slides ashtray of peanuts to Rafi. ]
Ah, the old “uncooked macaroni pieces glued onto an old cigar box and spray-painted gold” arts and crafts project.
Except I haven’t seen a cigar box in ages.
Related: based on my sparse attendance at Knoxville’s First Fridays art scene (the galleries on south Gay Street are open and put out some cheap box wine), any “mixed media” piece is just a bunch of shit thrown together. Equally bad is any art that uses the term “conceptual.”
[ Rummages under bar, emerges with yarn, needle, pile of ratty, threadbare socks. ]
Get crafting, madam.
I DON’T HEAR CRAFTING.
So… Why is John Cassidy writing for the Guardian instead of cutting out paper dolls or applying glitter and glue to paper plates? Surely some gallery would snatch that up in a heartbeat.
I’m guessing the knitting and gluing and basket weaving is meant for other, less important people. Someone has to be in charge, you know. Leading us to that utopia, where all the flourishing is going to happen.
[ Fetches stick, pushes pile of tatty socks closer to Stephanie. ]
Whereas this would have fit the last thread, it is not entirely inappropriate here, it is OK to steal because “Target enslaved my ancestors…”* also, we don’t need Target because we have Mom and Pop stores and we never steal from them.
*(little known, Colonel Jefferson Beauregard Target IV was founder of the Natchez Mercantile and Plantations, the only Mercantile and Plantations to have survived Reconstruction)
Because cleaning horseshit from the streets and stables is the logical and much nicer descendant of electric vehicles.
Who knew that decades of actively propagating pretentious racial victimhood might have suboptimal consequences?
So he wants the whole economy to look like Etsy?
Handicrafts.
Some years ago, during a car journey, a friend of mine mentioned that a friend of hers had set up an Etsy shop. Due to traffic noise and my ignorance of the website in question, I misheard her. I spent several seconds pondering the items that might be for sale in a Nazi shop.
#TrueStory
Cue Father Ted sketch.
Given the extensive literature and historical record one would think the supposedly well-educated would have some understanding of the expense and drudgery day to day living in a non-industrial society entails.