Miguel Afonso Caetano<p>"What the two of them so effusively believe about growth is more or less what I think about redistribution. Which is to say: when you redistribute wealth, you in fact hasten a present that is radically different from the one we currently know.</p><p>In an unequal society where the majority must invest the lion’s share of their time and energy into the labour required to obtain the bare necessities of life, individuals lose much in the way of personal freedom and life satisfaction. But we also collectively sacrifice unfathomable quantities of human creativity and potential. There might be abundant growth, but that can matter very little if its fruits aren’t broadly shared.</p><p>Redistribution does not equal, as Klein and Thompson assert, a mere “parceling out of the present.” In a very difference sense than theirs, it represents its own agenda of abundance — one reflecting the richest egalitarian ideas of the 19th and 20th centuries. The liberalism of the 21st might reject those ideas, but many of us on the left still see them as indispensable. Socialism, contrary to what many of its critics have historically claimed, is first and foremost concerned with human freedom: freedom to think, freedom to dream, freedom to create, freedom to live unburdened by toil<br>(...)<br>Klein and Thompson appear to believe distributional questions can be mostly elided if enough new technology is invented and a sufficient quantity of stuff is built and produced. Contentious debates about degrowth aside, I find this assertion vastly more improbable and utopian than the project of universal social welfare or the realization of social and economic rights. Scientific and technological innovations can be hugely beneficial, but until we live in the world of Star Trek: The Next Generation it’s unlikely they will ever compensate for the dearth of social and economic justice."</p><p><a href="https://www.lukewsavage.com/p/the-paucity-of-abundance" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">lukewsavage.com/p/the-paucity-</span><span class="invisible">of-abundance</span></a></p><p><a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Liberalism" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Liberalism</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/USA" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>USA</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Neoliberalism" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Neoliberalism</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Growth" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Growth</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Degrowth" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Degrowth</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Socialism" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Socialism</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Abundance" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Abundance</span></a></p>