This is a natural reaction to having constrained resources and being informed about one’s choices.
If people had enough money to feel comfortable, and lived in a world that wasn’t dying, they would want to participate in society and the economy more.
Very interesting, inspiring even.
Not long ago I saw a factoid to the effect that Japan had attained a kind of equilibrium where population contraction was making economic growth unnecessary (after all: less people for same economic output, so the virtual effect is expansion). It’s a striking idea, it would be interesting to hear more about it.
Zhao is careful to distinguish between people who choose to want less and those who fail to act on their desires out of despair.
Are they really different? I could start in despair and then tell myself that’s what I want. I think I do that with many things I don’t have, basically turn my envy or desire into contempt for those who have those things.
Getting to vs having to. Makes a big difference. Soldiers have to force march with a ruck; we get to hike the Appalachian Trail. One is an adventure and the others sucks.
Being happy with less or growing to accept less is different from wanting more and being unable.
Growing to accept less seems like capitulation to an unfair, unjust, and unstainable system… but then why would I want to participate in that anyway? This is confusing
That’s a good thing. We all should do that.
Sounds awesome. We should all do more of this (if the privilege exists).
Me too, Japan, me too.
Please edit the UTM trackers out of the link to: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/7/31/2336178/-Japan-s-Quiet-Rebellion-Against-Growth-Instead-of-striving-for-more-Japan-simply-chose-less
Done, but who cares. It is the wrong origin anyway.
That’s the intention. The trackers serve as a signature that is used to track the flow of information and build up a shadow profile on you and whoever clicked the link. If you didn’t use a VPN, Google now knows you personally are the sort of person to share this information, and will use that to feed you more seductive propaganda.
UTM tracking are basicly just used to know the origin of the link, however they do not store personal data in it at all. So Google does not know, if I or you shared that link.
The tracking mainly works by just having Google Analytics in pretty much every website and Google reading out browser fingerprints.
Until yesterday, I knew some stuff about tracking (mainly that my ad-blocker was taking care of it), but never heard about the UTM one.
From the articles I read since, it’s this UTM tracking for dummies that clarified things for me, and I think it cofirms what you say.
