🐭 A (degrowth) world without Disneyland

It would be a smaller and poorer world after all

Quote of the Issue

“Here is how human beings, again and again, confronted the deeply human problem of how to draw life from the raw materials of the world: Each invention, each discovery, each adaptation brought further challenges in its wake, and through such continuing transformations, we arrived at where we are today. The air is cleaner, the world more peaceful, and more and more of us are prosperous.” - Richard Rhodes, Energy: A Human History

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The Essay

🐭 A (degrowth) world without Disneyland

I’ve just returned from a delightful family vacation to Disneyland. It’s been so long since my last visit that an entire additional park has been added, Disney California Adventure, as well as the new Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge theme land at Disneyland Classic. Great time, beautiful weather. But as proof that I never fully set aside Faster, Please! and my pro-progress goal of creating a more techno-prosperous America and world, the same thought kept running through my mind: Would a degrowth world be a world without a Disneyland? 

A quick reminder: The kooky degrowth movement advocates for a radical reduction in economic growth to achieve its social and environmental goals. Degrowthers argue that the continued pursuit of infinite growth is ecologically unsustainable on Spaceship Earth, causing massive environmental destruction, social inequality, and political instability. Given that current global per capita GDP is currently around $12,000 a year, we’re either talking about a big reduction in rich country living standards or a world with far fewer people. Also universal basic socialism. Enemy #1 here is resource-gobbling, energy-devouring capitalism, and the mass consumption and “materialism” that it generates. Degrowth has a “small is beautiful” ethos right out of the counterculture 1970s of the sort we currently see when food is marketed as local and organic. (In the end, capitalism always wins, it seems.)  

As may already have occurred to you, a radical degrowth world wouldn’t seem to be one amenable to massive theme parks. After all, what is Disneyland other than an almost pure distillation of everything that degrowth opposes? Welcome to Neoliberal Land! 

In the degrowth mindset, Disneyland is a symbol of the destructive and unjust system of capitalism. It consumes huge amounts of energy and resources — so much concrete and plastic — generates a lot of waste and emissions, and promotes a culture of consumerism and mindless entertainment. Disneyland also depends on a large and relatively affluent market of tourists whose trips to Southern California are enabled by cheap and subsidized fossil fuels and global trade. What’s more, Disneyland appropriates the culture and history of local and indigenous peoples for profit. Finally, Disneyland creates artificial and commodified experiences for visitors, rather than authentic and meaningful ones.

In other words, degrowthers aren’t going to try to snap a selfie with Pocahontas or put visiting all the various Disney parks around the world on their bucket lists. Look, in a world focused on the hyper-efficient use of resources, no one is going to be building anything this frivolous just to provide fun vacations: