When studying filosophy one can come across the question whether all questions can be answered. If not then the follow up question would be why not, and where can we draw the line. Obviously our mind and vocal organs are capable of making a lot more seemingly meaningfull noises in a lot more odd permutations using a lot more disperate concepts than our universe is entropically capable giving reality to. "Does the Earth fit in a shoebox?" seems a rediculous question, but place a shoebox upside down on the ground and you have your answer (The Earth doesn’t pop in). The question demonstrates undefined limits to the relation between our mind and the universe (meaning the future experiences we expect from our past experiences, maybe made more robust by repeating them a number of times). So if we think and talk about the world that is out there, how do we know we make any sense? Doesn’t it make more sense to constantly do something so you are in fact sure you are making progress (test your beliefs).
It is one thing to never be able to find an answer to a question. The punishment for that is just a bit more complexity. Quantum physics deals with that using probability calculus, finding rest in distributions of outcomes "It wil be a color between green and orange". If the question can’t be answered because you mistakenly believe it can, then you suffer due to your own delusions.
But in reality there are things that can never be, things with zero probability. The best example of a never gonna happen situation is a person being welded naked into a steel box. A big one, 3 by 3 by 3 meters, made of 5 mm steel plates, welded shut. If it’s a guy he has to get out before the air runs out. We know it’s not possible. It is a cruel example that may not feel good to contemplate, but view it as an abstraction of impossibility. There are questions never answered, but there are also realities never achieved.
We think it is important to note that our decisions may lead us or some of us into a steel box from which there is no escape. Poverty, now rising (due to a malign policy called austerity), makes people less cooperative, and as a result some types of movements become less possible, some types of political directions get cut of. See the riots in the Southern European states, riots that should be for renewable energy but are about jobs (let us serve so we can earn carboncredits). Those may become so violent (because the policy is exactly wrong) that anyone offering the solution will be met with anger and obstruction. Reducing the freedom of thought through rising poverty (and a pro carbon media) may be welding the box shut for millions. The future holds only less and less wealth, not more and more as is perfectly possible.
Economics is a glass box painted silver inside, a place of darkness to be in. Outside : The Sun.
The box most of us are already welded into in is that of economical thought. We already respect steel walls made of credit, money, trade, concepts that all vitally depend on fossil fuels, so have no real persistent reality to them. By going along with this delusion (usually obtained through a difficult intellectual process) we limit our understaning of the real steel box we may becme trapped in, we think this one is made of steel, but it is made of fragile glass. We think we can use it as ship with it’s lid open, seeing some benefits in it’s constraints, but if we lean against its walls just a little it would break. It is a mental box, it is not real. It asks nonsensical question (how to achieve economic growth) by nonsensical answers (by stimulating it!). After a flash of buring fossil fuels and an associated rise in cashflow we find we end up with more machines, products, less fossil fuels, minerals, ecological reserves, more people expecting income. Did something grow? No. Was something valuable added? No. The only stimulation was provided by the prostitutes visited by the lazy intermediaries who came up with the theory of economics.
Economics works, but only in a truely closed system, our present system is open, carbon enters it from the mantle of our planet, and accumulates in our atmosphere, churning everything alive like a toxic laundromat, changing our planet into a steel box, a hot sarcofagus with us locked inside. We are paralyzed into not testing the belief whether we are realy stuck in the economic steel box.
Before we take this economic glass box so seriously we end up in a real steel one, we may want to consider our options! Because a steel box is a trap we can not escape from. Our economic delusion is one we can escape from! How? It is simple : Make the delusion less powerfull, dim its light, and place people as much people as possible clearly out of the path towards any steel box.
Strategy
A strategy would really only have one core goal : Reducing the power of the markets. Make smaller markets until you don’t need one to satisfy certain needs. This is not communism or socialism at all, it is called independence. Autonomy. Make things progressively less dependend on cashflows, reduce cashflows, break up larger flows into smaller ones, break up larger companies into smaller ones, make them more local, and above all increase the role of renewables in driving them.
Renewable energy can be centralized, but in general it is localized, distributed in nature. That means that if you produce the things you need using renewables your production capacity is limited, so central production and global distribution of products is not the most logical thing to expect. The most logical thing is to have many comparable production facilities producing what people need for each area, like bakeries and buchers, taylors, carpenters. All trades from the bygone fully renewable powered past (although people burned wood).
The point is not to go back to the middle ages, but to create pockets of wealth that are absolutely robust to what happens elsewhere. It is impossible to do that using fossil fuels. It is the obvious way to do things if we use renewables. It does mean less globalism, less international banks and logistics. It would mean more equally distributed and attainable wealth. More jobs, more social coherence, because we would better understand our own role in our culture. Being usefull is more important than being liked on facebook.
As advocates of the robo(eco)nomy we don’t think we need full employment to have a wealthy society, what else did we invent all those machines for? They take jobs our of our hands, they run fine on renewables. But it may be hard to come to grips with not having to do anything, and it may be more secure to not allow anyone to monopolize certain types of manufacturing. In any case we should start breaking the glass box of carbon based economics, smell the fresh air and feel the Sun that can provide 5900 times the energy we need, the wind, and geothermal resources we can build a whole new type of economy with, before we let ourselves be herded into a real steel box of non cooperative desperation, the soylent green world.
Notice any resemblence.