Business startup/investment debt though as well as government funding. A big reason for the current need for constant growth in both business and GDP (and this tax revenue in absolute dollar terms) is debt service.
But why do we need money and numbers growth? Why do we need growth for the sake of growth?
What we need are for people’s needs to be met and for environmental sustainability so that we can have a future. Our current models are literally destroying the habitability of this planet.
ETA: An argument for de-growth:
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Oh, absolutely, I totally agree, there are so many ways in which society ignores the carrying capacity of their ecological nests and the most insidious ones are ways only a fraction of a fraction of people understand. But that’s why I brought up debt, because debt service is one of the drivers behind this perceived need for constant growth.
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So let’s get rid of it. Or diminish it. How would we get there?
At the base level, I think that medical and student loan total forgiveness would be a good start. It’s something that’s already being demanded by people, it’s out of control in the first place, and more individuals would benefit as a whole than any other type of debt forgiveness.
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Hmm, I think debt forgiveness without reform doesn’t fix the problem, it just kicks the can down the road. I’ve read multiple convincing arguments that the easy availability of student loans (i.e. normalization of debt) is the biggest driver of inflating tuition costs in higher education. I don’t have any links to hand on that, but do want to share this article:
Scroll down to the heading about paying for college tuition. Free college for families <2.5x the median income would be a trivially cheap program for the federal government to fund. Pair debt forgiveness with that and then suddenly you see massive systemic change.
Medical debt I think it’s a similar issue. Forgiveness without systemic reform (some form of nationalization) just kicks the can down road. If it was done without systemic reform hospital systems would just raise prices, knowing that they had a guaranteed payout coming with the next round of debt forgiveness.
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I love Buy Nothing! Looking forward to my group opening back up; it was shut down after reports of people not practicing social distancing while exchanging goods. 
Freecycle was also shut down a couple days ago in my city - though that group was less active.
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I’m not talking about “without reform.”
We would absolutely need reform and transformation altogether.
To reiterate, the purpose of this thread is not to make the US capitalist system and society better. The purpose is to imagine an alternative and how to get there.
So if you’re talking about forgiveness and reform as a step on the way to get there, great. That’s the goal.
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I’ve heard about Freecycle over the years but didn’t look into it, guess I’m too late 
But yay for Buy Nothing.
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What do you mean by “how to get there”? Like, complete from-scratch thought experiment society? Or serial reform from the present day?
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This!
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Okay, so then I’d double down on my previous comment that debt forgiveness as a first step wouldn’t accomplish what you wanted unless it was a simultaneous pairing with reform.
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You don’t need to double down, I already said that I’m not talking about “without reform.”
I am a bit late to this, but I think traditional islamic approach to business here is an interesting blend of capitalism and socialism.
There is no lending money at interest. In Islamic economic theory, money is merely a medium of exchange, not a commodity to be traded. Therefore the creation of financial instruments have no intrinsic value.
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“A potlatch involves giving away or destroying wealth or valuable items in order to demonstrate a leader’s wealth and power. Potlatches are also focused on the reaffirmation of family, clan, and international connections, and the human connection with the supernatural world.”
“Only rich people could host a potlatch.”
I like this model. Not exactly something to be replicated, but maybe the spirit of it? Scaled up?
Folks who have or make over X amount host a large party where they redistribute the excess wealth among their community.
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Does this generally look the same as, let’s say, my car payment?
I owe $3600 and have a minimum monthly balance due to the bank, but under Islamic economic theory, it simply wouldn’t accrue interest, so my overall payment amount stays the same?
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That is technically an installment loans, but sometimes sharia-compliant mortgages are functionally installment loans.
Sharia compliant mortgages are very complicated, and I think not representative of the true economic theory behind islamic finance because they’ve been backward engineered into something compliant by finance folks.
a few types:
- In an Ijara arrangement, which means ‘lease’ in Arabic, the bank buys the property that you’re looking to purchase and then leases it out to you. The bank transfers the ownership of the property to you once the loan term ends. It’s like rent to own but not a way to prey on poor people.
- A Murabaha plan is where the bank will buy the property you want and immediately sell it on to you for a profit. You pay fixed monthly repayments on the higher price without paying any interest back to the bank. For example, if the bank buys a property worth $300,000, then it may sell it to you for $350,000 and you will need to pay the sum back in a fixed period.
- I don’t really understand Wakala plans, but they are very different.
- Under a Musharaka , you and the sharia compliant lender buy the property together. Afterwards, you gradually buy the bank out of it. To explain, if you put down 20% of the purchase price, the lenders will pay the remaining 80% of the purchase price. You then need to pay monthly rent on the share to the bank, as well as buy more shares in the property. The more shares you own, the less rent you pay to the bank, until you own the property outright at the end of the loan term.
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The first two sound basically like conventional mortgages with fixed payments, just structuring them so there’s technically no interest by building the profit margin into the terms.
Musharaka sounds more different though because of how the payment lowers over time.
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One thing I would like to see is not allowing lenders to sell debt. Either lend the money or don’t, but take responsibility for your decision afterwards, just like they tell us poor schmucks to.
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This would be good.
There are so many issues for the borrower every time their debt is sold to another lender. New logins, new payment types, sending payment to the last lender so now they’re considered behind on their loan and penalized for that.
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I think where a lot of more radical alternatives to capitalism struggle is when they try to scale beyond Dunbar’s number. For those unfamiliar, I think the first line of the Wikipedia article is well phrased “Dunbar’s number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships—relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person.”
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