By Disaster or Design: A Degrowth Answer to Finance with Matt Orsagh

“By disaster or design a Post Growth world is coming…because if we don’t do anything, the systems we depend on will collapse. Let’s not let that happen, let’s design our way to a better system.”

In this episode of Post Growth Australia Podcast, we welcome special guest Matt Orsagh, from the Arketa Institute for Post Growth Finance, and author of the blog ‘Degrowth is The Answer’. Matt and his colleagues at Arketa have been working to align to financial sector with environmental and wellbeing needs, culminating in the 2025 research paper: “By Disaster or Design: How finance can evolve to avoid the worst of the ecological challenges we face and enable the transition to a better economic mode.” The paper proposes many degrowth solutions to the finance sector, to which Matt explores further in this interview.

We also explore Matt’s own written work at his Substack blog, 'Degrowth is the Answer'. Big themes include wealth inequality, the loneliness epidemic, and collapse. These articles exemplify Matt’s storytelling skills. While describing our current predicaments with unflinching realism, Matt reminds us that the future remains hopeful if our global society transitions toward practical, planned Degrowth solutions.

This episode of PGAP is dedicated to the memory of Tristan Sykes, co-founder of Just Collapse, who recently passed away

Change the World through Changing Economics with Marcus Champ: The premiere episode of season 8 is a great companion episode, as it similarly explores economics and finance.

Planning for a Just Collapse with Kate Booth: Our interview with ‘Just Collapse’ co-founder remains one of our most listened to episodes.

We also encourage you to read the PGAP blog article To populate or not to populate? How we can come together around the eternal debate of everyone’s favourite vexed issue.

This interview explores the following three articles from Matt’s Substack Blog ‘Degrowth Is The Answer’:

Americans Don’t Know How Good They Don’t Have It
Collapse: Don’t Look Down
Everyone I Know is Lonely

You can find the Arketa institute publications HERE, where you may read the report ‘By Disaster or By Design.’

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Time stamp

Introduction:

Start – 00:04:19

Interview Part 1:

00:04:19 – 00:32:06

Intermission:

00:32:06 – 00:34:27

Interview Part 1:

00:34:27 - End