Two questions: should one exist, and does one already?

Many circulating arguments about why slowing technological progress might be good:

  • Will McAskill’s “Long Pause” and related long-termist / x-risk based arguments.
  • Environmentalist arguments about destroying the natural world
  • Taleb’s arguments against an increasingly fragile and interdependent world on the brink of catastrophic collapse
  • Kaczynski on the inhumanity of industrial society and the necessity to strangle it before it becomes unstoppable.

At the same time, many observers notice that technological progress has in fact slowed to a crawl for manmade reasons:

  • Thiel blames government regulation / socialism / increasing managerialism and financialization.
  • J Storrs Hall “Where is my flying car” blames the “Eloi” - effete rich liberal types who pursue what sounds good over what works.
  • (a stretch) Charles Murray blames a loss of faith in transcendent goals like truth, beauty, the good.

Increasing consensus among Progress Studies types (Cowen, Thiel, Collison, Hall) that something bad happened at a fairly definite time (1970s) when progress was arrested.

Loose ends

Club of Rome

Seems to be a vaguely conspiratorial organization with a generally anti-growth agenda. Timeline (founded 1968) matches.