It might be possible in principle to do better — to decouple, if you will, health and well-being from access to material resources, so that everyone is well-off with many fewer resources. Alston, P (2020) ‘The Parlous State of Poverty Eradication: Report of the Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights’, 2 July, available: https://chrgj.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Alston-Poverty-Report-FINAL.pdf (accessed 7 September 2020). It’s a bold, even romantic vision. But there are two problems with it: It doesn’t add up — and it would be nearly impossible to implement. Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2018) ‘Global Warming of 1.5 ºC’, available: https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/ (accessed 7 September 2020). But there is a lot in between bitcoin and basic subsistence needs. And “enough for everyone who needs it” inherently requires value judgments about what people really need, and what things they value that are frivolous luxuries. That’s why so many anti-poverty programs have moved away from giving people “what they need” toward just giving them cash — that is, giving them wealth, which they can choose to spend however they please.

It is, like every other measure, imperfect and one-dimensional. But ... it is imperfect at the edges while fairly accurate overall. Richer countries are countries that are generally better-off in almost all metrics, from education, life expectancy, child mortality to women’s employment etc. Not only that: richer people are also on average healthier, better educated, and happier. Income indeed buys you health and happiness. (It does not guarantee that you are a better person; but that’s a different topic.) The metric of income or GDP is strongly associated with positive outcomes, whether we compare countries to each other, or people (within a country) to each other.Less is More" is the last piece of knowledge I needed to finally accept that we can invent a better system than neoliberalism. And I had been a neoliberalist for my whole adult life. Jason is able to personalise the global and swarm the mind with ideas ... Heed his beautifully rendered warning. Russell Brand

Steven Chu, who served as secretary of energy under President Obama, has endorsed it, arguing, “You have to design an economy based on no growth or even shrinking growth.”He also links economic inequality and ecological destruction: “any policy that reduces the incomes of the very rich will have a positive ecological benefit” (p. 186). I was a bit surprised, though, to find that he doesn’t mention a universal basic income, which elsewhere he champions. It has become difficult to talk about making energy policies for combating climate change, for example, without being told that such thinking is actually irrelevant because it doesn’t involve system change,” she recently argued. “We need cheap, clean energy at scale and we need it now.”

There’s a lot of broad-brush policy prescriptions in the degrowth lit, but those details never really add up. One of the most important books I have read ... does something extremely rare: it outlines a clear path to a sustainable future for all.' RAOUL MARTINEZ, author of Creating Freedom Ward et al., 2016). High-income countries externalize production, thereby making the appearance of reduced or slowed DMC. Excellent analysis...This book explores not only the systemic flaws but the deeply cultural beliefs that need to be uprooted and replaced.' ADELE WALTON I’ve heard this story elsewhere (fellow anthropologist David Graeber, those influenced by Fernand Braudel like Immanuel Wallerstein), and of course this is a messy topic with many inner debates, but this was a refreshing summary: capitalism did not “evolve” from feudalism in a linear, progressive manner.

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This book has some excellent criticisms of modern capitalist systems and proposes some practical methods that could be used to reduce our obsession with and dependence on economic growth. I was ready to change my views, but to what? "Less is More" convinced me that the idea of degrowth is something that we can build upon. What if we measure our progress not by the amount of money circulating in the economy (GDP), but by the value it creates for humans and the world? b) Colonization: Similarly, colonization broke up sufficient Asian trade networks and destroyed global South Industries through asymmetric trade policies. This forced them to serve as a source for raw materials and an important market for mass-produced goods. Degrowthers reject this concern on two fronts: First, they argue that a sustained, deliberate reduction in consumption wouldn’t be anything like a recession. Recessions, they agree, are really bad, but that’s because consumption falls in affected sectors, instead of being targeted at things that don’t improve well-being. Degrowth, they say, would be different.

There’s some genuine appeal to the idea of an end to “consumerism,” but the pandemic offered a taste of how a sudden drop in rich-world consumption would actually affect the developing world. Covid-19 dramatically curtailed Western imports and tourism for a time. The consequences in poor countries were devastating. Hunger rose, and child mortality followed.There have been really big changes since 2005,” when people were debating whether decoupling was even possible, Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at the Breakthrough Institute, told me. “Green energy has gotten cheap. Solar power is the cheapest energy at the margins in every country today. Global coal use has peaked.” His research finds evidence of “absolute decoupling” — emissions shrinking while GDP grows — in 32 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany. T]his is the core principle of capitalism: that the world is not really alive, and it is not certainly our kin, but rather just stuff to be extracted and discarded – and that includes most of the human beings living here too. From its very first principles, capitalism has set itself at war against life itself.” The sleepwalkers Therefore, governments need to prioritize social objectives over creating the best conditions for capitalism. As GDP is only a measure of the welfare of capitalism, it needs to be replaced with concepts that better reflect human progress, such as Sustainable Economic Welfare or the Genuine Progress Indicator. From private wealth to public goods A masterpiece… Less is More covers centuries and continents, spans academic disciplines, and connects contemporary and ancient events in a way which cannot be put down until it’s finished. So much needs to change; although beginning that change might require nothing more than asking the right question.”