Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

Product Information

But logging companies equipped with chainsaws don't let their workers finish the job early and take the rest of the day off. Hickel understands how capitalism came to be, and so he must understand the role of the state and the role of any international organisation controlled by the colonial states. There is so much more that I want to quote from this book, but frankly, I'm afraid of being accused of plagiarism and distribution/licensing issues. He mentions the “dominion” passages in the Old Testament (Genesis 1:26), the Axial Age in which we saw the rise of the dominion ideology (p. We need to change how we see nature and our place in it, shifting from a philosophy of domination and extraction to one that's rooted in reciprocity and regeneration.

He observes that the tragedy of covid might be enough of a shock to get us to reevaluate whether we have a healthy society or not. And yet, capitalism demands that production increases not only linearly but exponentially, and if it doesn't, society will collapse. Jason Hickel is an economic anthropologist, Fulbright Scholar and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. We want our children to grow, but not to the point of being 9 feet tall, and we certainly don't want them to grow on an endless exponential curve; rather, we want them to grow to the point of maturity, and then to maintain a healthy balance. Another example is him suggesting that “with simple legislation, we could require manufacturers to guarantee their products for the duration of maximum possible lifespans”.This could cause ice sheets to disintegrate not in centuries but decades - perhaps as little as twenty or fifty years. Later, he quotes Reverend Joseph Townsend in 1786 as saying, "'hunger is not only a peaceable, silent, unremitted pressure, but as the most natural motive to industry. Enclosures, slavery, and colonization were (and still are) fundamental to capitalism’s objective of perpetual growth. Because after the brilliantly constructed 164 pages of explaining why capitalism doesn’t work and won’t work, surely he’s not just going to suggest MORE CAPITALISM BUT BETTER, right? This book explains the complex state of our world in an accessible way, and not only sheds lights on the systemic causes of the problems we face but also shares inspiring solutions we might adopt to change the course of our history.

I thoroughly enjoyed this biography of capitalism and found it both informative, with loads of well presented data, and a bit scary as well to know why things are as they are in the world in terms of excessive inequality. All products are made to be sold, and when a company figures out how to make a product better/faster, they simply want to sell MORE of it. It is a very easy to read book, and would highly recommend to anyone who is a bit worried about climate change and why the energy transition is not happening as fast as it’s needed. We will not be able to grow ourselves out of the current and imminent climate catastrophe, nor will magical thinking about technology as some sort of savior of humanity prevent or offset the catastrophe.

so we can spend our precious time on earth with loved ones and rebuilding communities/ecologies; this is a crucial framing that Hickel should emphasize more. News from Nowhere will not obtain personal information from other organisations, and will not share, pass on or sell personal information that we hold about individuals to anyone else. It is perhaps well enough that the people of the nation do not know or understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. Dit klinkt misschien dramatisch of zelfs een beetje radicaal, maar het goede nieuws is dat dit mogelijk is zonder dat we moeten inboeten op vlak van welvaart en welzijn, integendeel.

In particular, Commons have intrinsic value despite abundance, whereas capitalist exchange-value requires artificial scarcity (central in the commodification market-creation of the Enclosures/colonialism/Neoliberal globalization). It’s unfortunate that he has botched a number of the significant details that should emerge from a book on degrowth. I'd like to synthesize this with Michael Hudson's focus on Finance Capitalism's debt overhead (the aforementioned M-M’) and fictitious speculative growth (as opposed to industrial growth and its material use): The Bubble and Beyond. I’m not sure how I felt about him providing “steps” to shifting our economy centered around exchange-value to one centered around use-value.Jason Hickel shows that recovering the commons and decolonizing nature, cultures, and humanity are necessary conditions for hope of a common future in our common home. Thankfully, this violent breach has also exposed a revolutionary fervor that I didn't know I possessed. He describes the history of capitalism and how it got us to where we are with many advances in technology but with a very dark side. We need to change how we see nature and our place in it, shifting from a philosophy of domination and extraction to one that’s rooted in reciprocity and regeneration.