Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

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Het dominante wereld- en mensbeeld – waarin de menselijke geest geacht wordt de natuur en ook het lichaam te onderwerpen en exploiteren – dient plaats te maken voor een alternatieve filosofie, die je als lezer graag in de plaats wil laten komen eens je weet dat het mogelijk is: een filosofie gebaseerd op wederzijdse afhankelijkheid, evenwicht en respect, die stelt dat alles met elkaar verbonden is en men niet meer mag nemen dan men kan teruggeven. Less is More is required reading for anyone interested in what it means to live in the Anthropocene, and what we can do about it.

In “Less is More” Hickel believes firmly that the states and politicians are the good guys and they just can’t wait for an opportunity to pass legislation that is a slap in the face to big business, they just haven’t had the language to correctly ascertain what is there to be done, misled by GDP and other economic indices (poor, poor politicians).There was some cherry picking of evidence to feed a narrative regarding social welfare programs but to my knowledge the cherry picking was minimal and the arguments were convincing regardless. Question - Have you ever wondered why we work longer and longer hours despite all the technological advancement we've made over the last half century?

While Hickel does go over the issues with GDP (created during WWII to maximize war production, no accounting of costs or non-market goods, then enshrined as the universal target of “economic growth”), the crucial next step is exploring the strong coupling between (1) GDP growth and (2) raw materials consumption/ecological footprint which exploded with the “Great Acceleration” after WWII and no end in sight despite the supposed “Information Age”/“Intangible Economy”. The author very convincingly argues for a just society by reducing excess consumption by those who have over-consumed for too long, to get us out of the climate and ecological crisis.Less is More" is the last piece of knowledge I needed to finally accept that we can invent a better system than neoliberalism. 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. b) Colonization: Similarly, colonization broke up sufficient Asian trade networks and destroyed global South Industries through asymmetric trade policies. But in 2016, two American scientists published an article in the journal Nature pointing out that it may well happen a lot faster. Hickels debunks this, and he also debunks the very simple idea that growth for growth's sake simply doesn't exist in nature.