Here are my notes and thoughts on Jason Hickel’s book Less is More.
It has an ambitious subtitle: How Degrowth Will Save the World.
Degrowth is controversial word that means different things to different people. It’s important to understand that it’s less about downsizing and more about freeing ourselves from the relentless pursuit of growth, measured as gross domestic product (GDP) output.
Jason Hickel argues that capitalism’s obsession with growth is harmful and unsustainable, comparing it to cancer.
Organisms grow to maturity and maintain a healthy balance. If growth doesn’t stop, it’s a coding error, as in cancer, and cells continue multiplying.
Capitalism’s endless expansion is like cancer, as growth and profits come from exploitation and cause ecological disaster.
Should we ban growth?
The simple answer is no, as markets and traders existed thousands of years before capitalism.
Capitalism stands out from other economic systems because it’s based on the compulsion to constantly expand.
This reinforces a vicious cycle of needing constant growth to avoid social collapse.
Under capitalism, companies aim to increase labor productivity to cut production costs. When labor productivity increases, companies need fewer workers, so people are laid off and unemployment rises, leading to higher poverty and homelessness.
Now, governments must scramble to generate more growth for new jobs.
But the crisis doesn’t disappear, it returns year after year. This is the “productivity trap”.
Under capitalism, growth isn’t optional, it’s imperative. If the economy doesn’t grow, everything collapses.
There is the “debt trap” in addition to the “productivity trap”.
Governments finance activities by selling bonds to borrow money. Bonds carry interest, which compounds.
Governments need revenue to pay bond interest, so they seek growth.
If the economy slows down, governments may struggle to pay their debts, triggering a crisis: bonds lose value.
Governments have to promise higher interest rates to sell bonds, putting them in more debt.
Our economy and politics heavily rely on the concept of growth, which has become an essential system component. Governments prioritize growth over meeting human needs and social objectives.
Growth can be a goal, but not for high-income countries
Most Global South countries need to increase resource use to meet human needs, while staying within their fair share of planetary boundaries.
The problem is high-income countries.
Beyond a certain point, more GDP isn’t necessary for improving human welfare. The “growth” in high-income countries has long been more than required for human flourishing.
High-income countries must reduce consumption to sustainable levels. And must go beyond cutting emissions as they are only part of the crisis.
Clean energy reduces emissions, but doesn’t reverse deforestation, overfishing, soil depletion, and mass extinction. Transitioning to renewable energy alone won’t prevent ecological disaster with current economic growth.
An economy obsessed with growth powered by clean energy will lead to an ecological disaster.
Addressing the ecological crisis requires reimagining the economy to operate within planetary boundaries, prioritizing human welfare and ecological health over growth.
The sustainable alternative is a steady-state economy, which doesn’t extract more than the ecosystem can regenerate or pollute more than it can absorb.
Jasin Hickel concludes the book with a simple but radical solution: any policy that reduces the incomes of the very rich will have a positive ecological benefit. And because the excess incomes of the rich win them nothing when it comes to welfare, this can be accomplished without any cost to social outcomes.
This is widely shared among researchers who study this issue. The French economist Thomas Piketty, an expert on inequality, doesn’t mince his words:
“A drastic reduction in purchasing power of the richest would therefore in itself have a substantial impact on the reduction of emissions at a global level.”