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Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

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Jason Hickel

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“Growthism is little more than ideology – an ideology that benefits a few at the expense of our collective future. We’re all pushed to step on the accelerator of growth, with deadly consequences for our living planet, all so that a rich elite can get even richer. From the perspective of human life, this is clearly an injustice. And indeed we have been aware of this problem for some time. But from the perspective of ecology, it is even worse – it is a kind of madness.”

PoliticsEconomicsIdeologyInequalityEcologyDegrowth
Book:Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
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“Once we grasp the scale of national and global inequalities, then the narrative that seeks to cast GDP growth as a proxy for human progress begins to seem a bit tendentious – perhaps even a bit ideological. And by ideology I mean in the technical sense: a set of ideas promoted by the dominant class, which serves their material interests, and which everybody else has internalised to such an extent that they are willing to go along with a system they might otherwise reject as unjust. The Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci has called this ‘cultural hegemony’: when an ideology becomes so normalised that it is difficult or even impossible to reflect on it.”

PoliticsEconomicsIdeologyInequalityGdpCultural Hegemony
Book:Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
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“Those who insist that aggregate growth is necessary to improve people’s lives force us into a horrible double-bind. We are made to choose between human welfare or ecological stability – an impossible choice that nobody wants to face. But when we understand how inequality works, suddenly the choice becomes much easier: between living in a more equitable society, on the one hand, and risking ecological catastrophe on the other.”

EconomicsIdeologyInequalityEcologyDegrowth
Book:Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
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“Granting that you have more money than others, and that you don’t deserve such wealth—but stopping there—allows you to settle the score by paying your taxes and advocating more redistribution. This reductive attitude toward inequality has the added comfort of justifying nasty judgments about the other side.”

OpportunityCommunityInequalityElitesSocial CapitalWealth Redistribution
Book:Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse
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