Less is More

This is by far one of the best books I've read all year. I strongly recommend this book to everyone.

I've never been the spiritual type. I'm a methaphysical naturalist. But this book is the first book ever that has me questioning such an ideology. The ones who cleave the spirit from the natural world are also those who seek to dominate it at all costs.

If societally accepted fictions like corporations can garner personhood despite not tangibly existing, then we must expand our definition of personhood & individual rights to things and beings that do exist, like rivers and forests and animals. As these aren't “natural resources” to plunder. They're vital threads in the web of life.

Environmental sustainability is fundamentally incomparable with Capitalism. You cannot support both. Capitalism requires endless growth for the sake of growth. This is impossible on a finite planet, and unethical in a world filled with unjust suffering, poverty, and death caused by capitalism's unquenchable thirst.
GDP does not measure the health or wellbeing of the people or the environment, but the health and wellbeing of capital. Countries with lower GDP's have higher levels of happiness, wellbeing, lower carbon footprints, longer lifespans, etc.. In this country, we work ourselves to death not for ourselves, but to make the rich richer.

We must ignore GDP and shift our global economic system from an exchange-value system (underlined by unending growth and capital accumulation) to a use-value system (underlined by improving the health and wellbeing of the people, and becoming a more environmentally sustainable society.

This can be accomplished by de-comodifying healthcare via M4A, creating universal basic services, strengthening labor rights (reducing the work week without reducing pay, among other things)

I went into this book with “capitalism is not perfect but it's not that bad compared to communism” mindset. What this book opened my mind to is that this is not a duopoly. Democracy and capitalism do not come hand in hand. And what's at the core of capitalism is continuous growth. Mostly for growths sake. A sort of larpurlartism, if you will. And here is the crux of the situation we find ourselves in these times: growth and ecology simply can not co-exist.

>Whenever there appears to be a conflict between ecology and growth, economists and politicians opt for the latter and try ever more creative ways to get reality to conform to it.

But that doesn't work anymore. We have to ditch GDP as a measure of success and chose ecology/well-being. After a certain point there is no correlation between how good people have it vs how high the GDP is anyway. If anything it's actually reverse: take a look at Portugal and USA for example. We have to pick a metric that adjusts for income inequality as well as the social and environmental costs of economic activity.

>Decoupling of GDP growth from resource use is at best only temporary. Permanent decoupling (absolute or relative) is impossible for essential, non-substitutable resources because the efficiency gains are ultimately governed by physical limits. It is therefore misleading to develop growth-oriented policy around the expectation that decoupling is possible.

>If scarcity is created for the sake of growth, then by reversing artificial scarcities we can render growth unnecessary. By decommodifying public goods, expanding the commons, shortening the working week and reducing inequality, we can enable people to access the goods that they need to live well without requiring additional growth in order to do so. People would be able to work less without any loss to their well-being, thus producing less unnecessary stuff and generating less pressure for unnecessary consumption elsewhere.

TL;DR: We have enough already. We have to find a way to redistribute it so we can all have better and more fulfilling lives. And in the process also save ourselves from growth that's killing us via the actions we make on this planet.

A must-read